Alexandersmap

    Month: November 2023

    • Missing the Signs

      After dinner with my bride at a local tavern, she saw a neighbor across the room and went over to say hello. We would see this woman and her husband now and then at restaurants and joke that we never seemed to see them in the neighborhood, where they lived just across the street from us. This time she was having a drink alone, and she explained that her husband had passed away in July with express wishes to not make a big deal of it.

      A big deal of it… We were shocked at his passing and wondered how we’d missed the signs of his absence since then. Construction project at home, a new puppy, friends staying over for a time, and vacation time all conspired this summer to make us less aware, but so unaware that we didn’t notice the absence of a neighbor for three months?

      It turns out we did notice—we just didn’t put it together. Different people mowing the lawn. The trash barrels rolled out at a different time than they used to be rolled out. The pickup truck no longer in the driveway. All of it washing over us as we made our way home.

      When you live in a place for years, you get to know some of the neighbors quite well. You watch their children grow up and move out, you watch relationships end, new ones begin, and people pass away from this world. When you think back, most of the time we’re just a witness to the passing of time, not an active participant in the lives of those around us. Some people leave their struggles behind closed doors.

      The details mattered a great deal, and we reflected on what we missed. How we might have helped more had we only known. We are each on our own journey, shared with others but in the end ours alone. We have some touchstone moments with our fellow travelers that resonate more than others, but it’s up to each of us to weave those into a tapestry of connection. When our time ends, all that remains is the memories and moments that linger with others.

      Our neighbor gave us a sign: Help needed. Too late for her husband but not for her. One more touchstone moment connecting us to someone just across the street but seemingly so far away.

    • Life Change

      “To change one’s life:
      1. Start immediately.
      2. Do it flamboyantly.
      3. No exceptions.”
      ― William James

      Some of us think of radical change but do precious little of it in practice. Instead we opt for incremental change by changing habits or jobs or the way we commute to work. There’s a strong case for incremental change in our lives, for it sets us up for long-term success. Flossing and brushing one’s teeth are good habits that can change your life (and those in close proximity to you) for the better. So is reading and writing every day: The benefits are long-term and tangible and well beyond holding your own at a cocktail party.

      The idea of changing radically and immediately is fascinating when we get stuck in a routine that doesn’t inspire us. When you see people do it, it seems less ridiculous to think you can do it too. I’m more inclined to believe selling everything to sail off to ports unknown is possible because friends have done it. There’s magic in possibility realized, and we all want a bit of magic in our lives.

      William James’ recipe for change is a simple two step approach. Begin now, not someday. And be bold in both your vision and how you communicate it to the world. We shouldn’t go slinking off to some incremental change—we must follow our damned dream to the ends of the earth if that’s what it takes. Changing the bath towels isn’t going to do it.

      Tangible life change is really a combination of bold choices and consistent action. Dreams can be realized in one bold act, but for change to last we have to do the work to make our desired identity stick. Put another way, we can buy a plane ticket to paradise, but if we don’t work a plan for our life when we arrive there it’s nothing but a brief holiday before the world wants us back. Is there anything sadder than returning to something you don’t love after a brief but glorious dance with a dream? Here’s an idea: establish what you love and put yourself in the place where you can best realize it.

      Lately I’ve been talking to people of a certain age about what their exit plan is. What are they going to do when they’re not doing “this”? It turns out most people have a general vision for a future version of themselves, but it isn’t very specific. Playing golf seems to come up a lot. Travel. More time with family. These are all very nice things, but are they bold? Do they stir the fire deep within?

      To be fair, maybe the long-term comfort of a warm hearth was the answer all along. We don’t know what we’ve got ’til it’s gone, as Joni Mitchell reminds us. We ought to ask ourselves why we want change, not just what we want to change. If the why is compelling, the what often seems to take care of itself. Habit formation is easy when the vision is clear. That vision is the person we want to be in this brief dance with light. Being a bit more flamboyant with that vision is the least we can do for ourselves, don’t you think?

    • These Bare November Days

      My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
      Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
      Are beautiful as days can be;
      She loves the bare, the withered tree;
      She walks the sodden pasture lane.

      Her pleasure will not let me stay.
      She talks and I am fain to list:
      She’s glad the birds are gone away,
      She’s glad her simple worsted grey
      Is silver now with clinging mist.

      The desolate, deserted trees,
      The faded earth, the heavy sky,
      The beauties she so truly sees,
      She thinks I have no eye for these,
      And vexes me for reason why.

      Not yesterday I learned to know
      The love of bare November days
      Before the coming of the snow,
      But it were vain to tell her so,
      And they are better for her praise.
      — Robert Frost, My November Guest

      Stick season in New Hampshire. Sleet and rain greet me as I bring the pup out for her morning relief. These are darker days, surely, for the days are shorter than they were yesterday and the day before. The earth turns a cold shoulder on the warmth of the sun, and we are left to work with the light that’s left for us.

      I don’t struggle with seasonal depression, but I certainly understand where it comes from. The trick is to get outdoors anyway and greet the day no matter how dismal her response or cold her shoulder. We navigate through our days, rain or shine. That’s not naive optimism, it’s awareness of the conditions around and within. Dress accordingly.

      Frost was a New Hampshire resident, just up the road a bit from where I call home. He lived through his own share of dark Novembers and naked trees. He turned his days into poetry. I wonder sometimes, especially on cold, wet and dark November mornings, what are we doing with our own?

      As the sleet accumulated on the walk, the pup delighted in this new world of snow cone bliss. She ran about, licking up this unexpected abundance of icy treats, tail wagging furiously in her excitement at this previously unimagined experience. When you treat whatever the universe throws at you with such wonder, how can you do anything but love these bare November days?

    • The Most Important Pursuit

      “Remember that there is only one important time and that is now. The present moment is the only time over which we have dominion. The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future? The most important pursuit is making the person standing at your side happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life.” — Leo Tolstoy, The Emperor’s Three Questions

      Tolstoy’s story resonates because it’s timeless. Consider: What is the best time to do each thing? Now, because we are not timeless ourselves. Who are the most important people to work with? The person we’re with in this moment, because there is no guarantee that the person we are interacting with is not the very last person we’ll ever interact with. What is the most important thing to do at all times? The most essential thing we can do in our brief dance together is to find happiness right here and now.

      I am an active practitioner of the three questions because of how I was raised, not because I sought the advice of Tolstoy, but his philosophy resonates because of the universal truth in the words. Shouldn’t we be present in this moment, with full attention directed towards the person we’re with, with the sincere objective of making the moment joyful for both parties?

      Consider the most recent interaction you had with a stranger. Say, the person who served you breakfast the last time you went out for it. Do you treat that person as a servant or as a fellow traveler on this trip around the sun? If the roles were reversed, how would you expect to be treated by them? Shouldn’t the golden rule apply in every such situation?

      The thing is, I have people in my life who roll their eyes when I engage in conversation with random strangers—there he goes again. But the point of each of these engagements is to acknowledge that we’re all in the same orbit at the same moment. We may never pass this way again. In most cases, the chances are extremely high that we won’t. So we ought to make the most of that moment.

      We know the world is full of angry people. I often get spun up at the unfairness in the world, and the sheer cruelty of some people who don’t see the worth in anyone but themselves. We all witness bad behavior that is the antithesis of the golden rule. But we don’t have to swim in that sea of misery ourselves. Why splash around where so many have drowned?

      Here’s the thing: We all want to live a fulfilling and joyful life. To be actively engaged in living is to be in the game in every moment, not just a few chosen highlights. So embrace the opportunity to be fully alive now, whatever now brings to you. The thing about those nows is that they tend to string together into a pretty amazing life.

    • Connection in Solitude

      “I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can “see the folks,” and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for his day’s solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and “the blues”; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      Another example of a Thoreau word-explosion-as-paragraph, and one I wanted to compress into a smaller bite, mind you, but didn’t have the heart to. Henry was never lonely because he surrounded himself with an ample supply of words. His work resonates because he combined so many of them into insightful and timeless nuggets that we still find nutritious today. For a guy who spent so much time alone, he still manages to connect with so many.

      The difference between solitude and loneliness is very much aligned with what we perceive ourselves to be doing with the time. Active engagement in meaningful work, expressed creativity, meditation, exercise and prayer are each forms of reaching outside of ourselves for connection to the greater energy force that hums all around us. I write this knowing the words will come, and I’m but an editor for the muse. How can you feel alone in such moments?

      Many people encountered solitude during the pandemic and were forced to reconcile what it meant for them. I found it to be a time of connection with family, who otherwise would have been off doing their own thing as I did mine. It made no difference whether I was alone in a home office or in a hotel room, for solitude is solitude anywhere—but it doesn’t have to be loneliness. Feeling alone is to look for connection with the universe and finding no answer.

      There’s no doubt that surrounding ourselves with the right people leads to a happier, more fulfilling and longer life. With any strong group dynamic we rise to meet others, even as they rise to meet us, providing a lift to the entire group. Community gives us momentum and mutual support, solitude gives us the elbow room to mine the best out of ourselves. Don’t we each need both to live a full life?

    • Lighting Our Own Torch

      “Work is only a part of life. But work is life only when done in mindfulness. Otherwise, one becomes like the person “who lives as though dead.” We need to light our own torch in order to carry on. But the life of each one of us is connected with the life of those around us. If we know how to live in mindfulness, if we know how to preserve and care for our own mind and heart, then thanks to that, our brothers and sisters will also know how to live in mindfulness.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

      Monday’s seem to sneak up a bit more quickly lately. The weekends fly by in a swirl of activity, then suddenly it’s Monday morning again. How we react to that depends on what our relationship is with our work. Then again, how we react to getting up any morning is directly related to how we feel about our life anyway. Rising to meet the day is more attractive when we live a life of joyfulness and awareness. Don’t we owe it to ourselves to reach that place?

      I lingered with the sunrise this morning, not to delay writing but to meet the day properly. A bit of frisbee with the pup, a cuppa to clear the cobwebs free, and full awareness of the light show happening above me as the world turned to meet the sun. The point of living is to be fully alive in these brief moments stacked like dominoes along our timeline. Those dominoes behind us have fallen away, all that’s left is the stack standing in front of us. Just how long that stack is is anyone’s guess. The pup and I felt satisfied with the one just fallen behind us.

      What is work but a series of dominoes stacked in our timeline? Each of those dominoes will fall behind us eventually, but what direction are they carrying us in? We either work out of a sense of obligation to others or we follow the call to contribute something more. The latter is often harder to hear—more a whisper than a scream (that screaming sound you hear is a thousand souls commuting to jobs they deeply resent). Whispers of work to be done are meaningful clues to the life we ought to be living.

      When those dominoes fall behind us, do they land with a hollow thud or do they resonate as time well spent? We each have our share of hollow moments, but we ought to work towards a life that reverberates. To light our own torch is to choose a life of resonance and meaning. That’s something to work towards.

    • There ‘neath the Oak’s Bough

      Now there’s a beautiful river in the valley ahead
      There ‘neath the oak’s bough soon we will be wed
      Should we lose each other in the shadow of the evening trees
      I’ll wait for you
      And should I fall behind
      Wait for me
      — Bruce Springsteen, If I Should Fall Behind

      “The wand chooses the wizard, Mr. Potter.” — J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

      The song If I Should Fall Behind is forever a part of my identity, not just because it was our wedding song once upon a time, but because we’ve used it as our guiding principle. In this way, I wonder sometimes if the song chose us, rather than us choosing the song. It’s always been there in the background, whispering just how to keep this thing going year-after-year.

      Relationships are built on patience and each person carrying their share of the load. Sometimes one person carries more than the other, but over time it just seems to even out. There’s no score-keeping in a healthy marriage anyway, and the sooner you realize that the sooner you get to the serious work of foundation-building. Foundations matter a great deal in happy homes.

      Time is a bear that throws all kinds of bitter twists into an otherwise magical life. We get distracted by the madness of the world and spend more time than we ought to focused on a transactional life of people and titles and things that ultimately don’t matter as much as the person you committed a lifetime to. But when both of you carry on, patient and present, everything else falls by the wayside.

      We built a home five years after that wedding on a plot of land deep in the valley with a large oak tree in the front yard and another out in back. Neither of us thought of the line in the song, we just liked the oak trees and the feel of the land they grew on. We’ve called that spot in the valley ‘neath the oak’s bough home ever since. It’s funny how things work out just like a song when you put the work in to make it so.

    • A Good Long Time

      “Drink without getting drunk
      Love without suffering jealousy
      Eat without overindulging
      Never argue
      And once in a while, with great discretion, misbehave”
      ― Dan Buettner, Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way

      This world may just be a complicated mess. This world may be a miracle of experience and wonder. We skate between the two hoping to hold our optimal line as long as possible. The trick, I should think, is to lean into miracle and wonder lest we stumble into a complicated mess. We all step in it now and then, but a good life begins with the direction we lean.

      Inevitably, we settle into a life that works for us. Sure, “settle” may sound like a compromise, and naturally there’s compromise in every happy life, but settle in this context meaning to realize over time that this is what you’ve wanted all along. The rhythm suits you. In rowing you settle into a steady state that you can maintain for the duration of the race, with a few high cadence sprints mixed in strategically. Life is a lot like this.

      Some people never find that rhythm, and the dance feels a bit off-kilter for them. This is a clear sign that finding another dance club is essential. If the music and fellow dancers aren’t for you, why stay? A lifetime in the wrong beat with two left feet is no way to live. Turn the beat around, as they say (I’ve just betrayed myself as a punny uncle).

      Digging into the lifestyles of people that live a long life, as Buettner does, you begin to see that the people who live best and sometimes the longest are those who simply fall into the right rhythm. Eat well, walk, lean into the company of life-minded people with whom you can share a story and a laugh with. Simple, really. And don’t you think that life should be less complicated anyway?

      At the risk of introducing one-too-many analogies into a single blog post, allow me just one more: The fire that burns the longest is fueled by substance. Oak burns longer than pine, which in turn burns longer than kindling. When we build our lives around substance and meaning, we too can burn a good long time. That’s the thing, isn’t it? To not just live a long life, but a good life. That’s not settling at all—that’s something we reach for and hold onto for dear life.

    • It’s Probably Magic

      “The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.” ― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings

      Who said that every wish
      Would be heard and answered
      When wished on the morning star
      Somebody thought of that
      And someone believed it
      And look what it’s done so far
      — Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher, Rainbow Connection

      It took several days, but the bluebirds and cardinals finally found the feeders again. They’ve been elsewhere lately as the feeders came in for the summer. With a bit of short day trickery I’ve moved the feeders closer to the house, that we might see flashes of color and motion during stick season. Attracting beauty is often a matter of simply meeting it halfway. We must do the work to realize it.

      Lately I’m bursting at the seams with magic. I’ve been filled with the stuff from reading a few gorgeous books in a row, meeting with some magical people I haven’t seen in some time, and in conversations with one remarkable woman that I see most every day. Some days you look around and see that life can be truly magical if we just open ourselves to experiencing it.

      Now don’t believe for a moment that I’m not aware of the million tragedies unfolding around us in dark corners around the world. A heart can only break so many times over the foolishness, madness and anger of humanity. To carry on in this world at all we must find and shine a light within ourselves. That light may in turn offer hope for others navigating their own stormy seas.

      Sometimes it feels like so many bad people never seem to get the comeuppance they deserve. But we don’t know what their shriveled up souls are invoking upon them in quiet moments. It’s best to focus on finding the light within ourselves, aware of the darkness but never allowing ourselves to be lost in it. We aren’t here simply to be witnesses to the behavior of others, but to contribute our own verse, if only to tip the scales back to beautiful.

      We come to realize that we’re purpose built for reflection. We shine back on the world what the world gives to us, but this works in reverse too. When we bring light to the world, it comes back to us in spades. When we bring darkness, karma catches up eventually. This is the eternal hope of the universe, that any of this matters, and the person we are gets what we deserve. That belief is deceiving, of course, for so much of the good things in life seem so far out of reach when we always want something more.

      The thing about magic is that it’s found in the leap between what we believed was possible and what we encounter. Sure, sometimes we find it in sleight of hand trickery, but it also applies when we encounter the person we are becoming and the larger work that we are creating. There’s magic in art, and in performance, and when we rise to meet our essential role it’s a beautiful encounter indeed.

      Now I’m no magician, and the jury is still out on the work that I produce in this world, but I love to dabble in light and song and a bit of magic now and then. Life isn’t meant to be a spiral into the abyss, but a climb to possibility and contribution. We play our part in our time, and show the way for those ready to see the magic of becoming for themselves. This isn’t wishful thinking, but purposeful transcendence from the norm. Simply put, we attract what we believe. We know that it’s probably not magic, but surely it can be magical.

    • Another Foray With Writing

      “Mr. Alcott seems to be reading well this winter: Plato, Montaigne, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Sir Thomas Browne, etc., etc. ‘I believe I have read them all now, or nearly all,’ — those English authors. He is rallying for another foray with his pen, in his latter years, not discouraged by the past, into that crowd of unexpressed ideas of his, that undisciplined Parthian army, which, as soon as a Roman soldier would face, retreats on all hands, occasionally firing backwards; easily routed, not easily subdued, hovering on the skirts of society.” — Henry David Thoreau, Emerson – Thoreau Letters (VI-X) 1848

      Lately I seem to have drifted away from Thoreau. It’s not a deliberate act, mind you, but a full life. Like close friends, sometimes you drift apart, sometimes closer together. Everything has its time. Like those old friends, when you meet up with Henry again you pick up right where you left off.

      It seems my own creative writing is a lot like Alcott’s was in his day. I revisited some old characters yesterday, rallying for another foray with my own pen. Thoreau’s observation is keen, and as with my rowing friend who inspected my hand to see how much rowing I’d really been doing, the results show far more than a few casual statements about production ever will. We are what we repeatedly do, aren’t we?

      With that in mind, I began again. I’ve always been a streak hitter, and do my best when I have a simple goal of doing something every day without stopping. This blog is as good of an example of that as any, approaching five years of posting every day. It’s a lot like flossing before you brush your teeth—once firmly established as part of your identity you don’t easily let it go. Writing a blog is now easy for me, in a way, in that I simply do it straight away or it nags at me all day until I carve out the time to get it done. You have the right to judge the contribution each day, but not the will to get it out there in the world.

      The thing is, that clever observation Henry made to “Waldo” in that letter stings a bit when you don’t follow through. We’ve got to follow through on the things that are most important to us, or forever be judged undisciplined by that voice in the back of our head. Do the work, every day, until the work is done. The rest is just talk.