If I could through myself Set your spirit free, I’d lead your heart away See you break, break away Into the light And to the day — U2, Bad
When you think about the trajectory of U2 prior to the ubiquitous madness of Joshua Tree, it was Bad that became the song the crowd took possession of. The band carries it, always, but it soars with the collective energy of the crowd. It was the performance that everyone was talking about during Live Aid (at least until Queen took the stage). U2 grabs moments in that way, elevating a simple song about heroin addiction into so much more.
This desperation Dislocation Separation, condemnation Revelation in temptation Isolation, desolation Let it go
Each person who hears the call in Bad feels themselves in it. We never dabbled in drug addiction but we have our own demons. Listen to it now, with the perspective of a global pandemic and yet another war and the collective addiction of social media and its demand to pick sides. Listen to it now having lost something of yourself. Listen to it having seen parts of yourself slip away. It takes on a meaning it didn’t have in simpler times.
Even with—especially with—this bruised and battered lens of 2022, the call is the same: To wake up and find hope somewhere above the darkness in the world. Above the darkness in ourselves. To let it go and set your spirit free. It remains a timeless call waiting to be heard.
If you’ve been seeking balance in your life, today’s your day. March 20 brings balance to the earth once again. The sun is positioned directly over the equator, making the day and night exactly the same. If you love the idea of yin and yang and skating the line between order and chaos, then March 20, 2022 is your happy place.
For those in the Northern Hemisphere who prefer day to night, this is good news. You’ll have more and more of the former. For friends in the Southern Hemisphere, well, you’ll have more time for stargazing and romantic evenings. The Northern Hemisphere began this slow tilt back towards the sun on December 21st on the winter solstice, and will finish its tilt and start heading back away from it on June 21st, the summer solstice. For those keeping score the next vernal equinox will occur on September 22nd.
These are the four quadrants of the year, making one wonder why the calendar year wasn’t set to these four reference points. The answer is that the calendar year was originally set to the beginning of farming season, which in Rome meant March 1. March, being the “first” month, was named for Mars (there’s an interesting article about how the months got their names here). So much of who we are today was derived from those Romans.
So, lovers of balance, celebrate today like it’s the last day on earth, because it is but a one day celebration. Tomorrow day and night are once again out of balance. The earth is permanently off-kilter, and this odd fact both explains and sustains those of us who inhabit this crazy planet. Perfect only happens 2 out of 365 days per year. For those of us who are far from perfect, the other 99.5 % of the year is our time for celebration. Cheers!
Cape Cod is a summer playground, we all know that. But what of winter and early spring? These “off” seasons are often described by well-meaning seasonal snobs as desolate and depressing. I’d argue for the stark beauty of isolation, and seek it out whenever possible. The Cape isn’t desolate off-season; it’s dormant. If you listen you’ll hear the pulse of preparation for the busy months. You’ll see the changes as houses transform from small cottages to McMansions all around you. People want to be here, more than ever, and will pay insane sums of money to have their place in the sand.
I spoke with a neighbor, who lives alone on a plot of land he bought against the strong wishes of his future in-laws for $10,000 back when the Beatles were still cranking out albums. That view is worth well over 100 times what he paid for it back in the day. But money doesn’t matter for him now, what matters is this spot and his place in it. He keeps watch on the bay, talks of old storms and the last time he saw a seal on the beach. Time flies by, and he’s one of the last holdouts from the original young hopefuls buying property in this small piece of paradise. Five and a half decades watching the tides ebb and flow teaches you a few things, and he’s happy to share lessons if you invest your time. I’m in investor in such time.
I check in on him whenever I visit the Cape, especially off-season. I might be the last person who stepped into his house over a month ago. I’m surely not his first choice for visitors but he hasn’t locked the door on me yet. I did a couple of chores for him while he settled in for story time. He spoke of old cocktail parties as I brought up a few bottles of scotch and bourbon coated in a decade of dust from his basement. His sister was coming over in a week or two (what’s time?) and they were going to light it up once again, having a cocktail with a view of the bay.
Walking alone in the thick Buzzards Bay fog the next morning, I thought of him alone in his house with the million dollar view. He’s like a lighthouse keeper forever on watch as the world changes around him. He’s both an anchor to what once was and a witness to what is becoming of the upper Cape. Walking around, I was drawn to the bits of hardscape that rose up out of the fog, to reflections in water and the sense of timeless change. We’re all lighthouse keepers in the fog, both anchors and witnesses. We hold relationships and communities together, remember the lessons of the past and share them when we have an audience willing to listen.
Fog is disorienting because our eyes have nothing to lock on to. The swirling white mist hides both the objects we seek out and the ones we hope to avoid. A lighthouse keeper cuts through the confusion and helps us realize our place. Moving around the bay, seeing objects rise up to greet me, I understood why I’d come down here alone. I was simply keeping watch, it was and always has been about the lighthouse.
Monument Beach, in the Upper Cape town of BourneCape Cod Railroad Bridge swallowed in Buzzards Bay fog
“The greatest battle of all is with yourself—your weaknesses, your emotions, your lack of resolution in seeing things through to the end. You must declare unceasing war on yourself.” — Robert Greene
We all have our moment-to-moment skirmishes with ourselves. We fight through our worst traits or we succumb to them. It’s easy to let things slip, easy to settle for good enough, easy to wrap up early or scroll through Twitter or your social media feed instead of focusing on what must be done in the moment.
Seth Godin calls it our Lizard Brain, this thing that prevents us from doing the things we most want to do. Steven Pressfield calls it the Resistance. We’ve all felt it when it comes to following our calling: imposter syndrome, distraction or lack of focus, busywork, putting others first… and on and on.
Routine breaks through the bullshit. Habits force a reckoning with the truth of the matter. We must get past ourselves and simply start doing what we were called upon to do. The battle inside rages, but it becomes a war of attrition. We either give in to it or we see things through to the end.
Every moment we take meaningful action towards our calling or we slip backwards or sideways on the path. Becoming is dirty work full of blood, sweat and tears. The largest battles are with ourselves. But don’t we have to fight them? Decide what to be and go be it.
Mid-March brought the turkeys back. They roost high in the white pine trees at the edge of the forest, protected from the coyotes, bobcats and other predators who long for a turkey dinner. They’re silent during the early morning hours until something disturbs them. This morning that something was me.
Coffee in hand, I walked out into the songbird chorus of pre-dawn, stood silently to let the world sink in, and caught a glimpse of motion out of the corner of my eye. Turning to greet it, I watched a single turkey glide away in the early light. Soon another one began it’s own glide from the high trees to some place further away. A few beats later another dozen flew off silently, and then the squawking began. Grumpy morning conversation about the guy with his coffee disturbing the sleep-in.
I ought to write about St. Patrick’s Day or the luck of the Irish. I ought to write about war and pandemics and the collective pain we all feel at the disruption of our lives by things out of our control. But the sight of turkey’s gliding silently through a dim, foggy morning in New Hampshire reminded me that we each leave our small ripple on the universe in our own way. Today I disturbed the roost, but they don’t seem worse for the wear.
It made me wonder, what else lies dormant, waiting to be stirred in the foggy morning?
Lately I’ve doubled down on getting lost. Now, I understand that deliberately putting yourself into a place where you’re lost might seem counterintuitive and odd. But the thing about being lost is it forces you to find your way out, and this is where learning takes place.
Case in point: I dove into the deep end with learning languages, doubling down on French and German (!) and forcing myself further beyond my comfort zone with each. I’d been doing the bare minimum with French for a couple of years, never really proceeding beyond “Je m’appelle John. Je suis un homme.Où est le toilette?” Barely functional and not exactly conversational.
Something triggered me to dive deeper into lost. With French it was a lingering dissatisfaction with scratching the surface of feminine and masculine terminology, never diving into the nitty gritty because I stuck with the bare minimum to check the box for the day. With German, well, I booked a trip to Austria and Germany and forced my hand to figure it out.
The only way to truly learn a language is to immerse yourself in it. That’s true for a foreign language or the language of your craft. Want to understand the world of finance or a testing laboratory? Immerse yourself in that world and learn the world of pie charts or pipettes. Want to know how to build a house? Join a crew and start hauling lumber. Every apprentice begins completely lost in the world they’ve immersed themselves in. But then something funny happens—your hand is forced and you slowly, awkwardly begin to learn. We’ve all experienced this in school and in our earliest days after graduating and beginning careers. But then we get comfortable and stop challenging ourselves. We stop getting lost. And in our comfort we stop growing.
Taking the easy path slowly kills our learning and kills us in the process. Comfort kills our brains. Kills our dreams. Kills any momentum for big leaps and dramatic turns. In nature we grow or we die, there is no stasis. Yet so many seek stasis.
Maybe diving deeper into a couple of languages doesn’t quite equate to growing or dying. But then again, maybe it does. Challenging our own status quo begins with making ourselves uncomfortable now and then. It begins with stumbling through challenges and finding our way out of it. As with physical fitness, growth comes from stress. There are benefits to being lost. For in being lost we may find our way.
“What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Positioning this idea of beauty in the world seems quaint when wars and pandemics flood us with so much ugliness and darkness. What are we to do but find light in the darkest corners? Life is a dance along the edge between chaos and order, and we must know both. But we can’t dwell in either. Still, if we are to become what we focus on the most, why not focus on beauty?
Writing, like photography, focuses us on what we want to find in the world. We seek out wonder while our opposites wrestle for control and influence. If the world teaches us anything it’s that life is textured and imperfect and more than a little unfair. But it’s still a blessing to be here in it. To celebrate the inexhaustible beauty in this complicated world is a mission of possibility and hope. What we make of it is up to us.
The Aurora Borealis visited Southern New Hampshire again last night. I know it because reliable sources told me so, not because I actually saw it myself. But I dashed outside, cursed the bright Waxing Gibbous moon and the neighbors for their inclination to leave outdoor lights on and sought out the darkest parts of the street for… nothing. Well, nothing but the universe, which is admittedly still pretty spectacular.
When you live on the absolute edge of reach of the Northern Lights you suffer through many moments like this. What are we to do but venture northward to Aurora destinations? We choose where we live where we live for the proximity to others, not for the dance in the sky. Maybe we have it all wrong?
The act of dashing outside for the remote possibility of seeing colors in the sky isn’t unusual for me. I do it every morning to see how the universe is waking up. Many nights, wishing to properly tuck the day in for the evening, you’ll find me peeking outside for a splash of orange and pink and purple highlights. And if there’s even a hint of a meteor shower you’ll find me out in the dark like a madman, shuffling foot to foot or lying on the ground staring up at Perseus.
This all might seem crazy, but I’d suggest that watching manufactured drama unfold in 30-60 minute segments is just as crazy. I dash to greet the universe, others may dash back to the couch after a bathroom break during commercials. Both dashes might have their place in our lives. The bigger question, I suppose, is where do you want your dash bring you?
Build a new house down by the sea Get to the place we were meant to be You’ll know it when you smile —World Party, When the Rainbow Comes
Do you ever wonder why people are drawn to the seashore? Is it the taste of salt, or the sound of waves crashing on the beach? These are lovely things indeed. But I think it’s also the place where our world opens up to the universe, where the view is the same for us today as it was for some soul living 10,000 years ago. And so long as we don’t screw it up it will be the same 10,000 years hence. All rivers flow to the ocean, and so must we.
Ah, but what of the source? The rivers all flow from the highest points downward. And we often look up and wonder what we might find when we get there. For the mountains whisper differently than the sea, but no less persistently. When you walk amongst the peaks you feel like you might touch the sky, and the song in the wind feels as timeless as the crash of the ocean. Do we become breathless in the mountains from exertion or from awe? I should think both.
The thing is, we tend to be drawn to the edges; both source and sea. Yet most people settle in between. Is this a compromise between the places we love, or simply a pragmatic nod to efficiency? When you live at one end or the other you necessarily have a longer journey to the middle, let alone to what lies beyond. Crops don’t grow in beach sand or on granite summits. Somebody has to keep things going in the middle. Call it a happy medium if you will. But does settling in the middle like everyone else bring you happiness, or is it just settling?
Life pulls us in different directions, and most of us settle somewhere in the middle. But the magic resides at the edges of our comfort zone. And deep down you know you’ve reached the place you were meant to be when you smile.
“Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.” — Tim Ferriss
We have a love/hate relationship with busy. We all want for more quiet time, but when we get it we quickly yearn for the energy of hustle and bustle. This is compounded by the story we tell ourselves that those who get ahead are the busiest and hardest-working among us. That might help make you a Partner at one of the “Big Three” consulting firms or the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. But how often do we stop and ask ourselves why in the world we’d ever want that title? It’s a Faustian bargain—a deal with the Devil to have it all now in exchange for your soul.
Screw that.
Status doesn’t mean you’re successful at living. It just means you ground out more miles. Do we ever stop to ask what really gets ground in the process? Think about the last conversation you had with a “really busy” person. Was it meaningful or a transaction? Frazzled is a posture that doesn’t highlight one’s positive traits. To be calmly efficient is a choice; just as much of a choice as frazzled. But with better hair.
We can be successful in life without sacrificing 300,000 heartbeats a week for the profitability of whatever stock symbol we happen to align ourselves with. The thing about busy is it’s a story we tell ourselves as an excuse for not doing what we really want to do. It takes courage to stop hiding behind busy.
Instead we might choose contemplation and conversation and the deliberation of taking meaningful steps. We might seek experience accumulation and relationship building. We could delight in pregnant pauses. We can give ourselves permission to celebrate deep thinking and active listening and finding the right word without Googling it. We can rejoice in finishing what we once so boldly started but put aside because we’ve been so damned… busy.
