Alexandersmap

    Month: September 2019

    • Shattering the Peppadew Jar

      (Reposted after quirky WordPress delete)

      This morning I was pondering the power of routine in our lives when my routine abruptly changed.  I was filling a glass of water in the refrigerator when I noticed the basket of limes was protruding out because they were crowded by the package of strawberries.  In pushing the strawberries to side I started a chain reaction that led to a jar of peppadews to topple over onto the glass I was holding in my hand, shattering both immediately.  They eventually ended up on the floor, where the juice and glass and peppadews and water began to flow outward in all directions.  Suddenly I wasn’t focused on the next step in my morning routine and quickly began the cleanup process, which included extracting two small slivers of glass from my hand.

      Prior to that moment, I had been contemplating in succession the workout posters on the wall in the basement where we exercise, and then the cookbooks on the shelf in the kitchen, and thinking about how we rarely look at either.  When I work out I generally do the exercises I’m familiar with, I don’t scan the wall for a new one.  When I cook uiuiI usually cook the same things over and over, rarely going to the cookbooks for something new.  In the time I could scan the index of a cookbook I could Google a couple of available ingredients and find a dozen four and five star-reviewed recipes.  And yet the cookbooks remain ready should I need them.

      Routines are powerful things indeed.  I’m better for having changed the start to my early morning from grabbing a coffee and scrolling through social media to exercising first, reading second and writing third before I jump into whatever the rest of the world is up thinking about.  I credit reading Atomic Habits for shaking me loose from the normal routine.  Other books have inspired me along the way, but that book was like a jar of peppadews shattering in my hand, triggering me to change things immediately.

      This is my 200th blog post this year, and this is the 189th day of the year.  I’m well ahead of last year’s pace when I started this thing.  Last year I posted 143 times total.  That’s the power of establishing habits for you.  I’ve read more, and better books.  I’ve worked out more consistently as well. But the writing has been the one I’m most pleased about.  I was contemplating what to write about in this 200th post of 2019 – travel, gardening, history or some such thing, but nothing has done more for my writing than changing my daily habits.    Some of it is pretty good, some of it isn’t so good, but I’m not aiming for perfection.  Instead I’m establishing the habit and the commitment to shipping every day, as Seth Godin would say.

      Follow some friends of mine at fayaway.com to see how they’re doing their own version of shattering the peppadews to sail around the world.  Other friends have completely transformed their lives by focusing on hiking the mountains of New Hampshire.  We rarely see them anymore but they’ve never been healthier or happier than they are now. I watched a niece similarly transform herself through hiking and other lifestyle changes. Another good friend from Maine left an abusive marriage and moved to the mid-Atlantic region, where she just announced her engagement to a much better person. All shattering their own peppadew jars. Anything is possible if you just shake yourself free of the shackles of routine.

      “Don’t think, try.” – John Hunter

      “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” – Aristotle

      What Aristotle left unsaid is that mediocrity is also a habit. Change – getting out of your comfort zone, can be good indeed. James Clear talks about casting votes for your identity. If you identify yourself as an athlete you’re more likely to get up and work out. If you’re identify yourself as a disciplined eater you’re not even going to see that bowl of M & M’s your wife leaves right next to the door. Carrying the metaphor further, shattering the peppadew jar is deciding what your identity is going to be and casting that first vote. Who you’ll be, and who you won’t be on a larger scale.

      Back in my early twenties I used to call rowing an attractive rut, because it’s easy I could see the benefits of doing it in my overall health and fitness level, but I could also see the opportunities I was missing out on to do it. Travel, taking specific college courses because they conflicted with rowing, going out with non-rowing friends to an event because it would impact my performance. When you believe the overall benefits outweighs the costs it’s inconsequential that you’re missing out on things. About when I started identifying rowing as an attractive rut I was changing the equation in my own mind. I still row, but I don’t have illusions of winning the Head-of-the-Charles anymore.

      Achieving anything requires a healthy measure of sacrifice. Establishing one routine at the expense of another. You can remain average at a bunch of things and get along perfectly well in this world, or you can do the work that makes you exceptional at a specific thing and below average at other things. Attractive ruts are found in routine. But life is all too short, and before you know it another decade has flown by.

      “A rut is a grave with the ends knocked out.” – Laurence J. Peter

      So perhaps it’s best to shatter a few more peppadew jars. Sometimes an abrupt reminder to shake up the routine is the best thing that can happen.

       

       

    • The Rules of the Game

      Pre-dawn magic time once again on Buzzards Bay. Up early today, but not earliest this time. My brother-in-law, who owns a hardware store, was busy on his laptop in the kitchen as I headed out for the light show. A barge drifted past delivering oil to Boston. Yes, even on this Labor Day many people are hard at work keeping the world moving forward. And as I watch the rest of the world wake up, I’m pondering a few quotes on this Labor Day in the United States. This may be thought a day of rest for the common man, and I surely am that, but instead I contemplate the game of work, and the challenges that lie ahead.

      “If you don’t build your dream someone will hire you to help build theirs.” – Tony Gaskins

      “You will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.” – David Foster Wallace, Infinit Jest

      “If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the game, the stakes, and the quitting time.” – Chinese Proverb

      “Too many people believe that everything must be pleasurable in life, which makes them constantly search for distractions and short-circuits the learning process.  The pain is a kind of challenge your mind presents – will you learn how to focus and move past the boredom, or like a child will you succumb to to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction?” – Robert Greene, Mastery

      As I write, a crow lands atop a nearby tree, mocking me with its caw. The world owes us nothing, it lectured me, and it’s up to us to make something of ourselves. Pause, reflect, shift if you must, and move ahead. There’s only today after all.

    • His Majesty’s Pleasure: The Expulsion of the Acadians

      During the French and Indian War the British looked at Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island and saw a threat.  The Acadians, original settlers to this area from France, had been allowed to remain for 40 years after France had conceded this territory after the capture of Port Royal in 1713.  But the Acadians had never pledged an oath to Britain, and the resumption of hostilities in the French and Indian War became the tipping point.  How many in North America suffered because the French and English couldn’t get along?  Too many.

      Beginning on August 10, 1755 the British began rounding up Acadians and expelling them.  Often families were separated, with husbands and wives, mothers and children being sent to different places.  It reminds me of what happened to Japanese Americans in World War II, and what’s happening now on the Mexican border.  The weakness of moral character in people in power causing immense suffering for those who are powerless.  You can have homeland security without being an asshole.

      Henry Wadsworth Longfellow heard about the expulsion of the Acadians from Nathaniel Hawthorne.  There’s a moment when I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall listening in.  Longfellow then wrote a poem called Evangeline that told the plight of a fictional character of the same name trying to reunite with her husband.  The poem brought attention to the expulsion then, and still offers insight into their suffering now.  The Acadians were lured into church to hear at announcement, only to find out that they were prisoners, and their world was being turned upside down.

      “Then came the guard from the ships, and marching proudly among them
      Entered the sacred portal. With load and dissonant clangor
      Echoed the sound of their brazen drums from ceiling and casement, –
      Echoed a moment only, and slowly the ponderous portal
      Closed, and in silence the crowd awaited the will of the soldiers.
      Then uprose their commander, and spake from the steps of the altar,
      Holding aloft in his hands, with its seals, the royal commission.
      “You are convened this day,” he said, “by his majesty’s orders.
      Clement and kind he has been; but how you have answered his kindness,
      Let your own hearts reply! To my natural make and my temper
      Painful the task is I do, which to you I know must be grievous.
      Yet must I bow and obey, and deliver the will of our monarch:
      Namely that all your lands, and dwellings, and cattle of all kinds
      Forfeited be to the crown; and that you yourselves from this province
      Be transported to other lands. God grant you may dwell there
      Ever as faithful subjects, a happy and peaceable people!
      Prisoners now I declare you, for such is his majesty’s pleasure!”
      – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

      Many of the Acadians would end up in Louisiana, and their descendants are Cajuns.  Others would go to the thirteen colonies.  Some would eventually go back to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.  Many others died before they reached a destination.  It a dark stain in the history of a beautiful place.  And it offers a lesson we often forget.  The decisions of a few can disrupt the lives of many.