Alexandersmap

    Author: nhcarmichael

    • Attention is Vitality

      “Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.” ― Susan Sontag

      Please take a moment and re-read the quote above, but in the voice of a close friend or loved one who’s a bit exacerbated with you for not doing this the last time they reminded you to be more vigorous with this business of living. Vigorous in a “lust for life” way. Vigorous in a “decide what to be and go be it” way. What we pay attention to matters. We must choose to rise above mundane.

      Each of us is wrestling with something, likely amplified by the madness in the world these last several years. What drowns out that voice in the back of our head more than action? We all know the fable of the frog and boiling water (Put a frog in a pot of boiling water and it will leap out. Put that frog in cold water gradually heated and it will boil to death). The moral of the story seems obvious, but what are we currently boiling in ourselves?

      We must shake ourselves loose from the belief that we’re unable to change our circumstances. We must pay attention and get to the living part of our story. Get out of the damned pot! Be clenched! Be curious! Be eager!

    • Stepping onto the Mastodon Path

      Admittedly, social media can be a dark place, pretending to be about community and connection, but really just an echo chamber of accusation, antagonism and positioning. It’s not a quiet conversation with friends sharing stories and pictures, yet that’s what we all signed up for. Or, if we’re being honest, was it to become an influencer? Being a voice of moderation doesn’t earn you followers, you must shout louder than the rest to get attention. And herein lies the problem.

      Alternatively, we might step away. Find a place that makes more sense. Wade into the waters of something new and see how it feels. To be fully alive means to experience change and make the most of it. Change isn’t so bad, it’s how we react to the possibility of change that scares people. We each ought to decide what to be and go be it.

      This blog is now linked to a Mastodon account. You can still find it on Twitter if you want to, at least until that platform implodes and sinks. That’s unlikely though, isn’t it? Too many people rely on doing the same easy thing every day. But diversifying the distribution of this blog seems logical to this writer. If nothing else, I’m calling my own bluff and embracing the unknown. And it was surely unfamiliar territory. At first glance, Mastodon was confusing. Blogging once felt confusing too. Going to a new job once felt confusing. There are plenty of blogs and YouTube videos to help make sense of it all.

      After lingering with it a few days, it seems a lonely place, comparatively, to Twitter or Facebook. Loneliness is also good for us, sometimes. It means we’re building something new, and eventually, together. Consider it an adventure. Isn’t it so? Like starting something new. That loneliness is a sign that we’ve stepped off the old block and are entering the wilderness. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of elbow room while we sort things out. The pioneers get all the streets named after them.

      Follow me on Mastodon, if you’d like. Currently @nhcarmichael@universeodon.com unless another server or instance tempts me. See what I mean? Different. But who wants the same thing all the time anyway? Let’s jump in, shall we?

    • Discovering Wisdom

      “We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world. The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you, have not been shaped by a paterfamilias or a schoolmaster, they have sprung from very different beginnings, having been influenced by evil or commonplace that prevailed round them. They represent a struggle and a victory.“ — Marcel Proust

      Wisdom is drawn from experience. We all think we have the world figured out when we’re younger, then realize that we knew nothing as we accumulate experience. What we forget, sometimes, is that someday we’ll look back on today as our younger self too. We all know closed-minded people at any age, assured in their beliefs, blinders on to new ideas and influences. We must avoid becoming so closed ourselves. We must remain an open book, gathering what we may in our brief time.

      We learn the ebb and flow of life, the things in our control and that for which we have no say in the matter. It’s easy to see where we’ve been by how others are navigating that particular obstacle in their own lives. Likewise, we might benefit by turning our gaze ahead to learn how to handle the next stage in our own development. If there’s one certainty in life, it’s that others have been where we’re heading before us. Wisdom is learned through experience, but that experience doesn’t always have to be ours.

      Life is a series of struggles and victories experienced over time. We never have it all figured out, but we just might accumulate enough street smarts to navigate the highs and lows that greet us each day. The view changes over time, and the lessons keep coming. And there we may find that evasive wisdom.

    • Without Memory

      Mama says he can’t remember
      Daddy thinks that he still can
      I’m going back to see him
      While he still knows
      Who I am
      This time I’m gonna hug him
      Instead of just shaking hands
      Gonna tell him that I love him
      While he still knows
      Who I am
      — Kenny Chesney, While He Still Knows Who I Am

      There are moments when you hear a song on the radio and you want to pull over to listen to it in its entirety. That moment happened to me with this Chesney song as I was merging onto Interstate 95 between the George Washington Bridge and the Alexander Hamilton Bridge. In other words: not a place you want to pull over. But I multitasked my way through the song and Washington Heights safely anyway, thinking I’d have to listen again sometime soon. Technology puts songs at our fingertips nowadays, and so it would be.

      Having a father with dementia, the lyrics land as body blows. When you lose someone while they’re still with you, it’s a different kind of loss than the losing of someone who’s had their last heartbeat. I’ve lost two fathers in the last few years, one each way, and you feel the hurt uniquely for each. The one who was more present in my life feels like loss. The one that got away feels more like lost opportunity. Both have shaped me, both leave a void in their absence that has to be reconciled in unexpected moments like merging into traffic. Timing is everything in life.

      “Memory is our deepest actual language. It’s our storehouse of riches… and we need to keep it open, to keep in mind the importance of childhood events that will somehow condition our life and character… If we have no memory, we are nobody, and nothing is possible.” — José Saramago

      There are days when I wonder which way I’ll go myself. Will my body give out first, or my mind? We never want to be a burden on those we love in our final days, but we do want to linger with them as long as possible. It’s the saying goodbye part that we want the most in the end, even as we wish with all our heart that it wouldn’t end. Having seen people leave this world both ways, I think I’d rather have my body give out first. At least I might write and say a few things until the end. At the very least tell the people I love what the passwords are for all my accounts. Nobody likes loose ends. Dementia leaves a lot of loose ends.

      So we learn to hug the people we love in the moment instead of waiting. We eat our blueberries and leafy greens and stay hydrated hoping to stay healthy for as long as possible into our senior years. Vibrant physical and mental health become far more important when we see the alternative. We can’t always change the path we and our loved ones are on, but we can control how we react to it in this moment. I suppose that’s all we’ve ever had.

    • Opting for a Colorful Plate

      “The food you eat can be either the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.” ― Ann Wigmore

      A coworker recently brought up his frustration with the the “plateful of brown” options available for breakfast at a typical American hotel chain: eggs, bacon, sausage links, bread, potatoes or hash browns, coffee. If you’re lucky enough to have fruit options it’s usually bananas and pineapple or melon. Maybe some yogurt. In other words, a whole lotta brown.

      There’s a rule of thumb that we ought to include as many colors in our food as we can. A plate loaded full of brown foods isn’t especially good for you, and may indeed be a slow form of poison. If we are what we eat, why are we opting for processed junk and the same old same old? Add color! Add variety! Add flavor!

      Looking at the travel menu for dinners, there’s a lot of brown there too: pasta and bread, steak, chicken, rice and all sorts of not very colorful food. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can do as the Europeans do and swirl in a healthy mix of green, red, orange and yellow and feel more vibrant after eating. Or stick with browns and feel bloated and tired after eating. The choice is ours, one meal at a time. We ought to choose wisely. Choose deliciously. Choose colorfully.

    • Yes and No

      “It’s worth making time to find the things that really stir your soul. That’s what makes you really feel alive. You have to say ‘no’ to other things you’re used to, and do it with all your heart.“ — Roy T. Bennett

      Checking out the float plan for friends Fayaway as they resume their journey to the Caribbean, it’s easy to see the navigation points clearly charted. The trick is to stick to plan as the unexpected forces of wind, weather, current and fatigue influence that course over time. We can’t predict everything, we can only choose the course and decide when to take a leap into the unknown. Every day brings subsequent decisions that carry us to the next. So it is with life.

      It’s easy to see the series of decisions that brought us to where we are in hindsight. It’s more challenging to plot our course through life uncertain of the forces that will influence that course. Life is what we make of it, a series of yeses and no’s from start to finish. Sometimes what we’re most comfortable with needs to be a no to make progress. Staying in the cozy harbors of our life may feel like a yes when it ought to be a no.

      What we say yes to today will matter in our tomorrow. But so too does what we say no to. The future will judge what the right choice was. We can’t be paralyzed in indecision in such moments, we must decide what to be and go be it. As a rule, it’s probably best to say no to recklessness, and yes to moving away from comfort towards progress. Bon voyage.

    • A More Resplendent Life

      “Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.” — Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

      Most every year I travel to New York City in November for work and get to experience the city just before the holidays. The Christmas tree is up in Rockefeller Center but not yet lit up, the temporary stands are lined up along the Thanksgiving Day parade, and the general buzz around the city is anticipatory. Having done this a few times, I know what to expect, appreciate my opportunity to reconnect, and treat every moment like it’s the last time I’ll have a November visit here. We just never know, do we?

      Filling our time on earth with glory is a deliberate act. It requires more than casual interaction with life, and perhaps more than appreciating the moment itself. It requires a regular dose of Memento mori to fully arrive at Carpe Diem. Perspective leads to action.

      Glory is the wrong word, I think. Written in another era. Less modern. I like splendid or magnificent more. But the point is to live a more resplendent life, not to fixate on the trivial. We ought to look around more and see what the gifts are that the universe presents to us. And in seeing for the first or last time, to savor and shine brightly in our days.

    • Not Just to Pass Through It

      “I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.” — Joan Didion

      The thing about beginning a blog post with a Joan Didion quote is that she’s a tough act to follow. How do we not just let her words stand on their own and call it a day? But that’s not what a blog is, is it? We must press on, inspired thusly, awed slightly, and make a go of it.

      We ought to get out there and live in the world while we can. Embrace these moments together and sprinkle something memorable on top. We ought to play the songs that bring us joy and turn off the noise that drags us down. We forget sometimes that this is our moment in the sun. Choose to remember.

      Didion passed away earlier this year, honored appropriately, and shifted from active participant at the adult table to somewhere else, just out of reach. But her voice still echoes in the room even as she vacates it. My quoting her is yet another echo. See how this works? We live on through others, whether we know them in our lifetime or not. We just need to live a life large enough that we reverberate ever so slightly in our absence.

      So how do we reverberate? It’s simple, really: Choose to make a small splash. Speak up in the moment. Get up on the dance floor first. Tickle someone’s fancy. Seek adventure and live to tell about it. Serve others. Make a difference in someone’s life just when they need it the most. Be bold. Be humble. Live.

    • Creating Irreplaceable

      “Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.“ — André Gide

      [Quick aside: I’ve used the two quotes in this blog before, but feel there’s more to be said about them. Perhaps more still, even after this post. Forgive the repetition. We are what we repeatedly do?]

      It’s fair to ask ourselves, as we begin each day enabled or encumbered in our routines, just what it is we’re up to. Where exactly is this day bringing us on our journey? For that matter, what is the destination anyway? Big questions, to be sure, but life is full of big questions deftly dodged. When we avoid answering our deepest questions how can we possibly expect to reach our potential? We can’t succumb to distraction when we’re creating irreplaceable.

      A few weeks ago a friend planted a seed in my brain about finally hiking the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim. I’ve contemplated doing this for years, and deep down I knew it was going to slip away like so many other dreams. Until I decided to realize that particular dream. Now don’t get me wrong: it’s still unrealized, but it aligns with my identity, lends itself to other life goals, and is attainable with applied focus, time and effort. For better or worse, I’ve also just announced that intent to everyone who reads this blog, breaking a rule about announcing what I intend to do instead of informing about what I’ve just done. But sometimes you need to add peer pressure to reach your goals in life.

      A year or ten ago, I began hinting at a novel I was writing. I had no business writing a novel when I first started talking about writing one, because I didn’t believe I had any business writing it. Naturally the novel never was written, but the desire to write it remained. So I started blogging every day as a step towards writing better, applied daily through my commitment to post something every day. My blog posts are written the day they’re posted, which is why the time is variable, because I finish it when I finish it. You might add that the quality of the post is also highly variable, but the point is to ship the work, ready or not.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
      No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your identity.
      This is why habits are crucial. They cast repeated votes for being a type of person.”
      — James Clear

      We all wonder what the future will bring, but don’t always see we’re building it with each action. We have more agency in our lives than we give ourselves credit for, and often overthink things instead of just taking another step. That which is irreplaceable cannot be realized without consistent effort. We must choose our direction and do the work to realize it. Fate decides the rest.

    • Ebb and Flow

      “When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom” ― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

      Life isn’t always the highlight reel moments, for we’d quickly grow bored with epic living day-after-day until we meet our infinity. No, the mind and body need challenges to hone, and rest to recover, each in their time. We need our rainy days and Mondays to rest up for all that this world may offer us should we rise to meet it. Some days are ripe and full of wonder, others are relatively inconsequential, save for the urgency of maintaining our chain of days. To live to fight another day, if you will.

      Ann Morrow Lindbergh was married to the most famous man in the world when she wrote the words quoted above. She was also an accomplished aviator herself, which is somehow lost in the shadow of history as her husband took the spotlight. Yet she achieved a bit of immortality herself, didn’t she? Knowing something of their lives, I don’t aspire to be like the Lindberghs, but they do serve as a clear example of the ebb and flow of life.

      Relationships hit their high marks and low moments. Work, travel, health… each rise and fall in their time. We become resilient in weathering the storms life throws our way, and we embrace with vigor the good times for having persevered through the bad times. We all have these dalliances with light and darkness, don’t we? What do we learn from them?

      This too shall pass, we all learn in our lifetime. This applies equally to the good times as the bad. It’s fair to ask, what are we flowing towards, and what are we receding from? We are what we put our focus on, and each of us must develop resiliency and independence to survive and grow. And when we fill our lives with people who lift us up, the ebbs are more sustainable, and the flows just may be magical.