Alexandersmap

    Month: November 2024

    • Another Way

      “Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.” — Franz Kafka

      Nothing is forever, it’s easy to see that in the transactions of life, but some things return back to us in another form. I will always believe the world reflects back what we project into it, and when we project love, we find we receive just enough back. We can’t very well hoard such things as love, for the act of hoarding isn’t love at all, and results in a reflection back that isn’t love. There are plenty of examples of people whoring themselves out thinking they’ll get love in return, when all they really get are a bunch of whores hanging around them. That ain’t love.

      I started a new gig yesterday, mostly because it felt like the right fit but also because I don’t like to sit still very much. Between the old and the new gig, I’d done all the yard chores, participated in a window replacement project and painted rooms. All just to get things done. Each of these things may feel like chores, but they’re all opportunities to return love to those who have loved us.

      Each act in a lifetime is a message to those around us about the type of person we’re going to be. When all feels lost we may be a beacon to help someone find their way. This is how to live in a world that often feels cold and dark. There is always another way, and it begins with love.

    • The Next Essential Thing

      I’m not going to lie to you, the last month has been a whirlwind of change, travel and starting all over again. We collectively face massive cultural changes in this new world that we’re all sorting sorting out in our own way. I’ve got plenty on my mind already, so the national election will have to be stacked in the corner to percolate for awhile.

      In medias res (“into the midst of things”) is the phrase that exemplifies the state I’m in. I’m jumping right into the next after a busy and productive month. For all that I’ve accomplished over the last month, I ought to pause and reflect, but there’s no time for it. I see the swirling current in front of me and I’m focused on staying afloat.

      And that’s the key word when we’re in the midst of things: focus. Focus on the essential next thing that will keep us from drowning in the current of change. Put one foot in front of the other, and keep moving across that floor. To get swept away in any emotion doesn’t serve us well, it pulls us under. The next essential thing is the only thing that matters right now. So let’s get to it.

    • The Diplomat

      “Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou

      Every trip reminds me that we’re mostly all the same. Would that everyone travel more, that they too might learn this lesson. True, the popular tourist destinations are already crowded enough, but the lessons aren’t learned on a tour bus or cruise ship anyway. To know people we must meet them on their terms, where they live, without the sticker telling everyone which group we’re in.

      I am a diplomat without the pension plan. Wherever I go, I work to meet people halfway. That may be Rome or London now and then, but mostly it’s the person next to me on a train or a restaurant. I don’t know who they voted for most of the time (unless they’re wearing the uniform), but it honestly doesn’t matter anyway. The job of the diplomat is to build bridges, not to tear them down.

      Each day I work my craft. It’s not manipulation I practice, but the craft of reaching understanding and finding something in common with that human I’m interacting with. Most people reflect back that which we project onto them (the rest are narcissists or psychopaths—it helps to realize when you encounter them too). The diplomats are the ones who keep this fabric of humanity woven together. Someone’s got to do it.

    • The Pub Crawl

      A place like Dublin deserves a good pub crawl to really say that you’ve been there. Whether you drink or not isn’t the point, it’s the opportunity to immerse yourself into Irish culture and celebrate life all at once that makes a pub crawl a great experience. Of course, if you partake a few drinks can help one in that immersion business.

      The name “pub” is short for “public house”, which itself was used to differentiate them from private houses and thus able to serve alcohol. You’ll still see many a pub calling themselves a public house, and it brings us full circle back to the roots. Whatever you call them, they’ve become central community gathering places for generations, making them integral to our cultural history. I’ll drink to that!

      There are a few things one ought to seek out in a pub when choosing which of the hundreds in a place like Dublin to visit. For me, a bit of history counts for a lot. If I never get to Dublin again in my lifetime (and that would be a pity), then I’d want to get to a place with some history. No pub has more of that than Ireland’s oldest pub, The Brazen Head, a place that “has been a hostelry… since 1198. The present building was built in 1754 as a coaching inn.” The food was excellent and the Guinness was a perfect compliment. Walking around it, you feel you’re living your moment in its long history.

      Darkey Kelly’s isn’t quite as old as The Brazen Head, but it has its own rich history. “Darkey” Kelly was a brothel-keeper who was burned at the stake in Dublin in 1761 for witchcraft. She almost certainly wasn’t a witch, but there was evidence that she was a serial killer. Rough way to go for anyone, of course, and why did it always seem to be the women being burned at the stake? Anyway, the pub itself was lively and filled with music and conversation, everything you’d want in a pub. The Irish whiskey collection was the largest I’ve seen. And as a bonus the Ireland-New Zealand rugby match was on, capturing the enthusiastic attention of the locals. It was my favorite of the bunch.

      As a nightcap for the evening, The Old Storehouse, brought more live music with a young and active drinking crowd. In fact, noticeably younger. The later it gets, the younger the crowd gets. And that young crowd surprised me as they belted out the hits of the 70’s and 80’s as if they grew up with them )which of course they have, they were merely reminding me). The duo played to the crowd with far more rock and disco hits than traditional Irish music, but with a talented fiddle player sprinkling beautiful Celtic all over them.

      No trip to Dublin would be complete without at least a pass by The Temple Bar. It’s surely lovely to look at, but more than any other pub it’s geared towards the tourists, prices and all. Still, worthy of a quick visit, if only for the obligatory photo with it. After all, what’s a pub crawl without seeing and being seen with the most famous of them all?

    • The Great Affair

      “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

      Today’s blog post was written on a bus rolling through the Irish countryside between Dublin and Belfast. The timing of the trip was good, as it reminds us that the journey is really up to us to make. There’s time enough for work and scarcity-based bickering and all of that darkness. Today we defer reconciling ourselves with the worst of humanity’s traits in favor of the great affair with living boldly. So we move.

      We know we cannot defer everything. The world is full of problems that must be faced, and we’ll do our part, but the world will always have its problems, and we are but a moment’s sunlight fading in the grass. We have infinity for stillness. We must move now, while there’s still time. Ready?

    • Stuck In the Middle

      Clowns to the left of me
      Jokers to the right
      Here I am, stuck in the middle with you
      — Stealers Wheel, Stuck in the Middle With You

      For those of us stuck in the middle with the extremists on either side of the political spectrum, these are challenging times indeed. Those who aspire to personal excellence must reconcile that objective with the circle of people surrounding them. On the face of it that sounds arrogant and more than a little condescending, but I will stand by the belief that we are the average of the people we associate with the most, and lately popular opinion leaves a lot to be desired. When did this become a desired outcome?

      We must hold the line anyway and work to show others who would follow the path. Progress is never a straight line to the top. These are things I tell myself when the world lets me down a bit. The issue isn’t with the world, frustrating as it may be, but with my hope that the world will see the light and surpass my expectations. We must work on ourselves instead, for that’s all we may control anyway. Still, navigating to a better middle seems necessary too.

    • Philosophy Was Made For Days Like This

      “Look in, let not either the proper quality, or the true worth of anything pass thee, before thou hast fully apprehended it.” — Marcus Aurelius

      There’s no making sense of any of this. The country didn’t meet its moment. All we can do is try to be a better person today and always, that we may rise above the madness around us. And so the journey turns inward.

      We may navigate away from the worst of the storm and survive to see brighter days. It falls on us to find a place of strength and meaning in this maddening world. We must continue to build more resilience into our lives, that we may weather the storms to come.

      Resilience begins with inner strength and purpose. These are the only things we can truly control anyway, isn’t it? The universe keeps telling us so. The first step must be inward.

    • The Right Side of History

      “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
      ― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

      Well, today is election day in the United States, and we’ll see once again whether all those stories we tell ourselves about forming a more perfect union are true. That’s the thing about democracy: it lives on a knife edge with just enough willing participants to keep the game going. Just enough of us will vote for the stories or we won’t quite get it done and this will all fall apart on our watch. Either way, we all believe we’re on the right side of history, while roughly half of us are completely wrong.

      Live and let live, we tell ourselves, and we go on our merry way. Just don’t piss us off by pointing out the inconsistencies in that story. Be a “real American” or get out, some would tell us. As if there’s one homogenized version of real. Don’t dare call bullshit on that happy illusion or you’ll have the worst tendencies of the indignant in your business.

      Any reader of this blog is likely inclined towards the freedom of the individual to live the life for themselves that they choose. We all see the signs and flags and threats of violence if some don’t get their way. Not all stories have a happy ending, after all, and what’s right for me may not be right for you. We aren’t meant to agree on everything, but let’s pretend for a few hours that we want to stop playing games with our freedom and vote as if our lives depended on it. Maybe that will be just enough.

    • Source Material

      “Who are you? They called out, at the edge of the village. I am one of you, the poet called back. Though he was dressed like the wind, though he looked like a waterfall.” — Mary Oliver, Pen and Paper and a Breath of Air

      This morning there was a hard frost on the lawn, and a bit of sea smoke mingling with fog across the bay. The sky was pastel and postcard perfect. Why do we leave such places? Because life happens beyond the bliss of the comfortable moment. There’s so much more to discover and do, just over the bridge between here and what’s to come.

      Scanning the headlines it was evident that the doom cycle is in full gear. Wars, accidents, murder and a heated national election. It’s all a hot mess. No wonder so many people are irrational and afraid. No knock on responsible (and absolutely necessary) journalism, but there are those who seek profit in rapt attention. Shame on all of them, they who profit on dissent and tragedy and the misery of others, for they serve the darkest depths of human instincts. We may acknowledge the lessons without slowing down to have a good look. For all the madness that pastel sky indicated another perspective.

      It’s all source material for how we live our own lives, and for what we produce ourselves. Do we carry light or darkness with us in our oeuvre? To produce anything in this noisy world that may resonate with another is challenging, and leaning into formulaic and familiar may feel like a shortcut to acceptance in a fickle world, but aren’t we simply a part of the choir then? Where is our own voice? What differentiates us more than marching to our own beat? We may choose to be the source material for those who would follow. We may choose to be true to ourself.

    • Fears, Growth and Energy

      “If we do not have the depths, how do we have the heights? Yet you fear the depths, and do not want to confess that you are afraid of them. It is good, though, that you fear yourselves; say it out loud that you are afraid of yourselves. It is wisdom to fear oneself. Only the heroes say that they are fearless. But you know what happens to the hero.” — Carl Jung, The Red Book

      “Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.” — Steven Pressfield

      I’m not particularly afraid of the dark, but when I walk the dog at night I still bring a flashlight with me. Part of that is practical (try scooping up dog poop without light) and part of that is hedging my bets. I may not need the flashlight to see, but if a pack of coyotes decided to come out of the woods to face down my dog and me, seeing clearly slightly improves our odds.

      The thing is, we’re much more likely to encounter shit in our daily reconciliation with life than a pack of wild animals. But we must build resilience for those black swan events anyway. It’s only when we put ourselves in a fragile or vulnerable state that we are truly in peril.

      There are different kinds of fear we humans must face. Let’s start with the fear of the known and the fear of the unknown. Both are heavy hitters, aren’t they? If we know for sure that we’re going to have the crap kicked out of us, there’s an element of fear about the danger we clearly see approaching us, whether that crap-kicker is a person, animal or a storm, we know we’re in big trouble and it’s scary. All we can do in such moments is hope that we’re resilient, skilled or lucky enough to survive.

      Then there’s the fear of the unknown. Anyone who’s watched Jaws knows that the shark is much scarier before you really see it than it is afterwards. Likewise, fear of the dark is fear of what you don’t see. What we don’t know is far scarier than what we do know.

      We ought to condition ourselves to face our fears and do things anyway. I regularly begin most conversations with strangers rather than shrink back into myself, just to see where it takes us. I don’t mind speaking up at public events because I’ve conditioned myself to do it. Anyone can do that, if they really want to. Just do the scary thing, face the unknown and realize whatever the worst thing we imagined would happen wasn’t all that bad in reality. Then do it again.

      I currently have an underlying fear of the unknown with the United States Presidential election coming up Tuesday. I can’t control anything but my own vote, but I can fear for the future of democracy. Likewise I can fear the rising environmental crisis, the impact of artificial intelligence in everything from fake news to the proficiency of hackers to the ability of AI to take away the jobs of creative people. It’s all unknown and a little scary when you think about it.

      The thing is, everything I just mentioned are forces outside of my control. The only way to navigate these kinds of unknowns is one at a time. Bring the flashlight and phone when you walk in dark places. Live in a home situated above the 100 year flood zone. Buy insurance. Diversify investments. Exercise and eat well that we have a strong foundation for the inevitable health challenges that comes in time for all of us. Build layers of protection into our lives and we put ourselves in a position to survive and maybe even thrive. But still, vote like your country depends on it.

      Still with me? I know this is a long one, but fear is a deep topic. And we haven’t even gotten to the biggest fear of all: fear of failure. This is the ultimate unknown staring us down between the ears. Fear of failure makes a lot of sense if we’re walking a tight rope or doing a free solo rock climb high up on a cliff. The consequences aren’t nearly so high in most cases. Most failure bears out as embarrassment or setbacks—things we can learn from that lead to growth.

      So do ask the dumb question, ask out the person you want to be with, take the leap of faith on the job that is very different from the last one. We never know until we try. But in each case, do the work to be prepared for the moment. Informed “dumb” questions are better than ignorant dumb questions. Having the emotional intelligence to be with the person you’re asking out improves one’s odds of success when asking them out. Developing the skillset to handle the job we aspire to inevitably leads to better results than simply winging it when we walk in the door on day one.

      It all comes back to that invaluable Boy Scouts motto: Be prepared. When we’re prepared for the moment the moment becomes less scary. So prepare! And know what failure really means before taking the calculated risk. This is what gives us the best opportunity for success. When we’re prepared and know we’ve done the work, fear may still tingle the spine, but it’s transformed into productive energy.