This past weekend was one of my least-favorite parts of the annual cycle: I shut off and drained my hot tub.
I’ve always loved sitting in hot tubs, as far back as I can remember. Growing up on family vacations I preferred them to the pool. So when I was grown up and could afford one, I got it for my house.
Dr. Allan M. Block
I spend my winter weekend afternoons relaxing in it with a can of beer, some bottles of iced tea, and a pile of journals or a book. I put instrumental jazz on my phone and spend a few pleasant hours there, catching up on my reading.
But, as the Phoenix weather swings back to summer temps, it’s time to turn it off until next November.
It’s interesting the ways we mark the passage of time in our lives. The traditional standards are New Year’s, major holidays, and birthdays. Some may mark it by their favorite sports seasons starting.
In medicine we may mark it by patient ages, or a drug that we thought just came to market now going generic, or realizing our state or DEA license is up for renewal.
It doesn’t really matter how you mark the time – it’s going to happen whether you do or don’t. The person you see in the mirror is the same one there since you were tall enough to see over the bathroom countertop. Isn’t it just the ones around us who change?
As Phoenix moves back to a summer footing, and as someone who’s been through 56 of them, it’s hard not to think about it. Summer vacations growing up, summer classes in college, summer elective rotations in medical school. Now I work year-round and watch the same cycle play out with my kids in college.
You often hear the phrase “a hundred years from now it won’t make a difference.” Probably true. In 2123 the time I spent relaxing in my hot tub won’t mean anything, or be remembered by anyone.
But I’m not sitting in it to think about that. I’m in it because I have what I have now, and none of us will ever have that again. And part of that, to me, is enjoying some time in the hot tub.
Because That may not matter in one hundred years, but it matters to me today. And that’s what’s really important.
To all of us.
Dr. Block has a solo neurology practice in Scottsdale, Ariz.