This morning I awoke to thoughts of time. Time is an amazing continuum. Moment by moment, we see the effects of this. We all get older, but hopefully we all get wiser as well. Unlike anything else we experience, time (and the passing of it) is simply hard to describe. It is very definitive, yet surreal.

This continuum is all the more apparent today - in many ways, a monumental day in the history of the United States. 

Why so?

Let's look at "yesterday" - or eight years of yesterdays that will soon come to an end. Today is no better day to write about the legacy of President George W. Bush as he comes to the end of his second term in office. Front and center, we are left with the "Bush Doctrine". We are told that the country has not seen any terrorist attacks since 9/11 (under Bush's watch) yet how many did we see on U.S. soil before 9/11?

But it would not be appropriate to dive into "legacy" today. No sir ... there are more important issues at hand.

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May 6, 1954 was a landmark day. Much in the same way that Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound on October 14, 1947 – forever changing the dynamics of what was thought to be possible in the air - Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile and forever changed what was thought to be possible by a running human on land.

On that fateful day in 1954, there were just 1,000 people in attendance at the University of Oxford running track. At the time, Bannister was a 25 year-old medical student. Today, he is Sir Roger Bannister, neurosurgeon.

The physical barrier that was broken that day was significant. People wondered if the 4 minute barrier would ever be broken. Was it possible physically? When he crossed the finish line with a time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds, not only did he break through a perceived physical barrier, but he broke through a tremendous psychological barrier as well.

One man, four minutes, and suddenly there were new perceptions on the limits of human performance.

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Our world is inundated with digital media. In an era of television (and now the Internet), we are readily exposed to a barage of media, be it live footage, on-site reports, and images of just about any newsworthy (and not-so-newsworthy) event. There are days when it all becomes simply overwhelming and you just want to turn it all off.

But there are times when you witness something that is simply hard to believe or imagine. Landing an Airbus A320 in the Hudson River is definitely one of those moments.

When you first hear mention of an airplane crash, you think the worst thoughts. They don't happen very often, but when they do, they generally conjure up thoughts of the worst.

But on January 15, we were presented with a story that was, quite frankly, hard to imagine. It was a story in which truth was stranger than fiction. This is one time in which the media presented us with an amazing real-life story - which had a great ending.

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Health care has a huge impact on our country’s economic status, accounting for 17+% of the GDP and growing steadily. As the baby boomer generation gets older, we are faced with an even bigger drain on health care resources. But wait for it – wait until the youth of today, Generation Z as they are called – get a little older. If you think the problems are big now, wait for another 10 to 15 years.

Obesity (and a generalized lack of fitness) is taking its toll on the youth of America.

Ross Perot said it quite nicely back in his first election infomercial: “In America, we have a problem”. I just don’t think that Perot realized that this is where the problem would really exist.

The numbers are simply astounding. Perhaps “depressing” would be a better term.

Childhood obesity is rising. Based on data from the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention [1], 16 percent of children (over 9 million kids) aged 6-19 years are overweight or obese - a number that has tripled since 1980. Another 15 percent were considered at risk of becoming overweight. But it gets worse.

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