Alexandersmap

    Month: January 2026

    • Another Day Forgoing Mortal Nature

      Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
      There are four seasons in the mind of man:
      He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
      Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
      He has his Summer, when luxuriously
      Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves
      To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
      Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
      His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
      He furleth close; contented so to look
      On mists in idleness—to let fair things
      Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
      He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
      Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
      — John Keats, The Human Seasons

      I’ll admit that I don’t often revisit Keats poems, but when I do, it’s usually in the cold, dark winter months. This morning the dog food stored in the garage was frozen (frozen!), so I had to bring it in to thaw so the pup could have a bit of wet food mixed in with her dry. These are first world problems I admit, but on the last day of January 2026, let it be known that I fasted in sympathy with the dog until her food thawed out.

      Today is just another day forgoing mortal nature, but there are only so many days. We ought to live like we were dying, as that twangy formulaic song goes. To kick mortality down the curb with a better fitness routine and better choices about what we eat. To read and learn and sharpen the senses while sharpening is still possible. To go and do while going and doing are still in the cards for people in our particular season. Our routine determines the season we find ourselves in as much as the accumulation of years does. We mustn’t get old before our time.

      Consider that Keats poem again. The man was frisky! Delighting in lusty Spring and satiated Summer, acknowledging that in Autumn he was more inclined to let the fair things pass without some inappropriate gesture from the aging poet. It’s only in Winter that he calms down, recognizing that growing old and brittle is a trade-off for death’s final embrace. For all our human nature, it’s eternity that we will sleep with forevermore. We just don’t have to be in a hurry to get there.

    • More Than Crumbs

      “Joy is not made to be a crumb.” — Mary Oliver, Don’t Hesitate

      It hasn’t been lost on me that I’ve largely ignored the joy in the abundance of snow we’re having this winter while focusing on the chores that come with that abundance of snow. There ought to be more snowshoeing. There ought to be more walks in frozen woods. There ought to be more snowy play dates with the pup, who’s got enough joy to fill a barn. We can learn a lot from joyful souls, whether they’re human or otherwise.

      Winter is far from over in this frigid land, and at the risk of making plans, I will find my way back to play. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All play and no work makes Jack a poor boy. But money in and of itself is the pursuit of fools and empty suits. Get out and live before the buffet closes for that long night. Before all that’s left are crumbs and thoughts of what might have been.

    • Undoing Undone

      “As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left? Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.” — David Bowie

      “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.” — Pablo Picasso

      We are all getting older. I’m within 90 days of a milestone birthday myself, which begs the question, what am I going to do when I finally grow up? But why do we have to grow up anyway? I’m quoting rock stars and artists, which hints at my general attitude about growing up in the first place.

      The better question is, what might we become next? Forget about growing up! Focus instead on what we are going to do! Just who are we growing into? Finish what we’ve started and know that we’ve done our best in reaching it. And then? On to the next of course.

      What are we okay with leaving undone when we leave this world one day? What leaves us restless with each trip around the sun for not having done it yet? The process of becoming is extraordinary indeed, but so to is arriving at each milestone having done what we promised ourselves we’d do. Each day we dance with productivity and focus, undoing our list of undone and becoming who we might become. The only certainty is that we aren’t here forever—so get to it already.

    • Keep Going

      “In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on. In all the confusions of today, with all our troubles . . . with politicians and people slinging the word fear around, all of us become discouraged . . . tempted to say this is the end, the finish. But life — it goes on. It always has. It always will. Don’t forget that.” ― Robert Frost

      The world can feel overwhelming at time. It has always been so. Some days feel especially cold, particularly mean-spirited, largely hopeless. But life goes on. Keep going with it, for as long as it takes. Just keep going.

      Better lies on the other side of challenge. We either sail through the storm to reach the safe harbor or we sink into the abyss. Often the outcome is tied to our choice. So keep going. That’s what we’re all doing in the worst of days and the best of them. We keep going and work for better. For life goes on.

    • The Glorious Thing

      “Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake, heavy with useless experience, rich with suspicion, rumour, fantasy, crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge of mere fact. In the prime of your life.” — Adrienne Rich

      What a glorious quote. A poet struggling under the weight of identity, breaking away from the storybook life expected of her, stepping into a new narrative. We are transformed by thought and action, or we will remain forever imprisoned by expectations.

      No matter how much we replay it, our past is dead and gone. Our present is tenuous but malleable. Now is always the prime of our lives! To break free of now and create a bold new future is audacious. May we find that within ourselves and steer towards a course that makes our heart race with anticipation.

      It’s easy to feel frozen in place in the dead of winter. Every day is cold and dark. These last few days I’ve had flights and the plans related to them cancelled. Meetings fall away one-by-one, and empty spaces take their place on my calendar. These are merely facts of time and place and winter weather. The easy thing to do is nothing. The glorious thing to do is to seize the opportunity. Each day offers the freedom to crawl into old, familiar habits or leap into a new identity. Be bold today.

    • Winter Ghosts

      We see it most vividly when a fresh blanket of snow covers the landscape. Like children in bedsheets pretending to be ghosts, the hardscape rises up in whispers, haunting us with what once was in warmer days. Of what may be again in whispers of the future.

      But not now. Now there is only silence and a cold tickle on the back of the neck. Ghosts? Or merely snowflakes finding skin? The imagination brings us to our version of the truth. The only truth here is the quiet embrace of winter.

      Whispers of warmer seasons

    • Third Things

      “Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment. Each member of a couple is separate; the two come together in double attention. Lovemaking is not a third thing but two-in-one. John Keats can be a third thing, or the Boston Symphony Orchestra, or Dutch interiors, or Monopoly.” — John Hall, The Third Thing

      We have our self, we have our selves, and we have what we are mutually focused on in our time together. Like being on teams, whether sports or companies or projects worked on with mutual focus and effort, that thing we focus on together becomes a link that bonds us in the moment and forever after. A long-term relationship is simply coexisting with someone else with mutual attention on a series of third things we carry with us for the rest of our days.

      Our hiking friends have the mountains and expanding red lines on trail maps as their third thing. Our sailing friends scheme of bigger boats and tropical anchorages. Our lake friends are quietly carving out a life as snowbirds and the idea of growing old in a forever summer lifestyle. My sister and brother-in-law have found pickleball a useful third thing bringing them fitness and an expansive social life. We’re all different, and so too are the things we give our lives to in mutual focus.

      Third things capture a time in our life that we’ll remember one day when the math is no longer one plus one plus one more thing. We may be aware of such things as subtraction without dwelling on it. We all know the score. For it’s a thing too. Sha-la, la-la-la-la, live for today…

      What do we—together—focus on other than ourselves? The list comes easily at times. The frisbee-loving pup. The house and whatever the latest project is that my bride has deemed essential to our well-being. Always, the children, then aspiring student-athletes, now adults. Increasingly, the parents, and all that aging parents mean for them… and for us. Travel and collecting experiences once deferred for other third things. Third things are our common ground, focused on together yet differently. A part of us, yet not us.

    • Unprovoked

      “To be like a rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      We are all works in progress, and it’s understandable to be stirred by emotion—just look at all that happens in this world. To be provoked is instinctual. To be stoic is logical. Which comes naturally?

      Emotions are thus easy to stir up, but are we effective when emotional? Are we clear-headed and deliberate in our actions? Not likely. And so to be the best possible version of ourselves, to survive a crisis in the midst of chaos, we must train ourselves to react better to stimulus. We must learn to be clearheaded and unprovoked.

      “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ― Viktor Frankl

      Plans change. Forces out of our control wash over us all the time, disrupting our days—disrupting our lives. When we are clearheaded and unprovoked we often see the possibilities available to us in these moments. We may pivot into some other course of action, or turn inward to temper our reaction when all else fails. We are here, this is happening, what will we make of it?

      Amor fati: Love of fate. We don’t have to love fate, but we can accept the path we find ourselves on. The universe will remain indifferent either way. Isn’t there a lesson in that indifference? So keep calm and carry on. That is our logical choice. There is a measure of profound freedom available to us should we remain unprovoked.

    • Do Your Thing

      “I myself think that the wise man meddles little or not at all in affairs and does his own things.” — Chrysippus

      We have a serious issue on our hands. There is simply not enough time today to do all that we might do. Spending time on anything is serious business when we recognize how little of it we have left to spend.

      Knowing that time is our precious currency in a brief life, why do we carelessly toss it away on things beyond our control? The affairs of others is not our concern when those affairs are beyond our control. We ought to use this time more wisely, lest we fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. Hum the tune, but hear the message.

      Just look at how we burn through this very time thinking too much about how to use it. That’s the philosopher’s curse. To be or not to be, that really is the question. But remember to be now, for there is no later. So stop thinking so much and do your thing. Tomorrow will be far too late in the game for such things.

    • Bonfires and Beacons

      “Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.” ― Voltaire

      We all know the score. There’s no need to run down the list of affronts and miscarriages of justice. There is no need to tell us what is wrong with the world at all, for we too have eyes to see. We don’t have to add our miserable voice to the choir. The choir is at full strength already. Be a voice for hope and joy instead. It’s not naive or a head in the sand denial—it’s a beacon of salvation in the darkness.

      We can be aware and still choose a life of purpose and vitality. Read something that doesn’t require a doom scroll. Turn on a joyful tune and dance. Go for a run, a hike or a ride. Swing something heavy around until the sweat stings the eyes. When our muscles are active our mind focuses on the task at hand, not the larger world that is out of our control anyway.

      What will we remember most about today? Will it be some foolish thing an orange troll said or will it be some bit of magic we mine out of our available time? I say the latter is more essential, for it sparks life and kindles joy. Make a bonfire of delight or swim in the miserable soup the bastards made just for those who would consume it. That’s not for us, friend. We have bonfires and beacons to build.