Alexandersmap

    Author: nhcarmichael

    • Capturing Perspective

      We should never aspire to be busy, we just become busy as our responsibilities accumulate. At some point something has to give. So what must we hold onto in that moment?

      To write daily amidst the big changes occurring in one’s life offers a unique opportunity to capture perspective. That perspective will surely change with the changes, but in that moment we are who we are. A blog is not a novel and it’s not a journal, it’s a daily exercise in capturing perspective before it changes yet again.

      Where are we now? What has happened to bring us here? And the question of questions, what comes next? What stands out in this post that marks who we were as we wrote it? Everything is different, everything is the same. We flow through our time grasping for a good anchorage that will hold us long enough to gain some perspective. We must be sure to log it before we’re on the move yet again.

      Writing for someone with a lot to say is a release. Writing for someone who isn’t in the mood to share is a chore. We each have moments with each. To write daily is akin to doing our chores. We know we must do our chores, even when we don’t feel like it, and we feel better for having done what we promised ourselves we’d do. The promise is to click publish having said something worthy of the time it takes to read it.

    • The Passage

      “Our doubts are traitors,
      and make us lose the good we oft might win,
      by fearing to attempt.”
      ― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

      Something changes in us when we resolve to do something. A switch flips somewhere within our body and soul, and our very identity has changed well before the actual work is done that we’ve decided to do to bridge the gap. The attempt becomes obvious as the logical steps between here and there. Doubt defers to a rigid focus on outcomes. Determination enters the fray.

      All of this leads us to make a passage. Like a sailboat crossing an ocean, we are on a journey ourselves, from where we were to where we’re going. This passage is fraught with a potential dangers in the form of well-meaning friends and family, work obligations, and the most insipid of dangers, comfortable habits and beliefs about who we are that must be overcome to complete the transformation. We’ll need all of that rigid focus and determination to make it through.

      The thing to remember about a passage is that it’s not one step. It’s a labyrinth, and we aren’t meant to see the other side. We’re only to take this next step. Days will fly by as they always have, but we are moving through them differently than we used to. The passage changes us in ways we don’t see until one day we realize the gap has shrunken before us. We may then honor the changes by simply taking the next step ahead.

    • Practicing Significance

      “No matter the self-conceited importance of our labors we are all compost for worlds we cannot yet imagine.” ― David Whyte

      To be progressing in one part of our lives is meaningful, but incomplete if we aren’t also making strides in the rest of our lives. Balance, as they say, is the key. Progress in fitness and nutrition bodes well, but we can’t ignore our intellectual development while we hone our body into shape. We cannot be a champion of personal excellence if we aren’t reaching beyond ourselves to help others reach theirs, for we are all in this together, even when we sometimes wish to simply go it alone. Some aspire to make a dent in the universe, some aspire to write their own verse. Each is a way to make our brief time dancing with life more meaningful and lasting (in the form of a legacy of contribution).

      There’s no denying that a career is a large and meaningful part of life. If I’ve had any success in business it was built on listening to the needs of others and finding answers. People want to feel they’re being listened to. The world is simply looking for someone to get back to them. We reach out to others, expect an answer or at the very least a timely response, and hope for resolution to whatever started the transaction. Those who follow through are quietly powerful agents of trust and belief. We learn who can be relied upon and follow them throughout their careers. That network of trusted alliances is the foundation, not just of a strong career but a life of significance.

      Each day is an opportunity for connection. Checking in with people just to see how they’re doing, working to solve problems that arise, lending an ear when it’s all that someone needed in that moment—these are how we maintain lifetime bonds with our fellow time travelers. Achievement looks nice on a resume but is shallow on its own. Significance has deeper roots, and allows for growth beyond the individual.

      What do we practice in our daily lives? Looking beyond ourselves is the path to significance and purpose. This may seem out of touch with the current vibe in the world, but what will we remember in the end of our time on earth? How will we be remembered by those who survive us?

    • Creating Outcomes

      “There is some risk involved in action, there always is. But there is far more risk in failure to act.” — Harry S. Truman

      The funny thing about taking action is that it often leads to more opportunities to act. We become action-oriented, and notice opportunities to act more often than someone who is sedentary and usually looking for opportunities to rest. Ultimately we go in the direction we set our compass to, seeing what we see while creating outcomes that lead to even more outcomes.

      That term, creating outcomes, is high agency stuff. It’s an action-oriented approach to living that suits us. We all know that we’re here for a short time (memento mori). If you read this blog with any regularity you’ve certainly heard me mention that with some frequency. This is not a death-focused mindset, it’s life-focused. Awareness leads to action. We only have so much time—don’t dare waste a moment of it!

      What is an outcome but a destination separated from us by a gap we close? We see the target, determine the action necessary to reach it, and do the work to bridge our here with our potential there. Having reached an outcome, we naturally look towards the next interesting destination, and so on. This is a growth mindset, and it’s a world apart from believing we have no control over our lives. Decide what to be and go be it.

      All that said, I see even as I’m actively bridging gaps that there are other gaps yet to bridge. The only thing to do is figure out how to create those outcomes too, then get after it with urgency. For the clock is ticking and time flies (tempus fugit) and we’re deep into our one precious life, so what are we waiting for?

    • Advancing

      “Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing towards what will be.” — Khalil Gibran

      Earlier this month I began a challenge to myself. I do this every summer in some form or another, but this one felt different. More urgency to get fit again, but also a more compelling reason to stay at it. And I’ve seen progress, even as I’ve been impatient for even more. The scale indicates I’m on the right track. The three books I’m rotating through will all be completed if I stay with them. The weight circuits indicate improved strength and aerobic fitness. All signs point to improvement, and yet I want more. We humans are never satisfied, are we?

      There’s a subtle difference between enhancing and advancing. In the former we are merely tweaking our comfort level to make a slight change. It’s like turning up the volume on the television—we’re making a change, but we’re still just sitting on the couch watching television. Advancing is a different story. It’s turning off that television and walking out of an old identity towards a new one.

      Slow progress is still progress. When we get wrapped up in how big the increments are, we lose sight of the destination we’re heading towards and begin to doubt the process for getting there. The journey is always the point anyway. The arrival at a goal is certainly something to celebrate, but it also closes a chapter of becoming. We became who we set out to be. We may savor it, but them move on to the next, for life is motion.

      How do we measure motion? By progress. Where did we begin and where are we now? Where are we now and where are we going to? Who we are now is simply an image in a reel of images on the motion picture of our life. We forget sometimes that we are not a still life, but a life in motion. One moment leads to the next and the next thereafter. We may choose to make those images dance and build a life of consequence. Focus on the advance, the increments will sort themselves out.

    • The Time for Vigorous Pruning

      “I now consider exercise to be the most potent longevity ‘drug’ in our arsenal, in terms of lifespan and healthspan. The data are unambiguous: exercise not only delays actual death but also prevents both cognitive and physical decline, better than any other intervention.” ― Peter Attia, Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity

      It’s that time of the season where the first wave of roses have faded and the garden requires serious dead-heading. So yesterday, despite heat, humidity and the company we were keeping at the time, I excused myself to dead-head the roses at my in-laws. The fragrance was lovely, the thorns unforgiving, and the shear abundance time-consuming, but I pressed on anyway.

      Their health doesn’t allow them to even go out to smell the roses, let alone prune them. It’s a stage of life I hope to kick down the curb as long as possible myself. Which is why I’ve chosen to change my own comfortable routine to something decidedly more challenging.

      Like those roses, we all have our peak season and then we fade. But roses will continue to bloom as long as you maintain them. A vigorous pruning results in more abundant blooms, ignore them and they put all their energy into rose hips and the show is largely over.

      We too, benefit from a vigorous pruning in the form of habit change. Eating and drinking less, and exercising and sleeping more will each change the game for us. The game is health span, or extending the time when we can be enjoying our days instead of suffering through them in a precipitous decline. Who wants their golden years tainted by nagging pain and atrophy? The time to do that is now, friend. Forget about how busy we are in our lives. We must get pruning now.

      Life has a way of rolling a roque wave over us when we wanted nothing more than a casual sail through some stage of life or other. That’s why we must develop buoyancy—our inner strength and resilience that will hold us above when life tries to drag us under. We are building the foundation today to weather the storms of tomorrow.

      This must be the season of moving more and consuming less. It’s a fascinating process of self-pruning with an eye towards a better health span in the long term, with more vibrancy and vigor in the present. We must prune away that which is no longer sustaining us, that we may thrive again and again, whatever our current season. And don’t forget to smell the roses we’ve worked so hard to maintain. That longer health span must be fully enjoyed.

    • The Incremental and the Impatient

      “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” — Vincent Van Gogh

      Incremental progress is still progress. It may lack the excitement of an audacious leap forward, but there’s no denying that we’re going in the right direction, albeit slowly. Sometimes so slowly that it feels like we’ve reached a plateau. It can be a frustratingly slow transformation, when we dove into the change specifically for the change it promised to bring, and that’s why people drop resolutions almost immediately after they’ve embarked on them. We want instant gratification in this world. Like the spoiled rich kid in the Willie Wonka movie. But we know what happened to her.

      Incremental growth is the stuff of long term investment strategies and lifetime fitness. Bold leaps are inherently full of risk and reward calculations that don’t fit into important considerations like our health and financial well-being. Mothers and spouses and financial advisors tend to favor incremental, so they aren’t worries about their reckless loved ones. Being inclined towards reckless leaps now and then, I appreciate the steady focus my better half brings to the table.

      It comes down to impatience. When we are incrementally-minded, we develop the patience to let things play out until the transformation happens. When we are impatient, we change course the moment things aren’t going the way we expected them to go. Momentum dies when we’re constantly changing direction. By staying the course we learn the value of that steadiness over time. Patience is thus the virtue we were always told it was but didn’t believe until we saw it for ourselves.

      There’s value in both patience and impatience in our lives, and we ought to learn when to apply each to optimize our results. Bringing together a series of small steps completed can result in something beautiful in the end. One workout, one more day of paying ourselves first, one more page read, one more blog post, and one small brush stroke at a time accumulates into something, and that something then builds upon itself. Even when it feels like nothing is moving in the moment, momentum is established.

    • Reading Potential

      “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

      I picked up three books that I’m excited to read: one work of fiction, two historical non-fiction. I imagine myself reading them all this summer, but then I look at the books pressed against them that I’ve also promised to get to and wonder at my ambition. A great book is a journey into the unknown that will change us in some way, but only if we actually follow through with it. Otherwise, it’s nothing but untapped potential. Haven’t we enough of that in a life?

      Every now and then I go to my bookshelves and seek council in an old favorite book I’d read some time ago, only to rediscover that it’s no longer there. Still, knowing this, I scan the shelves anyway, just to confirm that I hadn’t missed it the last time I looked. A great book no longer in our lives is like an old friend we have fond memories with but will never see again. We hope they’re doing well, and making memories with whomever is in their lives now. We are forever changed by our own experience with them.

      What are you reading right now? That’s a question that betrays a lot about where we’re going in our lives. To have a ready answer is a sign of an active student of life. But reading a book doesn’t change us unless we take some actionable step in our lives from what we’ve read. Some quote or nugget of wisdom gleaned from the pages and realized in our own lives is the best gift we can give ourselves from the very best books we’ve read. For me, many of those nuggets end up in the blog in some way, or end up being paraphrased in conversation. Some things are just too good not to share.

      To exemplify the very best thoughts and ideas we come across offers tribute to the author. To use them as a stepping stone in our own lives transforms the reader. Together, across space and time, we make magic. There is the untapped potential in books on a shelf, awaiting their moment in the sun on our journey together. If that’s not a great reason, not just to read, but to write, I’m not sure what is. The very best writing isn’t a vanity project or some task required for tenure, it’s in service to others in another space and time from our own. Surely, that’s something to aspire to?

    • Some Palpable Pursuit

      Jack London drinking his life away while
      writing of strange and heroic men.
      Eugene O’Neil drinking himself oblivious
      while writing his dark and poetic
      works.

      now our moderns
      lecture at universities
      in tie and suit,
      the little boys soberly studious
      the little girls with glazed eyes
      looking
      up,
      the lawns so green, the books so dull,
      the life so dying of
      thirst.
      —Charles Bukowski, the replacements

      Do interesting things. There’s no other way to quench a thirst for living. Do something interesting today that you hadn’t even considered when you woke up this morning. Leap into the unknown and see where it takes you.

      I haven’t had a drink in 16 days. Not for any reason but deciding that this was a good time to try something different. To abstain from something isn’t anything more than a decision acted upon. Decide what to be and go be it. I’ll likely have a drink again someday, because that habit doesn’t rule my life, it simply spritzes it with effervescence. It turns out ice water is a decent spritz in the moment. We learn as we grow into new experiences. To challenge everything we believe is necessary is to open our minds to new possibilities.

      Honestly, I get like this sometimes, where I’ll simply stop doing something just to see how it feels to not do it anymore. And replace it with something else. A year ago I was cycling like mad trying to meet one challenge I’d set for myself. This year the goal isn’t distance but duration. To simply turn my days upside down from what they were a couple of weeks ago. The healthier character I’m becoming is a nice side benefit, if still incomplete. Naturally, there’s still work to be done. And isn’t character development a joyful pursuit?

      Changes become habits, and habits become identity. Don’t like your identity? Change your habits. Life doesn’t have to be a tedious march to the end, and it doesn’t have to be a drunken stumble awash in distraction from the inevitable. We may choose to be alive and engaged in some palpable pursuit. Mine isn’t to stop drinking, and it’s not to exercise more, though both are occurring in the same timeframe. Mine is to quench a thirst for new experiences and to see who emerges on the other side. And sure, to reflect on it in words formed of this emerging identity.

    • Put It to Words

      “Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such” ― Henry Miller

      Some mornings I don’t do anything right away. Nothing but let the pup out, feed the h’angry cats, step outside and settle into silent appreciation for the day as it is. Busy will come soon enough. Productive sometimes joins busy to offer a leap forward. And that can be enough some days. Having done some things, we feel that familiar pull to do something even more still.

      The trick in all of this is observation. We must listen more than we speak (two ears, one mouth). And we must learn to see what is dancing right in front of us, for it is life in all its tragic, hilarious, glorious entirety. And Walt Whitman had it right all along: That you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

      That verse doesn’t write itself. I have some avid hiker friends who would do well to blog. To put their thoughts and feelings to words that would outlive their adventures traversing the granite and schist. Writing pulls something out of us that pictures don’t, even as they tell their thousand words. For those thousand words are mined from within, and brought to the surface to be shared.

      A woman I once worked with took a creative writing class and now every social media post is a beautiful postcard to the world of her early morning walks around the north shore of Massachusetts. The only reason to ever go on social media is to see what someone is doing with their brief go at things in this world—why not post something beautiful? Whatever our choice of expression, we do well by sharing our very best observations with others, that they may see what in that moment was only ours.

      These days I’m inclined to soak up everything for all it offers, yet I keep choosing that dance of busy and productive. One can have both, if each moment is approached with intent. These days will soon be over like all the rest before. What have we got to say about our encounter with it? Put it to words, friend. And share it with a world looking for something beautiful previously hidden from them.