Alexandersmap

    Month: May 2023

    • Doing Something About It

      Breaking the habit loop is relatively easy when you’re in an environment that is disruptive to bad habits. If everyone around you gets up early and walks together, it’s an easy leap to join them. But if you’re an early morning walker and everyone around you stays up late talking and drinking until the wee hours it becomes a lot harder. Business travel can pull you in either direction. The question is always whether the mind is disciplined.

      A friend of mine once ran 20 miles on a hotel treadmill while training for a race because the weather outside prohibited an outdoor run. I start looking at the clock if I’m on a hotel treadmill for more than 30 minutes. Who’s mind was more disciplined? I think we know.

      Another friend used to do pullups in the hotel stairwell. There was nowhere else to go and his Beach Body workout demanded pullups, so he did the best with what he had. Again, comparison is a bitch. And so I don’t compare myself to either of these friends, but to myself. I do this through a couple of pointed but fair questions: “Have I checked the box today?” and “Am I making progress towards my goal or slipping further behind?” Lately the answers haven’t been good, but awareness matters, doesn’t it? The first step is admitting there’s a problem. The trick then is to do something about it.

      The thing is, there’s always something we can improve upon. It’s when we act on that observation that we begin to change. Corrective action can change our world, should we just begin and stick with it no matter what. Check the box and make progress towards the goal. String enough of these days together and big things happen. We just have to begin.

    • The Beauty of Our Discoveries

      “I hadn’t done drugs since sniffing Lady Esquire shoe polish when I was fifteen. I didn’t need to. I felt the pinch of wonder. I felt everything sharply, the people we met, the sensation of being in a body, of eating and drinking. I knew there was darkness in the world, but I was sure it would not overpower us; rather, we would let ourselves be overpowered by the beauty of our discoveries as we traveled through this world.” — Bono, Surrender

      A lovely expression, this pinch of wonder, and something I wish we all shared. Too many seek distraction and escape over wonder, but let that not be us. When we lean into the life of an explorer, every encounter becomes an opportunity for illumination. Understanding of the world and our place in it can be a slow dawn for those of us not living the rock star lifestyle, but life doesn’t have to come at us in bold strokes for us to find the color. We simply have to be open to it.

      A friend texted over the weekend, thrilled with the travel they’ve witnessed through my photographs, and wanting more. I confess to wanting more myself, even as I look around at the work to be done right at home. We never really finish building a nest, we just fly further and further from it in our quest to see what all the fuss is about. Not being a wealthy rock star, time and money remain considerations for strategic trips abroad. We simply can’t do everything, and really, why would we want to? Life isn’t about chasing the illusive, it’s about building something tangible: understanding, purpose, momentum… beautiful.

      What washes over us when we encounter such things as beauty and magic? Do these encounters feed the fire for more exploration, or do they finally offer satisfaction? Are we ever really satiated? As if enough beauty and magic could exist in a world such as this? I believe we find something in ourselves that was aching to reach the surface in such moments, something beyond our present selves, something drawn from us as we’re pulled towards that which we seek. Magnetic momentum, if you will, pulling us from our shell into the world.

      Bono uses his fame to build a better world, framed with understanding and empathy. It’s a noble pursuit enabled by the thrill people feel to be around someone larger than life. We might do the same, perhaps not to the same scale, but with the same zeal. We might each be ambassadors, not judges. We might be builders creating something better with each encounter. In a way, that’s a rock star way of looking at life: amplified and actively strumming, making our soundtrack. The beauty of our discoveries arranged into a life well-lived.

    • Honorable Isn’t Easy

      “Tiger, one day you will come to a fork in the road and you’re going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. He raised his hand and pointed. “If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments.” Then Boyd raised his other hand and pointed in another direction. “Or you can go that way and you can do something- something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide you want to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?”
      ― attributed to John Boyd by Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War

      It’s not easy to be something in this world. Playing the part infers acting in a way—a way that might seem counterintuitive to who we are in our core. The alternative to being something is doing something: backing up our words with meaningful action. To do the work that matters, that we know deep down to be the right thing. And to stick with our principles no matter what. Follow the vision, roll up our sleeves and live to a standard of honor and personal excellence. Surely, this is something to aspire to. But also a harder path.

      The thing is, we all are pulled in both directions every day. Life is friction; with other people and with ourselves. Who wants to follow someone else’s dream at the expense of our own? I once had a coach who wore a t-shirt with the quote: “If you’re not the lead dog the view never changes”. I didn’t think to question why exactly I was following this particular character for as long as I did. Surely, my view didn’t change for longer than it ought to have been so. It’s easy to into the trap of falling in line. Breaking free eventually changed my view and my belief in what was possible.

      “Decide what to be and go be it.” — Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise, The Avett Brothers

      To be or to do… Is there a contradiction in choosing who to be? I don’t believe so. Doing is the real-time implementation of our decision of who we want to be in this lifetime. Boyd chose to be the person who held the line on his integrity and honor, focusing on work that mattered most instead of chasing prestige and accolades. The irony is that his legacy is far larger than if he’d simply fallen in line. To make a ripple we must break the surface tension of complacency.

      To live an honorable life means living without compromising our core beliefs. That begins with deciding who we will be when faced with the choices life throws at us. So what will our legacy be? Living up to that identity is our challenge from cradle to grave. Honorable isn’t easy, but the view in the mirror is better.

    • The One and Only Cribstone Bridge

      On the rocky coast of Maine there’s a bridge like no other in the world. Its formal name is The Bailey Island Bridge, but its more descriptive name is the Cribstone Bridge. What makes it unique is its beautifully complex simplicity. It’s basically stacks of cut granite, piled just so one atop the other to form the foundation for a concrete bridge. The magic is in its strength and open design that permits water to flow freely through it. This stack of granite extends 350 meters across an active tidal waterway in Casco Bay, Maine, and has withstood surf, ice flows, boat wakes and a steady flow of vehicular traffic since it was completed in 1928, with only one major repair between 2009-2010.

      There’s truth in the expression “they don’t build them like that any more”. Time tells, and the bridge has proven itself built to last. Anyone who’s played Jenga can appreciate the complexity of a bridge like this. Stacks of granite slabs bear the load, while shrugging off the ocean tides, nor’easters and the harsh cold of a Maine winter. As a critic of mediocre civil engineering projects, I take a bow to this gem of a bridge, showing generations of Civil Engineers what’s possible with a bit of creative genius. It seems I’m not alone in my appreciation, as the bridge is recognized as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, and also on the National Register of Historic Places.

      I wasn’t seeking out this bridge, but I encountered it on a drive out to Land’s End, quite literally a point of land at the end of the road on Bailey Island. I suppose that makes me an accidental tourist of sorts, but these are the kind of encounters that inspired me to start blogging in the first place. Will the Bailey Island Bridge inspire a return to more deliberate regional exploration in this blog? Time tells.

    • The Moments Between Us

      Most people search all
      of their lives
      for someplace to belong to
      as you said
      but I look instead
      into the eyes of anyone
      who talks to me
      — June Jordan, Poem For a Young Poet

      We know how this works when we’ve lived awhile. People come and go from our lives, some never to return, and we move on without them. Some people we will barely recall, but others remain unforgettable. What do you remember most about a person? A tilt of the head and a shared laugh? Something said or done to punctuate the day? Often it’s nothing more than lingering in a gaze, and reaching deep connection with another soul, if only for a moment.

      I have little interest in transactional conversation. If the barista or waiter is expecting to take my drink order and move on with their lives they have another thing coming. I seek connection, even in those brief seconds, that will create a ripple of positive energy in an otherwise mundane exchange. Most of the moment will surely fade away for both parties, but what lingers?

      We are but a moment’s sunlight
      Fading in the grass
      — Chet Powers/The Youngbloods, Get Together

      Knowing everything fades away, wouldn’t the most generous thing we can do in this world be to then reflect light back to another? To illuminate and radiate, one-to-one, in this moment shared. It’s a form of upping the ante, because when the other soul is willing and aware they reflect right back to you too, magnifying the positive vibe.

      This is the opposite of the negative energy seen in the comments section of any social media platform, where darker forces prevail. Do you wonder why? I believe it’s because fellow humans aren’t making eye contact with one another, and thus not feeling the stakes of the game they’re playing. We can’t make real connection with another through words typed in reaction to someone else’s words. Darkness only consumes, it never illuminates.

      So where do we find moments of light? Awareness matters a great deal in building a life of connection and love. We all want to belong to something in this world. We all want to find meaning and purpose and maybe a bit of joy in the rush from there to the next. And there’s the answer, hiding in plain sight. So often we miss the opportunity for joyful connection standing right in front of us, awaiting our response. Look connection right in the eye and shine your light.

    • Reading and Writing and All the Other Things

      “I write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It’s greed, plain and simple. When my characters join the circus, I’m joining the circus. Although I’m happily married, I spent a great deal of time mentally living with incompatible husbands.” — Anne Tyler

      “I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.” — Anne Tyler

      We read fiction to escape: to be someone else in another place, if only for a little while. We write fiction to explore: to create something bolder within ourselves that we might not otherwise explore, and drop these characters into the places we might not dare to go in a normal lifetime. To take a walk on the wild side without too much damage. Each of us seeks something more in this world in some way. Fiction offers safe passage to extraordinary places.

      This blog doesn’t dabble in fiction, although this writer has. There’s a distinct separation there, between fiction and non-fiction, and between creative output and daily observation. My name isn’t even Alexander, which may lend to the confusion. Certainly it doesn’t offer optimization of the brand. But so it goes. The motive isn’t to develop a brand, but a deeper understanding of the world and my place in it.

      Sometimes we want to explore other lives, represented in fictional characters who come to life in the pages of a book. Sometimes we want to explore the meaning in our own life, and optimize our potential in this brief go-around. If I’m sure of anything in this daily ritual, it’s that I’m a better writer and a better human for having consistently done it. Writers develop characters, and we also develop our own character. Those richer and bolder lives aren’t just on paper, after all, they’re within us too.

      This business of reading and writing is a lovely part of who we are, but let’s face it: Most of our life is made up of all the other things. When done well, we develop a deeper perspective and sense of place through our active participation in words, but also through our engagement with the world. We must step outside our comfort zone in small ways that lead to bigger and bolder things. Just as a snowball grows as we nudge it along, so we grow as we accumulate skill and confidence through repetitive action. As with the snowball, at some point it grows beyond our capacity to push it, and it is then that we must seek the help of others. We must develop the awareness and courage to ask for help when we find our pushing isn’t quite enough.

      When you stop to think of it, we’re each the authors of our own lives. Those characters we develop are often us. Just as they stretch and grow, so too do we. All the other things that make up a life are derived from our imagination and the courage to step out into the unknown. It shouldn’t just be fiction.

    • On Ritual and Routine

      “Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.” — Jane Kenyon

      Last year my bride and I took a morning walk on a quiet beach in the off-season. We saw an older gentleman swimming with his dogs in the brisk Atlantic Ocean and met him as we were walking back towards our car. Well, as is usually the case, his dogs met us first, and he joined them in introductions soon after. He looked like Obi-Wan Kenobi in a thick, hooded robe. He mentioned that he took this Atlantic Ocean plunge with his dogs every day of the year, no matter the weather. The robe and the walk back home were his rewards for completing this ritual, and were thus an integral part of it. His fitness level and radiance betrayed a lifestyle worthy of consideration.

      Lately I’ve thought more of lifestyle design—of deliberately choosing how to spend my remaining time on this earth in daily ritual and routine. We might agree that we’re already living our lives based solely on the bookends of ritual and routine. The question is, are we optimizing our life or should we build better bookends? Is writing first thing in the morning the best use of this time? Or is a long walk better? Or a brisk plunge into cold water? The answer is whatever sets the table for an exceptional day—what comes first should hardly matter, just that we do the things that, stacked together, make up a productive and meaningful day, and by extension, our life.

      We tend to track things like workouts, but don’t always track other things that make up our days. Tracking habits makes sense when you’re trying to establish or reinforce them. I began flossing every day when I stared at an empty box one day, knowing I’d broken the streak. A friend quit smoking simply so he didn’t have to leave a day on his calendar without a big X through it. We forget sometimes in our realization that we can’t control everything that we can control some things. And these small things, added up over time, become big things indeed.

      The way to be a good steward of our gifts is to protect our time in ritual and routine. Kenyon outlines hers in the magical quote above. We might add a few others that punctuate our own days. The trick in building these bookends is to fill the space in between with more activity worthy of our precious time. We know that that space will be filled either way—shouldn’t we make it fulfilling?

      Plunge into things that optimize your days

    • Aware in the Moment

      “Später ist zu spät.“ (Later is too late) — Peter Altenberg

      This morning I’m driving my daughter to the airport. Once again our time together was all too brief. We each pack a lot into our days, which means never enough time in the same attentive moment, but we make the time that we do have matter. None of us is perfect in our efficiency: We all waste time on unimportant things at the expense of the essential. But awareness helps with prioritization.

      Memento mori—Remember we all must die, one day hopefully many years from now. Or perhaps sooner, we simply don’t know for sure. But we ought to embrace that realization and do something about it. If not now, then when? Anything but now is a fool’s game.

      Whatever we are deferring that matters a great deal must be done now. There’s simply no guarantee for tomorrow. What would we do if we knew this was our last day together? We’d up our game, linger in moments, hug harder and be hyper-aware of everything. Let’s all hope for a longer timeline, but live with that urgency today anyway. Be aware in the moment. For it’s all that matters.

    • Buds of Fire

      And in the shadow of our human dream of falling,
      human voices are Creation’s most recent flowers,
      mere buds of fire
      nodding on their stalks.
      — Li-Young Lee, Dying Stupid

      Working through the gardening shed, I found a terra cotta pot sporting hints of old root filaments, betraying its previous occupant from last season. Each life takes their place in line, lives their season and moves on for the next to take their turn. The keen observer sees hints of past lives all around us, ghosts whispering that they once turned their gaze to the sun too. Gardeners know a thing or two about the tenuous hold we have on our time. So do writers and poets.

      May mocks the meticulous gardener. Put your best foot forward and the trees crap all over it, again and again, until you admit you aren’t in control of anything. Life offers lessons for the attentive student. Seasons come and go. So too do we. We are only here for a brief dance with our best intentions.

      Life is change—this we know. Some of those whispering ghosts are us, telling tales of past seasons gone forever, of who we used to be. Sometimes there’s just wisp of filament that betrays our past life, sometimes it’s the whole pot. Still, there’s work to be done in the now. While there’s time in this season, fill an empty pot with something new.

    • What Things, Accomplished?

      “The fact of the matter is that aiming discipline at the right habit gives you license to be less disciplined in other areas. When you do the right thing, it can liberate you from having to monitor everything.” — Gary Keller, The One Thing

      Doing the right thing begins with knowing what the right thing is, of course. Keller points out that that right thing ought to be our one thing we prioritize in a day. Not the only thing we focus on, mind you, but the box we must check before we move on to other things. His recommendation is time blocking, and working on it until you’ve achieved your goal for the day.

      As a daily blogger, that one thing for me is writing before I move on to other work or family time or exercise. The question is, what are we saying no to that we might say yes to our one thing? One might say the answer is that if you’re focused on the right thing, it doesn’t matter what you say no to. Everything aligns when we focus on the right thing, which Keller said more efficiently than I just did.

      But is writing a daily blog an appropriate one thing? Shouldn’t exercise or family or work be prioritized before writing? It’s not like I’m paying the mortgage with the stream of cash coming in from blogging revenue. The thing is, blogging isn’t about generating revenue for me (you won’t find an advertisement, a Substack subscription offer, or even a basic email subscription. No, the writing is free and probably too hard to find, and is simply a process of documenting my thoughts and observations. Come along for the ride or opt out—for it’s either welcome or no hard feelings, really.

      So what comes after the right thing has been checked off becomes the next one thing. We generally know what this ought to be, the trick is to time block for this second and third right thing the way we do our one thing. Does this make us overly structured in our days? Perhaps, but that which we don’t prioritize often gets overlooked. We must schedule ourselves lest we forget ourselves.

      So maybe the question shouldn’t be, “what’s the right thing?”, but “what things, accomplished, will make this a day without regrets?” More succinctly, decide what to be and go be it. Of course, everything begins with one. But it shouldn’t end there.