Alexandersmap

    Month: July 2024

    • Choices and Character

      “The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become.” ― Heraclitus

      “Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.” — Heraclitus

      A good day to double down on the Heraclitus quotes. It’s raining out, the planned heavy mileage morning washed aside in a wave of rain water and that extra mai tai last night. A setback is not a trend, but it can be the start of one if we let it go unchecked. The influence of friends and circumstance can sway us from our key objectives if we don’t stay focused on who we are meant to be.

      This is where that protracted and patient effort comes into play. What is our system for resetting ourselves on the task at hand? Systems are our big picture, identity-based habits are the daily reckoning. We are what we repeatedly do, nothing more and nothing less. If those systems and habits are negative, we’ll repeat the same mistakes over and over, if they’re positive and productive, we’ll quickly right the ship and get back on course.

      The best way I’ve found to stay on course for the long haul is to ask myself every morning, who is the character I wish to become? Which leads to the secondary question, what do I need to do today to lead me there? And then it’s simply doing it. Diversions off the path happen to all of us in our long march to what’s next, that doesn’t make it who we are or will become so long as we steer our choices back to character.

    • Building Blocks

      “Life’s like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.” ― Jim Henson

      I’m thinking a lot about blocks lately. Probably because I’ve encountered a few more than usual recently in my life. Nothing extraordinary, just life’s jumble of obstacles stacking up between where I am and where I’d like to be. Still, they’re clearly blocks to be dealt with.

      Writer’s block doesn’t just get in the way of writers and poets, it gets in the way of anyone trying to break away from the path more traveled on. Life can be a trap, setting us in the role we’ve become accustomed to and not letting us go off and do the crazy things we dreamed once of doing. At least that’s the way the block forms in our mind. The trick is to see this for what it is and just keep on writing the chapter we want for ourselves despite that internal dialogue.

      Blocks are best used as sprinters use them—as something solid from which to launch ourselves into full speed without slipping backwards. A sprinter has no momentum yet, and the block becomes a fixed point from which to begin again. Reinventing the blocks in our life to become something useful seems a better way to live a creative life. Thinking of blocks as something to launch from, or something to build upon, transforms the block from a barrier to our success to a key element of it.

      The thing is, we must continue to be provocative in our lives. Push boundaries beyond comfortable and see what a bit of discomfort does for our story. Every hero’s journey has blocks along the way, and so too must our journey. Each offers something to build on to reach our happily ever after.

    • Beyond the News

      “News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read.” — Evelyn Waugh

      I seem to have the same discussion about the news over and over again. Most everyone is unhappy with the state of it, hates that it’s always bad and that the quality of reporting has slipped to levels of mediocrity not seen in years. And yet people still watch it.

      Like most people I stopped reading the newspaper first, favoring online for the more current news. The problem with online breaking news was that you lose insight when everything is so breathlessly now. Breaking news is akin to looking at the accident on the other side of the highway as you crawl past it. You can ascertain pretty quickly that it’s some level of bad and move on, or you can linger with it longer than you should and ruin the journey for all who follow you.

      News channels even hate themselves. They try to get people to watch with best ice cream in town stories or feel good pet rescue stories, but then they flip right back to the horror du jour. In Boston people spent hours and hours of their lives debating the guilt or innocence of a woman accused of killing her significant other. If you aren’t in the families of the two parties or aren’t part of the jury, what has that got to do with any of us?

      I can be aware of the suffering in the world without spending my time locked to yet another story about it. Call me blissfully ignorant if you will, but I could care less about any of that beyond a high level awareness of what may impact me if I don’t act on it. The news to me revolves around whether to bring the umbrella, drive a different route to my appointment, change my passwords immediately and occasionally to be on the lookout, otherwise I get on with my day. It’s okay to be aware, but we must remember to live ourselves that we may use our time productively and purposefully. To live beyond the news is to step closer to our potential.

    • Life’s Good Runs

      “Life is like skiing. Just like skiing, the goal is not to get to the bottom of the hill. It’s to have a bunch of good runs before the sun sets.” — Seth Godin

      We each go through distinct seasons in our lives, not just age-based but in what we are focused on. We look back on them fondly or maybe not so fondly, but we can see exactly who we were at the time and know it brought us to who we are today. School days, sports played, people encountered and cherished for awhile, books read and discussed, career rungs climbed, places visited that seep into our souls—these are all good runs that we remember for the rest of our days. A lifetime may itself be a good run, made up of a series of other runs played by the distinct characters we were at the time.

      I still identify as a rower even though my rowing days on water are far in my past. Millions of meters on a machine in my basement aren’t quite the same, but the feeling of the catch made perfectly resonates across time and place. How many great catches did I have? Who’s to say but we know one when we feel it. Either way, that stroke ends and we recover for the next. Like skiing and life phases the goal is to put together as many good ones as you can in the time allotted.

      At the moment, I’m on quite a run of blog posts, but just last week I was wondering if this particular run was over for me. Not quite yet, but we’ll see how life unfolds. We each have good days and bad days, and with each morning a chance to begin anew. There’s a certain thrill in publishing something just when I thought I’d had enough to say and found some new plot twist to unpack.

      We recognize when we’re in the midst of a good run, just as we feel when a good run is ending. We’ll look with trepidation at the next run wondering whether we’ll enjoy that part of the ride, knowing that there are some things we most definitely won’t enjoy at all. We can’t rush through the bad parts to get to the good parts to come any more than we can hold on to the good parts forever. Life unfolds and we adapt to it and grow. What comes next is important too, but let’s not forget the thrill of the run we’re currently on.

    • To Live Is to Fly

      To live is to fly low and high
      so shake the dust off of your wings
      and the sleep out of your eyes
      — Cowboy Junkies, To Live Is to Fly

      I think that maybe stagnation is our greatest adversary. It kills any momentum in our lives and hastens our demise. We must move while we can. Stillness will claim us one day soon, but not just yet.

      Yes, I think that movement is the key. We must keep moving to fully live. Even trees, forever rooted to place, are constantly reaching up and outward to embrace the light, and dance in the breeze together. So it is with us, even when rooted, we must keep moving.

      Yesterday I rolled out the bicycle for a long ride along a rail trail. Cycling is the low form of flying, but a delightful way to traverse time and place. I wondered, why don’t I ride more often? No answer was apparent, just a resolution to take flight again soon. Life is a series of self-discoveries with the occasional memory jog reminding us that there are moments from our past worthy of a moment of reacquaintance. A bicycle deserves a better fate than to hang forever in a garage gathering dust. So too do we.

      What else is gathering dust, awaiting our return? Hiking boots? Books? Passports? First drafts? What might we put into motion again, that it may take off full of life? We must shake the dust off and flap these wings. To live is to fly, low and high.

    • Something New

      Above the mountains
      the geese turn into
      the light again

      Painting their
      black silhouettes
      on an open sky.

      Sometimes everything
      has to be
      inscribed across
      the heavens

      so you can find
      the one line
      already written
      inside you.

      Sometimes it takes
      a great sky
      to find that

      first, bright
      and indescribable
      wedge of freedom
      in your own heart.

      Sometimes with
      the bones of the black
      sticks left when the fire
      has gone out

      someone has written
      something new
      in the ashes of your life.

      You are not leaving.
      Even as the light fades quickly now,
      you are arriving
      — David Whyte, The Journey

      On the 4th of July I walked out onto the deck, stepped down the first stair and noticed a sag in the decking. You know exactly what the story is in such moments, the question was the extent of wood rot in the joists under the decking. It turned out to be not all that much and a quick trip to the home improvement box store for some new pressure treated lumber solved the issue. Time had crept up on the joist, which I distinctly remember building beyond the code at the time. Time is indifferent to such things.

      Life is change. We know this. Sometimes the change is more apparent than at other times. Sometimes it’s thrust upon us by circumstance, sometimes it creeps over us so slowly that we don’t notice it until we look around and everything is different. We may choose how to react in such moments, but we may agree it’s far better to be surfing the edge of the wave than washed over by it.

      The thing is, walking down that step on that day felt different already. Because I’m different, and the people who have used those steps are all different too. Too many have moved on forever. We may mourn the passing of time and the changes it brings or work our way up to the edge and surf it. We choose how we react to the changes in our lives. Something new may be debilitating or exhilarating, depending on how we interact with the wave. Be inclined to embrace the thrill of change for the duration, for it’s rolling either way.

    • Happily Ever Afters

      He said, “Don’t you know I love you, oh, so much
      And lay my heart at the foot of your dress?”
      She said, “Don’t you know that storybook loves
      Always have a happy ending”?
      Then he swooped her up just like in the books
      And on his stallion they rode away
      — Mark Knopfler & Willy Deville, Storybook Love

      A few days ago I took all the serious books I’ve committed myself to finishing and stacked them gently to the side in favor of the delightful, beautifully-illustrated gem The Princess Bride by William Goldman. If you’ve seen the movie and memorized the lines, the book will be as comfortable as watching it just one more time. And yet the book is mesmerizingly wonderful and transformative on its own. You can’t help but visualize scenes and the actors who say the lines, but there’s so much more to delight in than the movie could possibly offer in 98 minutes, which is the official length of Rob Reiner’s masterful tribute to the book. And it reminds us that books are one of humanity’s greatest contributions to the greater good.

      God knows we could use more greater good. And that’s where you and I come in. We may rise above the dismal Fire Swamp we find ourselves forced to march through and ride off on our own white horse with our friends, to a brighter future together. Looking around at the world today, it surely feels sometimes like we’re deep in a dismal swamp we may never get out of. It’s fair to wonder sometimes, just how the hell do we carry on? Happily ever afters are never guaranteed in this lifetime, but we must live with the hope of a brighter tomorrow to manage the lift we’ve been assigned today.

      And that’s the lesson we’re all learning, isn’t it? Some pages are magical, some quite horrible, but most days lie somewhere in between—a steady march to hope. To face each day with love in our heart and a bit of courage is the way through the dark days to that brighter tomorrow. The irony is that chasing happiness often leads to misery, but following our heart to something greater within ourselves usually leads us to the place we dreamed of being all along.

    • The Worthwhile Endeavors

      “Optimism makes you less likely to walk away while not actually increasing your chances of success. That means that being overly optimistic will make you stick to things longer that aren’t worthwhile. Better to be well calibrated. Life’s too short to spend your time on opportunities that are no longer worthwhile.” — Annie Duke, Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away

      In all honesty, last night I was planning to make this my last blog post. To end with a bang on the 4th of July seemed poetic. I’ve thought this before, but talked myself into sticking with it for a round number or a date with particular meaning for me. The 4th has particular meaning for me and so it felt appropriate to roll out the Annie Duke quote and wrap this thing up.

      Naturally, this is why I write in the morning, with a fresh mind not yet beaten down by the realities of the world. This is why I read poetry and listen to music with the ear of a philosopher. This is why I travel to places that leave me gobsmacked. And this is why I favor quiet conversation with the smallest of circles, that we may each be heard. The well was empty last night, it’s not quite so this morning.

      No, I’m not ready to stop writing just yet. But the thought was a red flag for me that I must pursue other worthwhile endeavors to ignite the kindling before it floats away in the winds of time. There’s a whole world out there awaiting our graceful experience with it. So frequently asking ourselves whether we should stick with things opens up the possibility that maybe we shouldn’t. Recalibrate. And in the absence of obligation to that thing other opportunities may open up before us.

    • Green Grass and Long Conversation

      There’s an old response to the expression “the grass is greener on the other side” that points out that “the grass is greener where you water it.” Being a collector of quotes and poetry, the expression seems to pop in my feed now and then. Today was one of those days, and just before I started to write this blog post. Apparently the student was ready to see it again.

      I begin most summer mornings with a plunge into the pool and a cup of coffee in an Adirondack chair. I know this is a luxury of circumstance and celebrate it for the blessing it is. But I also know that a lot of watering went into this particular grass. To be born at the right time and place is a gift, to use that time and place in such a way that your life is incrementally better each year is a plan well-executed, with a nod to luck and fate for the blessing they’ve bestowed. But it’s simply my moment with these things, nothing more. We must remember that for all it represents.

      Yesterday I took a long walk with my bride and our pup through old neighborhoods she grew up in. The entire four miles was a walking conversation about what was, what is, and what will be. This year marks three decades of such conversations, and we’ve noted the changes in ourselves as much as the people and things around us. Life is change and a bit of selective watering, that we may enjoy our moment in the sun a little more before it’s time to concede it to the next. Memento mori and carpe diem, friends.

      Sitting in that chair, the air a bit cool, I watched the steam drift out of the mug and drift up into the morning sunbeam over my shoulder. The water vapors caught the sunbeam just right and sparkled like fireworks before drifting away to infinity. The days are already getting shorter even as the peak of summer is ahead of us. We may know the fragility of the moment and still look ahead with anticipation. A beautiful life is built on the things that are most fragile, like time and seasons and the people who grace us with this dance.

    • The Occasional Success

      “It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.

      There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” — Mary Oliver, Of Power and Time

      It feels like success is more elusive nowadays. We could all use more wins in this stage in our collective history. A few less setbacks would be great. Just what is happening in the world anyway? Nothing all that good it seems. We must remember to focus on what we can control and acknowledge the rest is up to fate. Amor fati.

      The thing we can control is our reaction to this world boiling away uncontrollably in rage and gases. We don’t have to like it but we have to remain focused on the things within our grasp, like how we greet each other and the example we set for our children. We can choose to be cool and steady, and produce something beautiful in this world.

      Distraction is pulling us down from the heights we might reach. What does success look like today? Small wins have a way of stacking up into something bigger. When the sun sets on this day, on this lifetime, what will we have done with it? The muse will not be ignored, it will simply find someone else who will give it the focused time it demands. Let that be us.