Alexandersmap

    Author: nhcarmichael

    • The Doing and the Done

      “There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it.” ― Andrew Jackson

      I’d like to get around to enjoying doing nothing when I have a lot to do, but honestly, it’s just not my style. I’m happiest when I find things to do when I ought to be doing nothing much at all. Call it an inclination to make order out of chaos. Sometimes I have to find chaos to make order of.

      Does this mean I won’t embrace retirement one day? Are we who fancy productivity doomed to work ourselves to death? Or simply focus on something else instead? A hint of how we’ll act tomorrow is how we act in our non-work time today. I believe we don’t have to lock ourselves in our career track to be doing useful things, we simply have to be inclined to be useful.

      While there is satisfaction in getting things done, isn’t the real joy in life to be found in the doing? To be active in the game is to be playing the game. Fun isn’t just where we find it, but what we make of it.

    • Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

      Across the evening sky,
      all the birds are leaving,
      But how can they know,
      it’s time for them to go?
      Before the winter fire,
      I will still be dreaming,
      I have no thought of time.
      For who knows,
      where the time goes?
      Who knows,
      where the time goes?
      — Sandy Denny, Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

      The other day I heard the honking of geese as I sat under the umbrella reading in the shade. I only heard and never saw the geese, but a sudden pop on the umbrella made me stop reading and look up. It turns out the umbrella saved me and the book from an unpleasant deposit a goose was making on its flyover.

      Yes, the geese are back. A sure sign of the summer season shifting towards later in the game. And have you noticed? Sunrise is later too. The summer harvest is abundant and relentless. Acorns are already bouncing off the pavement. Back to school sales are in full swing, and Halloween candy will be sold out if we dare wait until October to buy it.

      Ready or not, time moves on. Memories relentlessly pop up in social media feeds. WordPress prompts us to look back on our own posts from this date in previous years. Reminders are everywhere to look up from what is occupying our attention and have a look at where we are, where we’ve been, and what’s changed.

      And still, we have no thought of time until something jolts us into awareness. Beating a familiar drum, we ought to savor those summer tomatoes and corn, soak up the sun and time with one another. For who knows where the time goes? Tempus fugit. It flies right along like geese on a mid-August day.

    • Life and Poetry

      All the things to which I give myself
      grow rich and spend me.
      — Rainer Maria Rilke, The Poet

      We are what we focus on, for we are spending our lives in the process. Wherever we go, whatever we do, we are doling out our grains of sand. The time will never return again. Awareness of the value of time is our curse and our saving grace. The only answer for tempus fugit is carpe diem.

      I read poetry to encounter verse like that above. I write to try to arrive at something approaching the feeling I get when I read it. Perhaps you read it the same way, or wonder what the fuss is about. We all bring our own lens to life and poetry. For me, Rilke demonstrates that we are timeless and fragile all at once.

      I’m delighted by the perfect crust on a sourdough. The aroma of fresh herbal bread made on a hot day when I had no business using the oven but eagerly pay the toll for the way the house smells as the bread bakes. Candles are nice, baking bread is nirvana. Should we not pursue with vigor all that makes us feel alive?

      Sourdough is a two-day event. One makes the dough today to bake tomorrow. That in itself is an act of faith that we’ll be around tomorrow to enjoy the bread, but life’s greatest rewards aren’t immediately gratified. One must earn tomorrow today.

      That which delights us offers a higher return on the minutes spent. It’s not nihilistic to seek a higher return on our time, it’s our duty to our one precious life to maximize our value. To derive meaning from minutes spent vigorously. The spend will happen on its own. ’tis the vigor we bring that makes all the difference, now and in that uncertain future awaiting us.

    • Pebbles

      “It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe” — Muhammad Ali

      Inevitably, after doing some workout and feeling the rush of adrenaline that washes over you when you finish, I tell myself I ought to do that more consistently. I mean, a year ago I was working out twice a day for 75 days, so why am I not working out at least once a day now? Maybe working out twice a day was a bit much, but not working out at all was a bit too far in the other direction.

      Habits come and go. I wrote this blog every day for seven years and just stopped one day just to reset myself and stop that creeping feeling that writing was an obligation and not a privilege. I’m writing again with new perspective, and without feeling like I must publish today no matter what. Hopefully the content feels less like an obligation to read too.

      Habits stick when we love doing something. When it becomes so ingrained as part of our identity that we can’t imagine not doing it today and for every tomorrow we have left ahead of us. When it nags at us like a pebble in the shoe, we’re far less likely to follow through with it today. And our actions today are all that matters in all things.

      Today I took my bike out for a 15-mile ride. That’s nothing for a hard-core cyclist, but it’s not a bad use of an hour for a casual cyclist trying to get back in the habit again. It turned out what was nagging at me was how much I missed being out on the bike while stuck in a routine chock full of excuses. Tomorrow will take care of itself, but I’ll celebrate today for all the right reasons.

    • Drawing New Circles

      “Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another is drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.”

      “The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory and to do something without knowing why; in short to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment. The great moments of history are the facilities of performance through the strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion.”
      — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Circles

      Reading Emerson is like having a conversation with an old mentor we haven’t seen in awhile. We’ve grown, formed new ideas and opinions, and began to believe the hype generating between our ears that we’ve got it all figured out. Then our mentor comes along and reminds us that we’ve only read part of the story. There are larger circles being drawn as we speak, and the longer we linger in this one, the more behind the curve we will be in this new reality unfolding before us.

      Life is indeed change. Life is indeed unfair. What of it? Unfair compared to what? Be the change you want to see in the world, and stop focusing on all that we cannot control. The profiteers, bigots and fools be damned. We must forever change in the face of constant change. I grow so weary of people trapped in the unfairness of the world, instead of stepping out into something far beyond the trap of that particular vicious circle of thought. Be bold with your one precious life!

      Pendulums swing all the time—what is the axis point from which it pivots? There lies the truth. “Everything looks permanent until its secret is known”, Emerson wrote in the essay quoted above. Find the secret if you dare. Not bullshit conspiracy theories, but the truth within, that limits growth beyond this circle.

      To be resilient, we must abandon who we were and become what we are meant to be. We must forever draw new circles, or be imprisoned by the circle we current reside in. Every end is a beginning. Circle that if it helps. And go seize what flees.

    • The Harmony of Life

      In my eyes, the garden is beaten down and tired right now. Between a trifecta of the heat and occasional torrential downpours and a family of rabbits that find living amongst delicious plants delightful (to the chagrin of my fence-leaping pup), it’s going through a lot right now. And just as we compare ourselves to our own peak days of fitness and learning and view anything lower than that standard poorly, I compare the garden to where it was a month ago or in its peak in past seasons. It’s a bit unfair of me, I think.

      This week we hosted our neighbors, who delighted in the garden. They saw the beauty that I’d been ignoring while scrutinizing what’s faded. And in seeing it, they reminded me to stop looking at what’s missing and look instead for what is here. We are as happy in life as what we focus on.

      The French have an expression that I’m trying my best to adopt in my own life: l’entente de la vie, which translates directly as the understanding of life, but deeper, means the harmony of life. In other words, living a balanced life with time and attention to actively savoring all the joys available to us. So it pairs well with joie de vivre.

      A big part of savoring is simply being present with what is bringing us joy in the moment. Sure, there will always be something nagging at us that isn’t perfect in our world, but whispering quietly to us in that chorus of misery is something beautiful awaiting our attention. Turn the senses towards that and watch life transform into something more delightful, more delicious, and more harmonious with the act of living. Magnifique!

    • Something Gritty and Tangible

      Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
      Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
      So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
      Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
      — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Theologian’s Tale; Elizabeth

      We modern time travelers are forever busy, distracted and hustling on to the next. We ought to remember that many encounters we have will be our one and only exchange with a fellow time-traveler. Or it may be the last of many. The lesson? Savor the time together, however fleeting it may be. For we will never pass this way again.

      Since his untimely passing last week, I’ve been on a Glen Hansard binge. This often happens when an artist passes—we are reminded of their work, and seek to know more about what they’ve left behind that we may have missed. And with Glen Hansard, there is a whole catalog of brilliant, stunning music and film to choose from. Dare I say, he was the Van Morrison of Gen X.

      One might say the deck is stacked against us reaching even a small percentage of our potential, let alone our potential time with others. We must prioritize, and hope that we encounter the right ships in the night along our way, and at just the right time. This requires our receptiveness, active awareness and diligence, before the opportunity slips away forever.

      We can’t possibly experience everything, or know everyone. Inevitably something slips right through our grasp. Like sand, we can’t grab hold of it too tightly or too much squeezes through. But we can grab our share and hold on just tightly enough to feel we’ve got something gritty and tangible on our hands even as the rest flows past us in a whir. Sometimes, maybe that’s enough.

    • Dancing Before It

      “There is a reason, after all, that some people wish to colonize the moon, and others dance before it as an ancient friend.” — James Baldwin

      I use this quote on the same day that SpaceX crashed a rocket booster into the moon. Honestly, I’d had it teed up for weeks. Let’s roll with the irony of using it on the same day that the world’s richest man made a new crater on the moon. One small crater for humanity. Oh how, uh, far we’ve come.

      I don’t have an issue with SpaceX or Musk, but I also don’t enjoy their ascendance into our collective consciousness. I may give a nod to scientific innovation and the gumption to pursue the final frontier, but I’m reluctant to have any company monopolize the sky above us. And the mass glamorization of the accumulation of infinite wealth and power is also not my game. One can be a profitable capitalist without gobbling up everything.

      I’m no idealist, but I’m more inclined to dance with the moon than dance on the graves of all the competitors put out of business in a dog-eat-dog culture. There’s room enough for all of us, if we don’t hoard all the good stuff in life for ourselves anyway. But that’s just my two cents on the matter. Then again, what’s a couple of pennies but chump change?

    • Do Not Waste Your Time in Driblets

      “Follow, my dear boy, an honorable calling, which shall engross your time and give you position and fame, and besides enable you to benefit your fellow man. Do not waste your time in driblets.” — Charles Sumner

      As you might have noticed, the blog posts are back with more frequency again. I like to be productive with my time, and subscribe to the use it or lose it theory of active living. The it in that expression may be my mind as much as my writing skills. When I write I’m an active seeker. When I don’t write I seek less. The answer seems to be to keep writing. But always with the caveat to seek more that is interesting. Now and then that actually translates to the blog. Fingers crossed.

      Some of that time not writing was used for reading more. We are what we consume, and I’m consuming far more lately than my average. A leftover book (from which I plucked the quote above) from a recent flurry of Paris-related reading is David McCullough’s The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris. The theme of the book is the quest for more beyond the ordinary. Aspiring for more, exceptional people in history sought out Paris in particular to find what they were missing.

      The thing is, I’d just finished McCullough’s excellent book, The Wright Brothers, and wasn’t looking to jump into another of his books so soon. I read a couple of chapters of another book with a promising title but quickly grew dissatisfied with my choice. I’d read three great books in a row, and wasn’t going to settle for something that bored me to tears. When you’ve tasted the possibility of greatness, why waste time on driblets? Dive vigorously into the full menu!

      Those Wright Brothers were a fine example in not wasting time. Intelligent, highly-focused, industrious and open to calculated risks, they changed the world. We all know of Kitty Hawk, but that first powered flight was but a first step. They had to then go show the world what they’d built, and how to use it. A significant part of their story happened in France. If you’re looking for inspiration to move beyond settling for the driblets in your own life, reading The Wright Brothers offers a glimpse into how to get it done.

      To do more with the opportunity at hand is the thing. We each have the same amount of time today to work with. Just what are we doing with the hours? Might we choose a more savory bite off of the menu? Don’t we owe it to ourselves to sprinkle a little zip on top? Today leads to tomorrow, after all. Be bold today, that we may look back in wonder at all we’ve done. We must never forget that its the doing that leads to the done.

    • Partake of Individuality

      “All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity.”
      ― James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat

      Be yourself. The alternative is to blend in. Blending in may bring a sense of belonging, or the safety of numbers, or some such thing, but it slowly kills the soul. There is no personal excellence in blending in, there is only a meek settle for the average.

      Greatness of character is honed through not blending in. It’s standing out as somehow different from the rest. People attempting to blend in view unique as an affront to their own tactic, and will taunt, tease or torment those who are different. We think of middle school in moments like this, but it applies equally to adulthood. We never really grow up, we just play by different versions of the same rules.

      Arete is personal excellence, not being great at disappearing in the crowd. To opt out of what was expected of us for what we expect of ourselves is an act of boldness. As the expression often attributed to Goethe goes, boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

      We may choose to be bold today, and every day thereafter, to maximize the potential of this next part of the journey. Best case, we reach a level of greatness and person excellence we dared not imagine before. Worst case, we live a less mediocre life. The choice is clear: Partake of individuality. If only to make the ride ahead more thrilling.