Alexandersmap

    Author: nhcarmichael

    • 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.

    • Scratch the Little Itch

      Honey, it’s no secret that with matters of the heart
      Unreserved, I’m irrational and rarely ever start
      But since the world’s dark and often inhumane
      Relish our condition, come drinking in the rain
      ‘Cause you remember when, after Paris
      We all decided the best way to fight it was
      Drink wine, dance here and pray
      And make love that lasts with a vengeance
      So you can join the cowards all aboard the outrage train
      You can stay afraid, or slit the throat of fear and be brave
      And scratch the little itch ’til you’re moving like a motherfucker
      Up in this bitch
      — Gang of Youths, Lay Me Down Easy

      Look, I’m not naive; I know the world is a hot mess with plenty of outrageous nonsense to keep us all on edge. We ought to fight for all that is good in this world, lest we let it slip away into oblivion disguised as a P&L statement. Screw the greedy bastards and all who enable them. But don’t get so swept up in the madness that you forget to live vigorously in the time you have.

      Don’t join those little cowards aboard the outrage train. Instead, find a better place to dance through life. We are the average of the five people we surround ourselves with the most, so just how outraged is that crowd we’re surrounded by anyway?

      Be bold today. For this is our one great chance to scratch that little itch. Aren’t we tired of more of the same old nonsense anyway? Go forth and conquer those fearful voices that whisper their timid nothings. Our time grows short. Shall we dance?

    • A Thousand Lives

      “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” — George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

      Having breakfast with an acquaintance the other day, I was asked for recommendations on great books to read. Knowing my audience, I rattled off five books I thought he’d get something out of and briefed him on why I recommended each. He ordered two of them before we left the table, which I’ll take as validation of my judgement on such things.

      Comparison is the death of joy, as we all know, and I don’t compare my habits to anyone else. I may work out more or less than the next person, or write more or less, or pick the habit. The point is to set a personal standard for yourself and work to measure up to that standard, and stretch to exceed our own expectations. My standard for reading is not a random total number of books read, but a minimum of ten pages per day. Some books are 10x or more of that ten pages, and with some it’s all I can do to meet the minimum, but reach it I do. In this way, I read roughly 25-30 books per year.

      How does that compare to the average reader? Pretty well, if you look at the general population. Compared to an avid reader? Not so great. If I devoted myself to page-turners, ditched social media and worked less, I bet I could hit 100. But I’m happy with 25-30 books that move me, change me, educate me or entertain me. To live a thousand lives in this one seems quite expansive to me. How about you?

    • Following Your Own Way

      If you want, then start to laugh
      If you must, then start to cry
      Be yourself, don’t hide
      Just believe in destiny
      Don’t care what people say
      Just follow your own way
      Don’t give up and use the chance
      To return to innocence
      — Enigma, Return to Innocence

      This blog is inching along again. Inching towards what, exactly? Proficiency in writing? Show up and create something every day and see where it takes you. If nothing else, we become better at shipping the work, and there’s a lot to be said for doing what we tell ourselves we’re going to do. Keeping promises to oneself matters a great deal in a world of broken promises and shattered dreams. We may not be able to rely on everyone, but we can learn to rely on ourself. The trick is to up the ante with those promises. What got us here is great, but it won’t get us there—and there is where we’re trying to get to.

      Enigma is on my life soundtrack, and when I hear a song like Return to Innocence, I remember exactly where and who I was at the time. It turns out I’ve come a long way since then. We don’t generally leap from untapped potential to arete, we show up every day and incrementally drag ourselves through the good days and the bad, until one day we look around and realize we’ve done what we’d told ourselves we wanted to do and then some. Suddenly, that song means something completely different than it did then. Or maybe it’s us that’s completely different.

      So have we arrived at the place we aimed for when we started? Are we even aiming for the same thing? More likely, we’re still a work in progress, with different goals now than we had then. We are likely better from where we were but with some work still to do towards where we are going. We humans are always moving the goal posts as we grow.

      Don’t care what people say, just follow your own way. We learn that following our own way is a tough grind. Well-meaning folks and more timid souls everywhere are quick to curb our enthusiasm for what they perceive as reckless behavior. Thank you for your concern; but I call BS. Nothing meaningful ever happens without risk. The lesson is always the same: be bold today to reap tomorrow’s rewards.

    • In Magnificent Glow

      “I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.” — Jack London

      Happy Labor Day for those who observe it. We might use this occasion to confirm that the path we are on is a sound one. We might even dare for more in our lives than the answer to that very American question, “So what do you do?”

      I was challenged recently about purpose. Specifically, what will I do one day when I retire. If our careers are widely thought of as our purpose and identity, it follows that when we retire (or otherwise lose a job) both purpose and identity would take a massive hit.

      Perhaps. Then again, if your purpose and identity were never quite wrapped around some job or title, then maybe we will be just fine without some resume filler with dates attached. Maybe there’s far more to us than a string of career milestones.

      Do we aspire to be ground to dust in some job du jour, or follow passion to its logical end? I tell you, we must embrace the brevity of life! Not celebrate it, mind you, but know deep within that this is it, and we must then do with it all that we may in our brief dance. Memento mori…. So carpe diem the heck out of each day.

    • Discipline and Delight

      “Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.”

      The quote above is attributed to Abraham Lincoln. I won’t spiral down the rabbit hole debating whether that’s true or not while the truth lies there awaiting attention. The truth of the matter is that we humans often wrestle with short term pleasure versus long term rewards. Our days are each some version of that famous marshmallow experiment in which we must choose between gobbling up the treat right in front of us or abstain for a future reward of twice the treats. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, right? Most people choose the treat in front of them.

      The choice isn’t really about whether to choose discipline over delight, but whether to choose to delight in a long term over a short term pleasure. Every temptation offers its version of “pay me now or pay me later”. Indulge in that ice cream now, just don’t complain about the pants being too tight later. Washboard abs may (or may not) be worth the price of saying no right now when our taste buds are screaming “Yes!”

      Constantly deferring one’s desires is a recipe for a dull life. It may be okay to say yes to that treat now, if we remember that there is some price for it right down the road that we must pay. Life isn’t a freeway: There’s always a toll. We ought to be happy to pay it if we really want something.

      There’s a story we tell ourselves about who we are and who we will become. Is what we want now consistent with that storyline or drawing us off the path? Should we be on that path in the first place? Decide what to be and go be it.

    • Delight Is in the Details

      “The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.” — William Morris

      Our level of interest in the details of life dictates how much we get out of it, and yes, how much we are delighted in the living of it. Case in point, I am as interested in the proper capitalization of the title of this blog post as I am with the view out the window I find myself next to as I write this near a bay alive with choppy fetch, bouncing boats and hunting birds soaring above.

      Why should we care about every little detail? Because it’s the stuff of life! More precisely, the stuff of our life. This, friend, is it. And making something of it is our purpose. Indeed, the devil is in the details, so draw delight from the lot of them. That is the recipe for an expansive life.

      We are each collectors of days, with a stack of them making up our lifetime. Within each day in turn are a collection of moments and minutia that are the stuff of life. Paying more attention to that stuff allows us to appreciate all that we have or have held as uniquely ours. Gratitude and delight follow closely behind awareness of all that is.

    • Like Day-Blind Stars

      When despair for the world grows in me
      and I wake in the night at the least sound
      in fear of what my life and my chidren’s lives may be,
      I go and lie down where the wood drake
      rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
      I come into the peace of wild things
      who do not tax their lives with forethought
      of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
      And I feel above me the day-blind stars
      waiting with their light. For a time
      I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
      — Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things

      Labor Day weekend. Where does the time go? Relentlessly into the past. Whatever we’ve done, wherever we’ve been, it’s done with. It all recedes into memory.

      And what do we make of the state of things? This hot mess of a world defies reason. Who ever said it was meant to be reasonable anyway? Nobody said the universe would bend itself to our every whim. Nobody said life was fair. If it were the poets and saints would live forever, instead of the worst of us. Amor fati, friend: accept what is and change what we may control. Let everything else sort itself out.

      Like day-blind stars, the beautiful will emerge in time. Sometimes where we least expect it. Sometimes from deep within ourselves. And e when a poet or singer or singular voice of change passes, reminding us of what they’ve left for the world.

    • The Impeded Stream (RIP Wendell)

      It may be that when we
      no longer know what to do
      we have come to our real work,
      and that when we no longer know
      which way to go
      we have come to our real journey.
      The mind that is not baffled
      is not employed.
      The impeded stream
      is the one that sings.
      — Wendell Berry, Our Real Work

      It’s been a rough year for poets and singers. It seems the beautiful souls slip away from this chaotic place where the ugliest thrive. Or is it that we just care more when the light goes out? And when a light goes out, who will carry the torch next? Why not us, friend?

      Which leads to the question, what will we do? For all the confusion and obstacles that life throughs at us, we work our way through it all, somehow. Persistence and belief in our direction are the keys to growth. A stream carves more deeply with persistence and time. So it is that we ought to keep the work flowing, despite all that is thrown at us along the way.

      Beauty doesn’t die, it simply finds another place to grow.