Alexandersmap

    Month: September 2026

    • Like Any Great Story

      “Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” — Mark Twain

      I’ve delighted in a series of great books this year. I wonder what my top ten will be when the year is over, mostly because I keep working to up the ante with another great book after finishing the special one that resonated most recently. Momentum in reading, as in life, is built incrementally. We know it when we experience it.

      I have several books I’ve been meaning to get to this year. Some are new to me, some are old favorites that will read differently as I’ve changed. I’m one of those people who don’t “count” the books I reread the same way as I count new to me books. It’s like the number of “friends” we might have on social media; the total means everything to some people and nothing much at all to others. How many true friends can one person have? The only score that matters is what we experience when we’re together. May we each measure up in that moment.

      Some books, as with some friends, are better than others. What we immerse ourselves in means everything. Some books we love we can only read once. Some we choose to read again and again, finding nuance and meaning missed or forgotten in previous encounters with the page. So it is with the inner circle with whom we spend our lives.

      Our ideal life unfolds before us, like any great story. What seems ordinary when it’s happening turns into something life-changing as we turn the pages day-to-day. I think about the first time I met a few people in my life who changed me profoundly in later chapters. If we’re lucky, we each have one or two life-long friends in our lives who make life ideal, but we also have those people who meant something in a moment who stay with us in our memories for the rest of our days. Their voices play in our minds like a Favorites playlist.

    • Climb

      “We should try to be happy, just to set an example.” — Jacques Prevert

      I make no secret of my disregard for the miserable. It’s not that I disdain them, it’s more that I choose to avoid their glass half empty view of living as much as I possibly can. Just because someone chooses to make misery soup doesn’t mean we have to slurp it up. Push it to the side and savor something delightful instead.

      There are plenty of opportunities to be miserable in a lifetime. Why consume it? Why seek it out? Life will delivery our share of setbacks, misery and horror. That’s part of being alive, after all. Live long enough and we’re sure to take two steps back. Heck, we may slide all the way to the bottom and have to start again, like Sisyphus forever pushing his rock up the hill. We can choose to wallow at the bottom or begin to climb once again.

      There’s no joy in wallowing at our lowest point—we must push ahead. Does that prevailing attitude make me an optimist, or simply anti-fragile? Call me pragmatic, but something better is always a climb above where we currently lie. The good news is, we at least know which way to go.

    • With Urgency and Focus

      “Do that thing that honors life.” — John Kenney, I See You’ve Called in Dead

      I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating. I have people in my life who question me for writing about death. I remind them that Memento mori is not a morbid fixation, it’s a call to action. We must acknowledge our ending in order to begin living fully, with urgency and focus.

      John Kenney’s book is delightfully funny with an underlying sadness that washes over you in alternating waves. It’s a lot like life in this way. We fully savor joie de vivre precisely because we experience darker moments in our lives. How can we know the good if we never experience the bad?

      If I repeat myself, it’s simply a reminder to do more of the things that honor life. We are each blessed to be alive for this brief window of time. Optimizing that which makes us most alive seems prudent given the certainty of our eventual expiration. Dance with life, even as we accept the reality that the music will end.

    • Passing, and Preserving (RIP Annie)

      ‘Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me. This is easy to write, easy to read, and hard to believe. The words are simple, the concept clear—but you don’t believe it, do you? Nor do I. How could I, when we’re both so lovable? Are my values then so diametrically opposed to those that nature preserves?” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      I woke up to the news that Annie Dillard passed away yesterday. That triggered me to look back on her most famous book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, for which she won the Pulitzer in 1974. Having read it, I’ll never think of creeks or barnacles the same. In that way, she will live on forever in my mind, and in the minds of countless others who read her books. Creating something is to dance with infinity, or at least for the duration of recorded memory.

      Writing is one form of creative output. Apparently Dillard grew weary of the life of a writer and turned to painting in her retirement. The output isn’t the real point, it’s honing awareness through listening and observation, and interpreting those encounters into something tangible that we might share with others. We will all pass from this earth one day. What will be preserved of us? The creation of something beautiful, in whatever form it takes, is a whisper of who we are, and one day too soon, who we once were.

      I’ve quoted Dillard in this blog several times over the years, but her quote that resonates the most with me serves to shake me from complacency and force me to focus now. We all need someone to remind us that today matters a great deal in the big scheme of things. Because the scheme is the thing. Structure and productivity matter, when we have something we want to do with our time here. It’s the most stoic of reminders:

      “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.” — Annie Dillard, The Writing Life: The Classic Essay Collection on the Creative Process

      Thanks Annie.

    • This Might Not Be for You

      This blog isn’t for everyone. Nor is key lime pie or poetry or Ted Lasso or Jazz on Sunday mornings. I have a couple of friends who react negatively to the presence of olives. My only advice for them is to not eat the olives.

      Some people get pretty angry about people who don’t see things the way they see things. Some people demand respect that they haven’t earned, or consensus on divisive issues, or reciprocation on their follows and likes. Remember the reaction to the series endings of Seinfeld or The Sopranos or Game of Thrones? They were memorable because they weren’t what people wanted. Some folks put a lot of their emotional well-being into a better ending of a series that they’ve invested a lot of time watching.

      Sometimes, the answer is simply that it might not be for you. Embrace that and move on. This might not be for you, but it might be for me or them or all of us but you. And that should be okay. The beautiful thing about living in a free society is the freedom to choose what we say yes and no to. It you want a happy ending, write the script that brings you there. And pass the olives if you’re going to pass on the olives.

    • Swiftly Swifty

      I was never much of a dog track person, mostly because I’m not much of a gambler. I do recall going to a dog track with friends once when I was younger, seeing the gates open and greyhounds bursting onto the track in a thrilling rush of speed as they chased a mechanical rabbit. I recall the announcer would exhuberantly proclaim, “There goes Swifty!” as the rabbit circled the track with the pups in hot pursuit.

      I’m reminded of that distant memory each morning when I let the pup out to relieve herself. She’s a hunter at heart, and bursts out the door in a mad dash to circle the yard in search of her own real-life Swifty. There is no creature so full of life as a dog leaping across the yard at full speed looking for something to chase.

      These are the days we’ll remember. These full-of-life days that are such a big part of our now. We see the years fly by faster than that pup doing her morning rounds and wonder where it all goes. Tempus fugit, but also amor fati. Love the now, whether we catch Swifty or not. Now flies swiftly by, and we never really capture time.

    • September is Made

      “All the months are crude experiments, out of which the perfect September is made.” —Virginia Woolf

      For reasons I won’t get into here, I’ve been reluctant to jump straight into September this year, but I’ve arrived now. On a crisp early evening tonight, I grabbed a book and a good cuppa tea, headed out and got a fire going (more for the crackle than the heat). On days like this, you’ve just gotta get outside.

      The tea gently steered me away from booze (it is a Monday night after all). The fire gave me something to check in on between pages. The book gave me an opportunity to immediately flip the script from the character I play at work to something more adventurous. I read until it was too dark to see the pages anymore, then focused on the flames.

      September is just another month until we do something to make the most of the beautiful weather we are usually blessed with this month. September is made, just as life is made, by deliberate action. Harvest what we can, while we may. For the days are growing shorter.

    • Believe It to Be So (The Lesson of Prufrock)

      Do I dare
      Disturb the universe?
      In a minute there is time
      For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

      For I have known them all already, known them all:
      Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
      I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
      I know the voices dying with a dying fall
      Beneath the music from a farther room.
      So how should I presume?
      — T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

      One ought to read this entire poem, at least once or twice, and maybe thrice. Make that a surely thrice and we’re on the right track. Prufrock changes as we ourselves change. And poetry reveals itself to the persistent reader. Or like buried treasure it hides just below the surface, stubbornly holding on to its mysterious blanket. We are not meant to know everything, but we may know some things in a lifetime. If we dare go to the trouble.

      I grow old … I grow old …
      I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

      Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
      I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
      I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

      I do not think that they will sing to me.

      I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
      Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
      When the wind blows the water white and black.
      We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
      By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
      Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

      We hear the mermaids but are chagrined knowing that they aren’t talking to us. It’s far easier to be eavesdroppers on the lives of others. ’tis far better to seek out the voices that call to us, and try to find them before our time runs out.

      The lesson of Prufrock, I believe it to be so, is for us to be bold today. It doesn’t matter about the weather or the quiet timidity of our rhythm and routine. Now is our only chance. Yes, believe it to be so and then do what must be done,

    • Raising Standards

      I saw some old friends at the farm stand. We used to see a lot of each other, back in the days before, well, you know… Anyway, I still adore them as people. They may or may not think well of me, charming as I believe myself to be. But who’s to say? The only way to know what someone really thinks about you is how often they reach out to be a part of your life. Otherwise, what are they but apart from your life? We all get busy. It turns out we’re busy becoming less attached to one another.

      The most profoundly tragic thing about the world today is the amount of people walking the earth who are largely alone with no capacity to do anything about it. Too many people walk through life without the skillset to talk to other people (which really means being able to listen to other people). I get some grief in the family for talking to strangers, but what is a stranger but a person we haven’t talked to yet? I believe the world needs fewer strangers.

      Six years ago we lost a real character in our family. Since it was in the middle of a pandemic, the opportunity to say goodbye wasn’t available for most people, so that character didn’t have the sendoff he would have had otherwise. We honor him by working to meet the standard he set for us as citizens of the world. We dishonor him by drifting into a lesser version of ourselves than we would be if he were still around. To me, that’s a measure of the person he was, that you wanted to be a better person because he wanted that for you.

      I write a lot about personal excellence (arete) in this blog. I’m under no illusion that I’ve reached it yet. We’re all works in progress, and that goes for the inner self as much or more than the outer self we show to the world. Those old friends at the farm stand are still friends, even if we don’t talk all that much anymore. The least I can do is be the kind of person that they would want to be around more often. To not only hold the standard, but raise it. Isn’t that the proper way to honor those we’ve lost, or those we’ve lost touch with?

    • Where Are We?

      Where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?
      — Alan Jackson, Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning)

      25 years. We knew exactly where we were, and exactly what we were doing. The only thing we knew is that things would never be the same again.

      We imagine it was like Pearl Harbor was for the Greatest Generation. Perhaps in some way it was like that moment with COVID when the world realized this was much worse than expected. Except that COVID was a creeping realization, not an immediate jolt of shock and outrage and anger.

      Acts of violent aggression always trigger a response. The world of 2026 is far less trusting, far more ostracized and divisive than the world on that crisp, brilliant blue morning of September 11, 2001. Humans being humans, people are still looking for someone to direct all of their anger and resentment towards. Let’s blame the liberals, let’s blame Canada, let’s blame science. It’s all misdirected anger that’s been playing out for decades.

      Awareness is the answer. Know what the weaknesses are and seek to build resiliency. Not just stocking more missiles and guns, not simply becoming more isolationist and resentful, but increasing intelligence—both in knowledge of what the world is doing and in our own emotional intelligence, that we may think clearly at a time when too many people simply react to whatever is happening in the moment.

      9/11 was 25 years ago. The conflicts it triggered, both internationally and domestically, are still playing out. We may never get back to the relative innocence before the first plane hit, but we may eventually reach a point where we grow into shared wisdom, acceptance and a vision for how we may finally move towards a more unified world, together.

      Where were you when the world stopped turning? Perhaps the bigger question is, are we still there, or are we looking to rise above the ashes? In many ways, 25 years isn’t nearly enough time to really know.