Alexandersmap

    Author: nhcarmichael

    • Discharging The Loyal Soldier

      “Odysseus is a loyal soldier for the entire Odyssey, rowing his boat as only a hero can—until the blind prophet tells him there is more, and to put down his oar.” – Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

      Richard Rohr planted this seed of discharging the loyal soldier in my mind. He described the ritual used with Japanese soldiers returning from World War II being thanked for their service and discharged to focus on the next stage of their lives – to be productive members of society. I’ve read a fair amount of history of that war and know the fanatical intensity of the typical Japanese soldier, so to shed that character and assume some level of normalcy on a mass scale is itself impressive and instructive. If your only path was total victory or death, how do you process defeat and going back home? So ritualistic discharging saved what was left of a generation of soldiers to rebuild Japan from the ashes.

      “This kind of closure is much needed for most of us at the end of all major transitions in life. Because we have lost any sense of the need for such rites of passage, most of our people have no clear crossover to the second half of their own lives.” – Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

      We’re at a time in our collective lives where we need this ritual for society. Thank you for your social isolation, for your mask-wearing and countless hours trying to keep people alive. Thank you for your passionate political opinions and protests on both sides. Thank you for voicing your opinions so forcefully on social media. You’ve done your service for society. It’s time to focus on rebuilding now, for the world needs you for another mission. To save the planet and humanity.

      I recognize the transition happening in my son’s life – graduated from college, finished with organized sports, and now what? With the pandemic they didn’t even have a graduation ceremony, let alone a discharging of loyal soldiers. Here’s your diploma, mailed without pomp or circumstance. Good luck! No wonder this generation is looking around and saying “What next?” You learn that they aren’t ready to hear everything yet, as you weren’t. But they’re definitely ready to hear the message that they’ve done well fulfilling the first mission – we’re proud of you, now go forth and find the next mission.

      I’m in my own transition, of course, with the responsibilities of parenting shifting to sage advice strategically inserted whenever a teaching moment arrives – sometimes validating, sometimes contradicting the advice from the other parent. But what of us? We’re stepping into the second half of life when we start filling the proverbial container we built in the first half of life. So what do you fill it with?

      “Discharging your loyal soldier will be necessary to finding authentic inner authority,,, When you first discharge your loyal soldier, it will feel like a loss of faith or loss of self. But it is only the death of the false self, and is often the very birth of the soul. Instead of being ego driven, you will begin to be soul drawn.” – Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

      Discharge that loyal soldier and become “soul drawn“? That’s a bumper sticker or a name for an IPA if I ever saw one! The coolest cat surfing life, dispelling timeless wisdom in clever soul drops as you serve your new guiding light.

      We’ve all been in a period of forced transition, timed for some of us in a period of natural transition. It’s time to focus on what comes next, and do the work you were honed to do during the previous you. Time to put the oar down and follow through on that next mission. That soul drawn and fulfilling mission.

    • The Rhode Island Red Monument

      One of the joys of travel is stumbling upon roadside curiosities. On my pilgrimage to visit a favorite hero of King Philip’s War I came across a monument to the Rhode Island Red that drew my attention. The Rhode Island Red is a hen, of course, that famously and productively laid eggs particularly well, which led to breeding of this particular character to make eggs a common and reliable staple of our diet. It seems the Rhode Island Red was first bred on a farm in Little Compton, Rhode Island.

      In 1925 a group of Rhode Island Red enthusiasts erected this monument to the hen, commissioning an artist named Henry Norton to make it. But here’s where the story gets interesting. One group wanted the monument to be erected at the actual farm where the hens were first bred. Another group wanted it in a more prominent location in town (where I came across it, validating their choice I suppose). For a small town, this was pretty heated, with both sides trying to establish a pecking order. At the unveiling of the first monument the opposing group didn’t show up, apparently feeling the location was pretty… fowl. A year later they erected their own monument at their preferred site. The 1925 monument features a rooster, the 1926 monument features a hen. But a well-placed hen. They really showed ’em.

      The 1925 Rhode Island Red Monument

      The inscription on the 1925 monument reads:
      “To commemorate the birthplace of the
      Rhode Island Red breed of fowl which
      originated near this location
      ___
      red fowls bred extensively by
      the farmers of this district and later
      named “Rhode Island Reds” and brought into
      national prominence by the poultry fanciers
      ___
      this tablet placed by the
      Rhode Island Red Club of America
      with contributions of Rhode Island Red
      breeders throughout the world
      on land donated by
      Deborah Manchester
      1925″

      This entire incident is described in the monument’s Wikipedia page in delightful detail. Not having the back story when I came across the monument, I wasn’t aware of the other monument. Now I feel compelled to return to Little Compton again sometime to find it. In the meantime, Norton’s 1925 monument quietly marks time, closing in on its 100th birthday. Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001, this monument to a chicken has secured its own place in history.

    • 7 Observations on Reaching 1000 Blog Posts

      We all write for different reasons, and my observations might not be yours, nor should they be. But reaching a milestone like 1000 blog posts deserves some measure of reflection. As I look forward with anticipation to post number 1001, I pause to give you seven observations about the journey to this point:

      1. The well never runs dry. You just run out of time. Writer’s block is a myth. If you’re earnest and curious you never run out of things to write about. But you will wrestle with perfection and trying to make a post reach its potential. When you post daily you learn to love it as it is and know when it’s time to let it fly. No, it’s never perfect, but you post it anyway.
      2. Everything becomes a potential blog post. I started writing Alexanders Map intending to have a local travel blog with historical sites with visits to amazing places. The name itself infers this. But it quickly expanded to include a diverse (some would say eclectic) mix of topics. You learn to listen to the muse, and embrace the new. And in the unexpected you find your own voice. You are the link between each post, and part of you reflects back on what you’ve visited.
      3. This business of blogging is your own business. You can quickly grow your blog follower list by playing the game of actively following and liking other bloggers. Or you can do the opposite and grow organically. I choose the latter: I’m very selective about who I follow, I “like” what I actually read and appreciated, and I don’t follow to gain followers. You choose what you want to be in the blogging world. I didn’t even mention I had a blog to family and friends until I’d written a hundred or so posts. I do link to Twitter, but rarely on other media. Choose what works for you, because your blog is how you present yourself to the world.
      4. One sentence at a time, you become a better writer. Let’s face it, none of us start a blog thinking we’re bad writers. Bloggers tend to believe they’ve got some skill for writing or they’d start a YouTube channel or build an Instagram or TicTok site. But the craft of writing develops through the daily struggle. I’m nowhere near the writer I thought I was, and I’m nowhere near where I want to be. But I keep chipping away at it, day-by-day. Blogging is an apprenticeship in writing, but you never meet the master.
      5. Some of your favorite posts will be completely ignored. You will work on a blog post that stirs something deep inside you, feel a wave of emotion crash over you as you click publish, and see the world react with complete indifference. Write these posts anyway, and write them often. Because when you tap into this well you aren’t blogging for instant fame, you’re writing to find something inside yourself that you thought, maybe, was there all along.
      6. You develop an eye for the interesting and an ear for the hidden stories. You stop more frequently in fascinating places, detour to find and celebrate the obscure and forgotten, and do things you might not have done otherwise. You become a ghost whisperer, visiting old graveyards and monuments to the past engraved by some soul long forgotten, who was honoring something of note that brought us to where we are today. You learn poetry and philosophy and Latin phrases and stir up the magic in an old pile of words. You hike to places of wonder and seek adventures. In short, you become more alive, and you appreciate this journey more than ever before.
      7. You learn to follow through on the promises you quietly make to yourself. You want to be a writer? Then write, no matter how you feel, and post that work every day, no matter what. Keep that commitment to yourself today. And tomorrow too. As James Clear puts it, every action you take becomes a vote for the type of person you wish to become. Your blog is a stack of votes for your identity. So craft them as best you can and set them free for the world.

      So there we are: 1000 blog posts. As I mulled over this one the last few days, I found myself in a corner of New England I don’t visit enough and chanced upon a couple of roadside wonders I might never have seen had I not set out for an old grave I wanted to visit. And just like that I’ve got three more blog posts in my mind. The world is funny that way – it opens up for the curious observers. I can’t wait to see where the next 1000 take me.

    • The Heart of the Bay

      Nobody owns the sky or the trees.
      Nobody owns the hearts of birds.
      Still, being human and partial therefore to my own
      successes—
      though not resentful of others fashioning theirs—
      I’ll come tomorrow, I believe, quite early.
      – Mary Oliver, Winter and the Nuthatch

      Oliver writes of building trust with a nuthatch that eventually learns to eat out of her hand. One morning she arrives later than other mornings only to find her nuthatch friend eating from another person’s hand. And thus she resolves to arrive earlier the next morning. I’ve felt this myself, not with birds in the hand so much as places of solitude.

      Early Spring is still a time of hard frosts and temperature swings. Maple syrup weather – when the sap flows and gathers in buckets around Maple trees throughout the region. But not here. Cape Cod is more temperate, not subject to the extremes that draw the sap out. And then there’s the trees themselves, which seem to prefer the other side of the bridges. No, here we have a different sap drawn out in the early mornings. And I’m drawn to the light and the chorus.

      Buzzards Bay, well before the dawn, is awash in deep blues and burnt orange and the calls of thousands of Eider Ducks off in the distance. They have a lot to say to each other. It must be breeding season for these migratory birds. They didn’t pay much attention to the stranger on land, and I let them alone in their banter and flirting. The chorus felt altogether different from the bay in warmer months, when outboard engines of fishermen roaring off to favorite holes pierce the silence. Eiders quickly become white noise as I refocus on the task at hand.

      I crunched across a deep frost, leaving footprints in the grass on my walk to the shoreline. Low tide drew me out further into the bay, right to the waters edge quietly lapping in quiet surges like a heart beat. The bay is alive in this way. Alive in its vibrant, nutrient-rich, welcoming way. It pulls at me as it pulls at the Eider ducks, down from northern regions for their version of Spring Break. I suppose I am as well, looking for a change of scenery from New Hampshire to Buzzards Bay. For a return to salt water reflections and big skies.

      The chorus of Eiders ends with the sun breaking the horizon. Mating time gives way to feeding time. I leave the shoreline myself, for I’m not adorned in the down of a duck and the morning chills me in lingering too long. Hot coffee and inadequate words await me, with the glow of the morning alive in my mind.

      Buzzards Bay

    • The Familiar and the Habitual

      “The familiar and the habitual are so falsely reassuring, and most of us make our homes there permanently.” – Richard Rohr, Falling Upward

      We all find comfort in the familiar, whether a favorite chair to sit in or your morning coffee routine, the people we hang our with or the way we greet them. We embrace it and make it our own, and rarely deviate from it. This is the nature of the familiar and the habitual.

      How many of us stick with things just because it’s the way we’ve always done them? Familiar is strangely comforting, even if it doesn’t benefit us. This is the way we’ve always done it. Humans evolved by mitigating risk by sticking to tried, true and trusted. Those who were foolhardy didn’t survive to dilute the gene pool. When the risk is deeply programmed into your identity, it doesn’t matter if it’s bad for you or not – it’s falsely reassuring and part of you. We all know smoking and overeating are bad for you, but how many do it subconsciously, risk and viable alternatives ignored?

      With everyone’s routine disrupted over the last year, it’s interesting to see how people react to going back to the way things used to be. Do you want to commute to a cubicle farm chipping away at your tasks, all while trying to ignore the screams inside you again? Return to the same old ways, or pivot to something new? How resilient were some of those routines and rituals in the face of a pandemic?

      It’s easy to embrace anchors in our lives – homes, relationships, jobs, and routines, and hard to question that which we’ve always known to be true. But ultimately the only true anchor is our self. None of this is permanent. Forget anchors: embrace sails. Embrace change. For change happens around us whether we want it to or not.

    • A Focused Place

      “Finding a very focused place to do your work rewards you many times over.”-Seth Godin

      “The opposite of ‘distraction’ is ‘traction.’ Traction is any action that moves us towards what we really want. Tractions are actions done with intent. Any action, such as working on a big project, getting enough sleep or physical exercise, eating healthy food, taking time to meditate or pray, or spending time with loved ones, are all forms of traction if they are done intentionally. Traction is doing what you say you will do.” – Nir Eyal

      Perhaps it was a week of chaos and distraction that made Eyal’s statement grab me by the shoulders and focus my mind on the truth of the matter. Distraction is diluting my moments of clarity, and this simply won’t do. It isn’t just the noise from mobile devices and televisions or the crush of emails and requests from people near and far. It’s also that noise within that shakes you from sleep or makes you not hear what was just said on that Zoom call you participated in.

      If our best moments are when we’re fully alive, what does fully alive mean anyway? I believe it to mean being fully engaged in the moment, aware of the world around you, and embracing your part in it. Keeping promises to yourself to do what you intended to do. This isn’t just habit formation, it’s traction formation. Honoring intention with intentional focus.

      Eyal takes aim at one of my go-to habits for getting things done: the to-do list. His issue with to-do lists is that things just continue to get added to the list. There’s no intention to is until you block off time in your calendar and honor the time commitment to work on it. Even if you don’t finish you’ve done what you said you’d do, which establishes trust in yourself. As Eyal puts it, you can’t be distracted from something if you didn’t have an intended action (traction) that it was pulling you from.

      Today happens to be the last day of a very busy work week. I thought about that to-do list and the things that aren’t completed yet and felt the tension raise up inside me. But then I thought about the work that was completed this week, the actions done with intent, and felt the tension melt away a bit. However you measure it, the pile of done should be especially satisfying. And the pile of undone shouldn’t be a cruel demon whispering in your ear. The path to removing that demon is in knowing what your intentions are, and honoring them as best you can in the time you’ve allotted.

      That focused place to do the work isn’t a place; not really. It’s a block of time and a commitment to yourself to do what you said you were going to do. Promises kept, one block at a time.

    • Charming Gardeners

      “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” – Marcel Proust

      Spring in New England is a tricky thing. We pivot from beautiful warm days to snow squalls and bitter wind, often within a few minutes of each other. But the days grow longer and we quietly grow more confident about putting the lawn furniture back out and maybe planting some seeds in starter soil. Basil, cilantro and parsley are each growing in sunny windowsills as I write this, and I’m considering getting the dahlia bulbs going soon. Such is the mind of a gardener.

      Proust writes of a different kind of gardener, of course, but they’re generally one and the same. The people who light us up in social interaction are quiet observers of humanity, readers of eyes and solicitors of smiles. In this particular time when social interaction has been elusive, we haven’t had as much interaction like this, and we’ve never needed it more.

      Spring brings hope to the gardener, and vaccines bring hope for time with those people who make us happy. I’m as ready for a gathering of celebration with friends and family as I am for the smell of fresh cut grass and tomato vines. Confident hugs and hand squeezes and shoulder leans are just around the corner.

      Imagine the days ahead, as a gardener imagines them – life blossoming anew, hope in the air, warm sun on our backs. Breathe in the fresh warm air, turn towards friends old and new, and smile. They could use it – and so could you.

    • A Year Like No Other

      “Man, like a bridge, was designed to carry the load of the moment , not the combined weight of a year all at once.” – William A. Ward

      I’m not going to run a postscript on what happened over the last year – plenty of people have already written about that. A year ago we were quietly celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in an empty bar owned by a friend bearing what we optimistically thought would be a temporary shutdown to flatten that curve. That friend has managed to stay in business despite the severe restrictions on their business, open a second location in the middle of a pandemic, and is in the middle of a second battle front with cancer. Who am I to complain about working from home for a year?

      Some of us have lost much more than others, but we’ve all lost something. Loved ones and graduations, sports seasons and jobs, trips of a lifetime and gathering with friends in busy places. We all have that Rolodex of losses we can pull out to share with the world. The profound losses mix with the simple. But something has to balance the losses out. The world doesn’t just tilt on its side without counterbalancing with something else. If we’re all walking that line between order and chaos, what have we gained?

      We know instinctively what has balanced the losses, if not completely at least enough to stay afloat. More time with immediate family, perhaps a little too much now and then but time we’ll reflect on fondly. More creative use of technology to find a smile in the darkness. More alive time with gardening and cooking and reading the books you were meaning to get to… and more time alone to think. Deep reflection on what is really important.

      There are heroes among us that did so much more than the average. We celebrate the essential workers who kept this thing going, but we should also give ourselves a small pat on the back. We may not be medical staff or law enforcement or supply chain workers, but we’re all collectively doing our part to bridge the madness of the last year, one day at a time.

      Of course, this bridge is still being built, still extending to some place in the future where it might set in the firmness of normal. And some are restless – we watch some tentatively gain footing on what they believe to be firm ground, celebrating together and shouting for the rest of us to join the party. But some of them are dancing in quicksand.

      No, we’re closer now, but like the soldiers in the last months of World War II, we know this isn’t the time to let up our guard. Don’t go frivolously burning that mask just yet folks, we’ve still got today to face, and tomorrow too. We’ve carried on this far, just hold on a bit longer. Almost there.

    • Effort and Flow

      “Fatigue can teach us where effort is being misplaced.”- John Jerome, The Elements of Effort

      “The optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is order in consciousness. This happens when psychic energy—or attention—is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match the opportunities for action. The pursuit of a goal brings order in awareness because a person must concentrate attention on the task at hand and momentarily forget everything else.”
      ― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

      Becoming immediately overwhelmed with the list of things that must be done is no way to start a Monday. When it bleeds over into Monday night and Tuesday morning, well, you find yourself confronting misplaced effort. We all have those weeks that start off way tougher than a week ought to start out, but the irony of it happening when I’d teed up the Jerome quote above isn’t lost on me. When things seem overwhelming, find your way towards back to the center.

      You don’t reach mastery and flow without slogging through the tough days. You don’t grow without challenge. If you’re feeling challenged, that’s a good thing. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, well, that’s something else entirely. Fatigue is a teacher, pointing us towards a better way that we might not see in the moment.

      Effort and flow each inform. There’s a balance between the two that we intuitively understand. Yin and Yang. Surfing the edge between order and chaos. Flow requires effort, and yet it seems effortless. This is the desired state for the meaningful work we seek out.

      Momentarily forgetting everything else in the pursuit of something of importance is where flow happens. You can reach this state when you focus to such a degree on the task at hand that you literally forget time is slipping by. We’ve all had those moments where everything is clicking, we are in our element, and things flow. It’s a desired state on the path to mastery, where skills and passion and focus are channeled into the task at hand.

      When things seem overwhelming, take a deep breath, reset, and look for another path towards the goal. Place your effort in a place that brings you where you need to be instead of fighting forces that bring you nowhere. Gain strength from adversity, and apply it to insight and direction. This too shall pass. What will we create in the interim?

    • The Intersection of Passion and Talent

      “Our visions are the world we imagine, the tangible results of what the world would look like if we spent every day in pursuit of our why.” – Simon Sinek, Start With Why

      Sinek’s talk is one of the most watched YouTube videos of all time, largely focused on business’s asking this critical question, “Why are we in business?” My own company is focused on this very question at the moment, prompting me to finally read Sinek’s book a few weeks ago. But you can’t ask why of your work without asking the same question of yourself. What is our purpose in our work, and in our lives? Why are you doing this? Think carefully, for it means more than a paycheck and a Netflix subscription when you get home.

      Every now and then we find ourselves stumbling upon a place where ideas converge, and where the path ahead divides into any number of directions. Which way do we go? If we all agree that life is shorter than most of us want it to be, doesn’t it make sense take the path that offers the greatest opportunity to fulfill that personal mission? Defining that mission is the tricky part. A mission that requires deep thinking.

      “What are you chasing? Why? Is the chase aligned with your deepest values and Ultimate Mission?” – Dr. Jim Loehr, The Personal Credo Journal

      We all have talents. But we can be pretty good at something and not be all that passionate about it. And you never really master something that you’re subconsciously going through the motions with. Whether career, art, relationships or athletic pursuits, if it doesn’t whisper to our soul we simply aren’t going to thrive in it.

      “Ikigai (pronounced “eye-ka-guy”) is, above all else, a lifestyle that strives to balance the spiritual with the practical. This balance is found at the intersection where your passions and talents converge with the things that the world needs and is willing to pay for.” – Chris Myers, Forbes, ‘How To Find Your Ikigai And Transform Your Outlook On Life And Business’

      Call it your “Ultimate Mission”, your “Why”, “Ikigai” or simply purpose. What you call it doesn’t matter so much as what it is, and what you do with it. These are powerful questions that demand deep thought. Determine where your passions and talents converge. Envision the world as you’d like it and set about making it. Align your chase with your deepest values. And perhaps the deepest question of all, determine what exactly you’re living for and do something about it.

      “It’s not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something.” – Dr. Leo Buscaglia

      I’ve re-written this particular blog post seven or eight times. Work is piling up in the in-box while I re-read it once again. Do I publish or just keep editing this indefinitely? Who really cares? Well, I do, and that’s as good a sign of where my passions meet my talents as anything. Who else would obsess over a bunch of words on a random Monday post? Maybe this is my something after all. At least a good chunk of it anyway.

      The things we do for love…