Alexandersmap

    Month: September 2025

    • A Shared Experience

      “The Scripture rule, “Unto him that hath shall be given,” is true of composition. The more you have thought and written on a given theme, the more you can still write. Thought breeds thought. It grows under your hands.” — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      Give and it shall be given. A bit of Luke for the casual Bible reader. The more we give of ourselves, the more flows through us. Generosity is an infinite game, derived out of an abundance mentality. Over and over again, we learn that we get what we give (You’ve got the music in you).

      A friend invited me back to Substack with a gift subscription. I appreciate the generosity, but I’m in a place where I favor analog over digital consumption, and am thus keeping most digital content at arms length. Is it ironic that I blog daily, thus creating the very digital content that I’m currently attempting to trim from my unrelentingly large information diet? Perhaps. But our hand is more complex and nuanced than the up card that is showing. This paragraph is not who I am, just who I was in the moment I wrote it. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

      When the words flow with abundance, all sorts of things come out. We either filter vigorously, knowing our spouse and mother and daughter will read it, or we simply accept the consequences of an open dialog and write what comes to us. But we become what we focus on, and this blog, scattered as it may seem at times, focuses on the fine art of becoming what’s next. Life is a shared experience, and what is a blog but the sharing of where we’ve been and what we’ve seen?

      Thought breeds thought. We are here to write our story, made rich by the vigorous application of full days. Do more, experience more, learn from it and see where it takes us next. Then share it with others. Life grows in abundance to the level with which we engage with the world.

    • Release the Dancers

      “He was weary of himself, of cold thoughts and intellectual dreams. Life a poem! Not when you perpetually went around inventing your life instead of living it. How meaningless it was, empty, empty, empty. This hunting for yourself, slyly observing your own tracks—in a circle, of course; this pretending to throw yourself into the stream of life and then at the same time sitting and angling for yourself and fishing yourself up in some peculiar disguise! If only it would seize him: life, love, passion—so that he wouldn’t be able to invent it, but so that it would invent him.”
      — Jens Peter Jacobsen, Niels Lyhne

      There’s a fine line between imagination and invention. We dream big dreams, or perhaps simply a wee wish or two, and they each dance about happily in our imagination until we do the work to realize them or eventually get sick of being teased by the dancers and find something else with which to fancy for awhile. Life isn’t meant to be a dream, it’s meant to be a gradual realization of our potential. It’s a matter of turning imagination into reality through deliberate and purposeful work. That line is crossed through action.

      “Decide what to be and go be it.”… —The Avett Brothers lyric that lives rent free in my head.

      Incremental experience—the experience that Jacobsen’s character Niels is pining for—in turn forever reinvents us. The person we’ve become is far more capable of doing this next thing than the person we were then. We imagine possibilities we couldn’t imagine from our previous vantage point, and we move along a timeline of steady progression.

      It’s natural to chafe at the limitations of our current level of experience. This discomfort is a catalyst for change—if we allow it to be anyway. Unless we’re forever paralyzed by inaction and low agency. We must develop our voice over time and learn to use it to realize possibility:

      Alas for those that never sing,
      But die with all their music in them!
      — Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Voiceless

      We are forever inventing ourselves or settling into the stasis of an under-developed character. We must raise our voice and sing! This life is flying along with or without our active participation. By all means, step away from the mirage of dreams and do something with this day. Release the dancers!

    • The Wave

      We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we
      change.
      Congratulations, if
      you have changed.
      — Mary Oliver, To Begin With, the Sweet Grass

      Anyone who survives a day at the beach learns quickly that waves are meant to be faced one at a time—fully present with the one we’re in, but aware of what’s coming next. The one that has just washed over us is has already receded as undertow as the next rises to meet us. We learn not to dwell on what has come and gone when there’s another wave rising before us. To dwell on the undertow of what’s already receding serves no purpose but to fill our bottom with grit.

      We are nothing more than the routine with which we wrap our days in, and we become nothing more than the changes we embrace for ourselves. We know that change is constant. We accept that it’s often unpredictable. And we grow at the pace with which we adapt to it and learn to seek it for ourselves.

      Indeed, we’re grittier than we once were, and built to face what’s coming next. Life is always the next wave, and if we survive it, the one after that. Learn from all that is receding, but focus on what’s rising to meet us. We are changed, and we are changing more still.

    • Marking the Path of Being

      “All the bright precious things fade so fast, and they don’t come back.” — from F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

      I love a rainy day with nothing much to do. I find there haven’t been all that many of either rainy days or days without much to do this summer, so savoring the sensation feels right. Let tomorrow bring the crush; today is for too precious to concede to busy.

      The tricky thing about being busy is that we lose the capacity to savor when we’re trying desperately not to drown. There’s no floating with stillness when the waves are choppy and filled with sharks and other drowning people. An angry sea is no place to be. We must seek stillness in our lives if we are to find awareness and peace.

      When we get busy things tend to slip away with time. We focus on the important and urgent instead of the essential few. If it’s important we ought to focus on it, right? I mean, it’s important. And if it’s urgent we don’t have time to debate, we just do. This mindset makes us feel productive, but it forever kicks the essential down the curb.

      “How many pages will be left empty because your process was dampened by doubt and deliberation?” — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

      We must develop and nurture our non-negotiables in life. Mine include time to exercise, read, sleep, and yes: to write. If I get enough of these four, then even the stormiest day feels manageable. Writing every day coaxes the busy mind into awareness. To dabble in the essential for an hour, or a few hours, before the angry sea attempts to wash over us is a gift we give to ourselves. What do we make of this accumulation of blog posts and pages written? Will it take us anywhere in the end? It’s taken us this far already, friend.

      A lifetime is an empty and hollow thing indeed if we don’t fill each day with something more than we began it with. What is accumulated is a growing awareness and the willingness to experience and do the things that may come to us if we would only be open to them. These words are simply marking the path of being. How many pages may we fill in a lifetime of deliberate being? There is a hint of an answer revealed here and now.

    • Plot Twists

      “There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.” — André Gide, Autumn Leaves

      What is possible is often nothing more than what we believe to be possible. Where we believe the world is going. Where we believe our limits lie. What are beliefs but stories we tell ourselves?

      Beliefs ought to be questioned. Challenged. If only to see what’s on the other side of that belief. I believe our story depends on a plot twist or two to be compelling. But some people aren’t fans of plot twists in their lives. They favor a predictable story—all neatly lined up in sequential order. That’s nice, I suppose, but not what I believe.

      What some people call bad luck I call a plot twist. We ought to sit with the situation and ask ourselves a few questions: Why is this happening? What can we learn from it? Where is this leading us? How can we re-write our story to be more compelling? The hero’s journey demands that we transcend the challenges thrown at us and rise to a greater place.

      Life is nothing but one plot twist after another. What are we to do but learn and grow? Write, review, revise and make the next draft even better. Possibility is simply a better plot twist, realized through persistence and creativity.

    • Our Beautiful Choice

      “A person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits.” — Carl Rogers, On Becoming A Person

      I walk by a single tree that is clearly more distressed than it’s neighboring trees. The foliage has already begun to change to gold and faint orange. The drought most likely, I think to myself on one pass beside the tree. There are many loops past this tree, and thus many chances to observe things like the rate of change in the foliage relative to the trees around it. Each pass marks the incremental change in both the tree and me. I may have a little more agency, but every reunion with the tree reminds me that I’m really just moving in circles most of the time. We are kindred spirits, alive in the same moment, transformed by environment and place.

      “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for its not the same river and he’s not the same man.” ” — Heraclitus

      All these changes have brought us here. Collectively. I’ve turned away from the news of the world—politics and sports and celebrity gossip mean nothing to me now. To focus on what is within my control and nothing more is liberating in and of itself. We are explorers, charting a path through an upside down world. When we find the ground beneath us isn’t solid, as on a beach with the surf constantly pulling the sand from beneath our feet, we too must adapt and adjust our stance. And eventually find our way to solid ground once again.

      Life is change. And it’s never been nor ever will be fair. Environment and place are largely out of our control, but how we move through this world is our beautiful choice to make. We may get caught up in the swirl and concede the sinking or choose a path to something more tangible from which to base our growth upon. Decide what to be and go be it. Our potentialities are always ahead of us, awaiting our move in that direction.

    • Walls Be Damned

      “Art may only exist, and the artist may only evolve, by completing the work.” — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

      I was reading some poetry, thinking that maybe I’d include it in today’s blog, and each poem spoke to me reluctantly—’tis not our day to be turned about in your precious blog. I know a cold shoulder when I encounter one. We must never force the issue, for we’d all know the truth of the matter soon enough. Some days we must simply work our way through our walls without the dance of poetry and song to light our way.

      Ideas come easy. It’s the work to realize them that is difficult. Writing every day is a form of paying penance to the muse, but also a ritual of doing what I said I was going to do, if only for this hour or two before the day washes over me. Excellence is a habit—right Aristotle? Well, this work in progress aspires towards excellence, as we all should in our pursuits, even knowing we will fall short. Ah yes: short, but ever closer. That’s the thing, friend.

      Having completed a blog, having clicked publish, the muse feels satiated and the pressure is off until tomorrow morning, when it will press upon me yet again. But there are other stories to tell, deferred indefinitely. Will those stories pass with me one day, or will I finally bring them to light? That’s the curse of the creative mind, knowing there’s more to tell, but for more time. The only answer is to just do the work—walls be damned. For our time together is only so long, and there’s so very much to bring to light.

    • A Sense of Progress

      “One thing we have lost, that we had in the past, is a sense of progress.” — Daniel Kahneman

      “My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there” — Charles Kettering

      This writer’s near-constant focus on improvement is simply a reminder to keep going towards the things that we can control. Sure; momento mori, but before that, we ought to have something to look forward to. A sense of progress is essential to our well-being. We’re all heading towards something, and we’d like to think it’s something better than everything that surrounds us now. Better health. Better relationships with others. Better options for how we spend a random Friday night. Focusing on one thing we may improve upon leads us to better in that thing. Expand that improvement to a few things, and maybe we can feel some positive momentum developing.

      The world may feel like a hot mess right now, and really, there are compelling reasons to feel that way. We cannot control most of what is happening, but we should raise our voice when we can influence the trajectory. How we treat others, and how we treat ourselves, matters more than we realize in any given moment. Ripples project from the center, but they also interact with other ripples. So we must always strive for that evasive personal excellence (arete), knowing that it’s not something that stays bottled up in our core, but is something that projects outward towards others, raising the standard for each of us.

      The thing is, we tend to become what we focus on. When we focus on the steady decline of society, we become fearful and mistrustful, which perpetuates, well, the decline of society. When we focus on developing new skills and our overall fitness, we realize incremental improvements that lead us to a higher level of performance. This in turn may transform our belief in the state of things from pessimistic to optimistic. Applying that positive force on building bridges and lighting beacons of hope may just transform others along the way.

      One twist in our belief for the future may just spritz a little joy into an otherwise methodically-dismal life designed by the doom cycle trolls. Indeed, we’re collectively heading towards the very thing we focus on the most. We ought to set the compass accordingly. Make some progress today—towards something better. It makes a world of difference.

    • Drive

      So if I decide to waiver my
      Chance to be one of the hive
      Will I choose water over wine
      And hold my own and drive?
      Oh
      It’s driven me before
      And it seems to be the way, that everyone else gets around
      But lately I’m
      Beginning to find that when I drive myself, my light is found
      Whatever tomorrow brings I’ll be there
      With open arms and open eyes, yeah
      Whatever tomorrow brings I’ll be there
      I’ll be there
      — Incubus, Drive

      When we finally step away from the endless loop of habit, when we break free of that relentless and pervasive collective belief about who we are and what we ought to be doing with our lives, we may be surprised at the character who emerges. There’s much more to us than the stories we’ve told ourselves. Identity is honed one choice at a time.

      Since completing a summer of transformative action, I gave myself a break. Easing off the twice a day workouts, having some carbs with that protein (or skipping the protein for carbs), and perhaps the most transformative thing of all, indulging in a few drinks to mark the occasion(s). A few days of that will inform pretty quickly. We can easily slide back into who we once were, or we can decide that there’s no going back and reset our days accordingly. It’s like moving back home after college—we’re different people than we were before, and those old rules don’t apply quite the same way.

      Choosing water over wine more often than the other way around profoundly impacts wellness. This is not much of a secret, but it isn’t something we like to think about when we’re deep in the cycle of having a glass of wine with dinner, and another to cap off the evening. I’ve found that my sleep score is greatly improved when I don’t drink. Deep, restorative rest is more important than ever for me. Is our sleep pattern the foundation of wellness? Ask someone who doesn’t sleep well. How’s your sleep? What ought to change to improve it?

      My answer to making significant changes in my life is to choose big goals but the smallest possible increments with which to move the chains. I have a big round number birthday coming up in the spring, and there are a few things I’d like to be when I get there. Healthy and fit, for starters. But also more informed than I am now by continuing on a path of learning that is accretive. And of course, this writing path has a natural milestone that must be crossed eventually.

      Each of us has a vision of who we’d like to be at some point in our lives. We forget that time is flying along (tempus fugit) and we’re quickly running out of runway to take off. Applying a bit of lift each day is the only way to ever get off the ground. Sure, light is where we find it—gratitude and awareness of who we are today is as essential to our wellness as sleep, diet or exercise, but rising to an ever-higher level of illumination optimizes who we will be when we get there. Growth is by its very nature expansive, even as it remains deeply rooted in identity.

      Whatever tomorrow brings, surely we hope to be there. Just who do we want to be when we arrive? There’s no time to waste now, friend. Drive.

    • A Dream of September

      “One of the most powerful wellsprings of creative energy, outstanding accomplishment, and self-fulfillment seems to be falling in love with something—your dreams, your image of the future.” — Ellis Paul Torrance

      If August infers grandeur and majesty, September—Sept—is related both to the clan (Scottish) or simply seven (French). The Highland Games return to New Hampshire, uniting the clans once again, and this was once the seventh month until some knucklehead added two months to the beginning instead of the end of the calendar, forever screwing up the logical order. Isn’t it funny how so many buy into a flawed story? We humans are completely illogical. But I digress…

      When you live in New England, September infers the beginning of magic. This is the high holy season of change and enlightenment. It’s a time of harvest, cooler days and the formal return to learning. We ought to listen to the rhythm of the season and embrace the transformation we wish to embark upon.

      We can literally feel it in the air—these thirty days of September are neatly packaged for life change. We must listen to what whispers. So what stirs within? Our creative energy demands a departure from what was towards what will be. And what a thrill to be a part of it!

      My enthusiasm may seem over the top, but isn’t this the place from which transformative action is born? Dreams aren’t meant to be dull and plodding, but crisp and bursting with flavor, like an apple awaiting plucking with a twist of the wrist. September is upon us, so what shall we harvest in our season? Dream big and get to work. This dream of September moves so quickly.