Alexandersmap

    Month: January 2025

    • Reverent Listening

      “Good writing as well as good acting will be obedience to conscience. There must not be a particle of will or whim mixed with it. If we can listen, we shall hear. By reverently listening to the inner voice, we may reinstate ourselves on the pinnacle of humanity.” — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      I went through a period of time where I considered whether to stop blogging altogether to give that valuable time to other writing. My most productive time is first thing in the morning, before the world wakes up and tells me what it thinks of my grand plans. Why use that time for a blog when I could use it to write a novel or the works of non-fiction that whisper to me?

      The answer, I think, is that this is my daily reckoning with a particular muse that blesses me with its time. To jilt this one for the hope of meeting another is impertinent. Put another way, everything has its time, and first thing in the morning is taken. We may be more selective with our listening at other times of day and turn off the noise of the world. We may choose to spend, say, lunchtime walking quietly with a new muse, reverently listening to a new perspective.

      Everything we do is habitual and routine. This naturally implies that what we’re doing with that time now ought to change. Our life’s contribution comes down to a series of decisions about what we say yes and no to. Decide what to be and go be it, as the Avett Brothers song suggests. Perhaps our most important decision is what we choose to listen as we navigate our days.

    • Creativity and Work

      “Great things are not done by impulse, but a series of small things brought together.” — Vincent Van Gogh

      Work without creativity is drudgery. Creativity without work is nothing but daydreaming. The optimal condition for any of us is to do creative work every day. When it all comes together, it’s magic.

      When we go through the motions in our work or creative pursuits, we quickly grow bored and look for distraction or an exit plan. When we do creative work, we imagine doing it forever. We ought to ask ourselves in all pursuits, is this enough? What more can I bring to this? The answer may drive us to make the changes necessary to be more actively engaged in creative work.

      So many people are lost in their days, either plodding through the hours or daydreaming the time away. That’s no way to live. I’ve been there myself, struggling through soul-crushing work looking for a viable escape plan. It wasn’t until the moments in my career where I brought creativity to my work that it lit a spark and illuminated my days. It’s the same with writing—when I go through the motions, nothing interesting happens. When I work through the walls I find the muse waiting on the other side.

      None of us have the time to waste on meaningless activity. Bringing work to our creative pursuits is just as essential as bringing creativity to our work. We cannot go through the motions in our days and live an optimized life. Creativity and work must be integrated together to fully realize our potential.

    • Seasonal Shifts

      “If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere,” — Seamus Heaney

      “On the other side of endurance, joy waits.” — Joanna Nylund, Sisu: The Finnish Art of Courage

      I have friends currently afloat in pristine, turquoise waters. I have other friends unsatisfied with the snowpack in their own backyards who hike seemingly every waking moment above tree line to find paradise in fickle and extreme weather conditions. I could be doing either of those things myself right now, but instead I’m holding the center that we may all meet in the middle again one day.

      We do have agency with such things as winter. We may choose to stoke the fire and watch the storms pass by from the comfort of our favorite chair, book in hand and a hot beverage to warm us from the inside out. Or we can dress the part and venture out into the swirling snows and bitter wind, to taste for ourselves the bite of January. If we have the currency of health and the accessories of winter, there’s every reason to fully experience everything winter has to offer.

      The world feels colder and darker than it’s felt in some time. These shifts are seasonal, we tell ourselves. The pendulum will swing back one day to warmer and brighter. Our mission is to toe the line between chaos and order and make the most of our days, whatever the climate. This is stoicism. This is grit. This is Sisu. Whatever we wish to call it, it’s a mindset and quiet resolve to face the day and whatever it brings to us. To hold the line and winter out the worst that we may summer it up again one day.

    • The Rise of a Quiet Excitement

      “No matter what night preceded it, she had never known a morning when she did not feel the rise of a quiet excitement that became a tightening energy in her body and a hunger for action in her mind—because this was the beginning of day and it was a day of her life.” — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

      “Rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventures.” — Henry David Thoreau

      How did it feel getting out of bed this morning? Does the day ahead stir the imagination or fill the mind with indifference? We all have bills to pay, we all have obligations that require our attention, but most of us simply let those things steer us where they will. We drift through our days, only feeling excitement for the things that pull us away from our work, like holidays and travel and what we’re doing on the weekend. What if every day offered the thrill of audacity and creative output?

      I know the writing is important to me because I rush right to it. On those mornings when I can’t get to it right away because of a flight or because I have early riser friends staying over, it eats at me until I immerse myself in the creative act. It’s not that those other things aren’t fun or interesting, it’s that I feel the writing brings me closer to a place I want to go.

      When you read that quote from Atlas Shrugged, does it feel like the way you met the day today, or does it read as merely words? We’re either turning excited energy into action or we’re going through the motions in our days, just to get through them. Remember the line from the movie Animal House? “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.” It’s a funny line when we’re kids, but it cuts deeper when we wade through life a bit longer.

      What might we offer to the world that is uniquely ours to give? Does that fill us to bursting with excitement and energy? Then do more of that, whatever the cost. For most of us, it’s a side hustle or a hobby. For the truly blessed, it’s a lifestyle and a career path. Whatever we feel is telling us all we need to know, if we’ll only listen. But more than listening, we must act. This day is ours only this once.

    • Made New Again

      “Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      My bride and I went out to dinner with old friends over the weekend. We hadn’t seen the two couples we met with in some time so there was some catching up to do before we got down to what each is planning for the future. I fancy myself a good listener, and delighted in the company of some exceptional listeners who sought to hear what each party was saying and not simply waiting for a break to jump in with their own take on the world. I delight in a conversation with a person who seeks first to understand, and I do my best to be that person myself.

      Once you’ve raised children together, gone through the succession of jobs and pets and cars and appliances and hobbies that all had their day, we look around and see that the person who’s been there through all of it is still patiently waiting for us to finish stating an opinion they’ve heard us state a hundred times. It may occur to us in such moments that we’ve been every bit as complicated to live with as they have been for us. A long-term relationship is an investment, shared and nurtured equally.

      We put energy into today, that tomorrow we are stronger together. All those fatal flaws that every one of us bring to a relationship are discovered, wrested with and navigated beyond on a course to better. Each day is an encounter with a new version of the person we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with, who’s looking at the latest version of us and deciding what to do with that discovery. Together we grow into something similar, but entirely new.

      The magic is in the rediscovery of that old familiar spark, still burning under the layers of days together. Some days it’s easier to find that spark than other days, but it’s hiding there somewhere, waiting for the fuel and oxygen it needs. So many relationships peter out for neglect, smothered under layers of indifference. Each day is our chance to rekindle and reinvent, to remake and make new. Our future together depends on it.

    • Boldly now

      “When I took my first wobbly steps on ice skates aged four, my mother was standing on the sidelines cheering me on. The ice was cold, hard and not very even, and I didn’t like trying out new things. I wanted to leave. My mother smiled encouragingly, and as I shakily ventured out farther on the ice, I heard her shout “Rohkeasti vaan!” behind me. This Finnish expression can be roughly translated as “Boldly now!” and typifies our attitude to raising kids.” — Joanna Nyland, Sisu: The Finnish Art of Courage

      This blog is a series of railroad ties laid one day to the next, carrying the writer and anyone who cares to follow along across the blank slate towards heightened awareness. Sometimes the journey reveals stunning vistas, sometimes it slogs through the dullest of plateaus seeking a breakthrough. The sum of our daily action is carrying us somewhere. The compass aims at better, but it comes down to what we’ve done with the days.

      The trick with anything we set out to do is to keep doing it until we reach our goal. To be bold is not itself a goal, but an aspiration of attitude to bring to this next step and the one after that. It’s the long, purposeful stride, not the timid baby step. Both move us along, but we’ve only got so many days. The bolder step carries us faster and farther, and builds momentum necessary for the occasional leap.

      When the days become routine and the weeks blend together into a level of sameness that leave us uninspired, let us remember to be bold. The Finnish phrase quoted above, “Rohkeasti vaan!”, isn’t likely to roll off my tongue, but the translation, “Boldly now!” has the power to inspire the laying of more track, on an ever-higher plane, towards those aspirational vistas. Baby steps may offer forward progress, but we must remember to boldly lengthen that stride and get after it, now.

    • Remember Your Dreams

      Take it all in
      It’s as big as it seems
      Count all your blessings
      Remember your dreams
      — Jimmy Buffett, Jimmy Dreams

      We who try to reason with an unreasonable world can get pulled into distraction before we know it. We know that distraction steals our lives away as quickly as a murderous thief. The time given to distraction will never be returned to us. Focus on the future. Remember your dreams.

      Just writing this, I thought maybe I’d link to a video of Buffett singing the song I quoted, which led me to YouTube, which promptly threw a hundred distracting options at me that could easily have taken this productive moment from me in exchange for trinkets of frivolity. It happens so quickly, so easily, that we hardly notice it anymore. And before we know it our dreams are deferred to a tomorrow that will never come.

      We must be bold to dream big, but then we must be disciplined to realize them. Be present. Be aware. Be alive and vibrantly focused on the things that matter most in this time and place. These are days we’ll remember—the madness in the world assures that, but we must make it our mission to write the script ourselves.

      To be alive and aware of what we’re doing with the time puts us ahead of the masses of minions watching curated videos all day. We may leverage that time advantage to realize a dream or two in our allotment of days. There is no other reasonable alternative but to be bold and leap into life.

    • A Look and a Listen

      I want to leave to you,
      My grandchildren,
      This wren from Down,
      Its cotton-wool soul,
      Wire skeleton, feathers
      Apparently alive,
      Its tumultuous
      Aria in C or
      Whatever the key
      In which God exists.
      — Michael Longley, Another Wren

      I learned that Michael Longley has passed, and realized that I’ve never quoted a single poem by him in this blog. To do so now, after his death, is one way to keep his voice alive. But then, don’t all poets transcend the fragile timeline of life? We all ought to write more, as a gift to our own grandchildren and their children beyond.

      We get so angry at the world and the failings of mankind that we ignore the music playing in the background while we rant. It turns out to be quite beautiful when we return to stillness and hear it as if for the first time. We owe it to ourselves to discover the miracles hiding in plain sight. We become like the Marshall McLuhan analogy of fish in water, not realizing what they’re swimming in. Friends, we’re swimming in miracles. Have a look and a listen.

    • Ship of Fools

      “Why have we left it all to fools? It should have been ours.” — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

      There’s no getting around the foolishness in the world. It’s maddening if we let it be, but we must remember that it’s always been foolish and maddening. This is simply our time to navigate it all. The reason it frustrates us so is because we had such hope for the world not so long ago, and then the fools turned it all upside down.

      We’re setting sail to the place on the map
      From which no one has ever returned
      Drawn by the promise of the joker and the fool
      By the light of the crosses that burned
      Drawn by the promise of the women and the lace
      And the gold and the cotton and pearls
      It’s the place where they keep all the darkness you need
      You sail away from the light of the world on this trip, baby
      You will pay tomorrow
      — World Party, Ship of Fools

      We’re being carried along, pressed-ganged into service to pirates seeking profit, as the world burns. In a moment when humanity needed to rise up to meet the climate crisis head-on, we chose oligarchs and conmen to steer the ship. Where it leads us, only science can predict. But why listen to facts when there’s so much money to be made? There will be consequences, and life will be more challenging than it might have been if we’d simply chosen progress over short term profits.

      Maybe I’m missing the part where all the billionaires and pirates pool their resources to save the world. Let them prove me wrong, but their track record isn’t particularly impressive. We aren’t here for miracles, we’re here to face to world as it is (and will be) and to position ourselves for the best possible outcome given the circumstances. Our answer is to build resilience into our own lives and to have our lifeboat at the ready.

    • Connecting Miracles

      “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” — Albert Einstein

      I spoke with one of my aunts yesterday. I don’t see her and my uncle all that much now. Really, I don’t see any of my aunts and uncles much now. In fact, most of the people who were central to my identity in the first half of my life are not very present today. Childhood friends and enemies, teammates, old coworkers and that person we went on the nervous date with once upon a time. Life gets busy, we tell ourselves.

      The truth is that we can’t be everywhere at once, and some people who mean the world to us gradually slip away as the gap of time and place grows. A bridge requires strong anchors on both sides, but oftentimes we forget to tend our own end of things. So many people in our lives want for a simple call and conversation. We have more power for connection than we utilize in our frenzied, important lives. And what is really all that important anyway?

      We have this one go at things. When we view our lives as a miracle of infinitesimal chance in the cold expanse of the universe, we may appreciate our waking up to face whatever our day brings us a little better. When we consider our fellow time travelers, living their own miracle moment at the same time that we are, well, perhaps we might appreciate their presence a little more. We are stardust, after all, and so is that older neighbor down the street, that barista serving us go juice and the guy that just cut us off on the highway. All miracles in the moment; starstruck and dumbfounded in where we find ourselves. Go figure.

      Connecting miracles is a mission we opt into. Active engagement with the world is a choice. Using that mobile device to actually make a call instead of watching another curated video is a bridge to someone else who may be in desperate need of a reminder that they too are a miracle. Connection is harder than ever in this world of distraction and outrage, but it’s our choice to make.