Alexandersmap

    Author: nhcarmichael

    • Urgency Applies

      “The reason to finish is to start something new.” — Rick Rubin

      To finish what we started ought to be the goal for every project, but we know the truth isn’t so pretty. We bounce between projects, finishing some, but too often drag others along forever for want of attention. It’s all prioritization and focus, lest the forces conspiring against us wash over our lives and that project we were once so excited about gets flushed away like so many schemes and dreams. As with life itself, urgency applies to projects. Do it now.

      Starting something new is exciting. We dance with possibilities: discovering and enhancing and dancing with the light that shines through our eyes and lights up our work. Like a cold mountain stream, it’s invigorating and full of momentum. It’s only downstream, where things slow down and sometimes stagnate, where that project grows tedious. Momentum is everything, and we maintain it through focused attention. Deep channels flow relentlessly fast, shallow deltas slow and sometimes flow backwards with the whim of the tide.

      That new project ought to be a reward for having finished the previous project, not yet another distraction from it. Surely urgency applies to the things we wish to accomplish in this lifetime. We must finish what we’ve started, that we may begin again with the fresh perspective and skills developed from the last brought to the next.

    • The Only One

      “We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we have only one.” — Confucius

      Blame it on autumn, or maybe the series of life events I’m currently passing through, but it feels like life is starting over again. Every moment we’re fully alive offers that opportunity of course, but stack enough stuff on the scale and the balance tips enough. Enough for what? For whatever is next in this one wild and precious life, as Mary Oliver so vividly put it.

      This is it, last time I checked, so let’s make the most of our time together. Double down on adventure, take calculated risks more frequently, do the “one day” bucket list things in this time bucket while we have the vitality to experience all it might offer. Defer deferral for a [real] change.

      So stop wasting time already! This is all we have left. Practice active savoring in this one and only dance through life. We can be co-conspirators while the rest of the world marches on thinking there will always be a tomorrow. Let’s not waste a second on such illusions. Seize what flees.

    • All the Nerve

      Oh, when you were young
      Did you question all the answers?
      Did you envy all the dancers
      Who had all the nerve?
      Look round you now
      You must go for what you wanted
      Look at all my friends who did and got what they deserved
      — Crosby, Stills & Nash, Wasted On the Way

      Early this morning far from home I turned the corner and my headlights spotlighted two coyotes who quickly scurried off into the woods. I had no business being right there at that moment, but for a series of events that brought me to that encounter. Just a guy putting himself in the way of beauty (thanks to Cheryl Strayed’s mom for the suggestion).

      We know the people who have all the nerve. They’re usually the ones who have few regrets in the end. To be bold is to break out of the boxes we framed around ourselves. We ought to make box-breaking a regular part of our routine. Really, it’s the only way. How else can we grow?

      Rising to meet the day

    • The Roll of the Peculiar

      “There’s a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      We finally begin to hit our stride when we ignore the expectations of the well-intentioned and follow our own path. For some of us it comes well after our formal education and those earnest early career moves. Momentum isn’t leaping off the cliff, it’s picking up pieces of our identity and adding them on, one after the other, like a snowball rolling down a mountain of fresh, sticky snow. Soon there’s no stopping us.

      The thing is, that momentum applies as much to the wrong slopes as it does the right one. Once we start rolling and picking up habits, stopping becomes very challenging indeed, let alone nudging ourselves over to another slope. We don’t always know which slope is our slope, but we often know which one is not for us. And we know we can’t wait forever to decide: we must eventually roll.

      Some snowballs appear as oddballs. So what? Does the world need yet another compliant commuter making their way to a job they hate? Who want to go through life wedged into a box like that? Find a place where it’s okay to roll the way you want to roll. That which makes us peculiar also makes us unique, and there’s always an audience for someone unique. What is more virtuous than a life spent growing into the purpose we were meant for?

    • Going From, Toward

      “A traveller! I love his title. A traveller is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from —— toward ——; it is the history of every one of us. It takes but little distance to make the hills and even the meadows look blue to-day. That principle which gives the air an azure color is more abundant.”― Henry David Thoreau, The Journal, 1837-1861

      Any hiker is familiar with Thoreau’s description, so too any sailor. Those who venture out into the world are bound to find it. It takes but little distance to make where we’ve been take on a bluish hue. The same can be said for where we’re going, if we look far enough ahead anyway. Life is only abundantly clear when we live in the present. ’tis this day that we must seize.

      Just as Thoreau documented his life through his journal entries and the books he wrote, so we may document our own journey from, toward. These breadcrumbs show where we are as much as where we’ve been. The act of writing every day, then publishing a bit of it, has changed each of us that travel this path. The lingering question isn’t when we’ll stop writing, but why it took us so long to begin? So much of our pre-writing lives will remain entombed within us when we pass one day—isn’t that a pity? The world doesn’t need to know all the details, but there are some tasty breadcrumbs growing stale back there on the trail.

      It’s essential to ask ourselves where we’ve come from to bring us here. So too to look at where we’re going. The act of writing about such things is contemplative and enlightening, states the world ought to linger in more than it currently does. I often get caught up in the excitement of tomorrow, and were it not for the daily ritual of writing I might miss now altogether. Life isn’t meant to be shaded in blue, but lived forthwith—with all the immediacy and urgency that word conveys. What would we write about tomorrow that reflects where we’ve been today? Steer towards that.

    • Crossing Bridges

      “When one door closes, fortune will usually open another.” — Fernando de Rojas

      We may navigate the world either closed within ourselves or open to all the possibilities it offers. If I’ve found any truth in my own winding road of a career (let alone life), it’s that opportunities always open up if we ourselves are open to opportunity. We ought to remember that we’re all connected, and by nurturing our connections we may build a bridge to many potential versions of our next self. The trick isn’t to cross the right bridge, the trick is to not burn the one we just crossed.

      When is a bridge too far to cross? Is it switching industries? Jumping to a competitor? Moving to another country or across the one we’re in? Putting up a sign for a political candidate the polar opposite of the one the neighbors have in their yard? In this connected world, I don’t believe we ever really reach a bridge too far so long as we live with character and purpose.

      When a bridge collapses it’s usually a case of one or both sides skimping on maintenance. Never let a bridge rust away from neglect. It doesn’t take much to maintain a connection, and one day we may wish to cross that bridge again. We’re all connected, aren’t we? At least when we want to be.

    • Action is Identity

      “Creators create. Action is identity. You become what you do. You don’t need permission from anybody to call yourself a writer, entrepreneur, or musician. You just need to write, build a business, or make music. You’ve got to do the verb to be the noun.” ― Chase Jarvis, Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life

      If action is identity, so too is inaction. What we say yes to and what we say no to are each a part of who we are. It’s inherently obvious, yet so easy to forget in the day-to-day demand for our time played to the soundtrack of the well-meaning who only want the best for us (thanks a bunch for that). We must pause a beat and get our bearings, then get back to the climb to our potential.

      If I could offer a bit of unsolicited advice to myself, to my children and anyone else paying attention, it’s to simply follow the call for as long as we can get away with it until we meet that person we envisioned. The only way forward is to do that thing. To write, to build, to make: action is our identity. It’s that vote for the person we wish to become that James Clear reminded us of.

      And so a bias towards action is the not-so-secret way to reach the promised land. Hitting the lottery is a fool’s game, hitting our stride by doing the things we know we need to do is how we live fully. We’ve been gifted with being born at a time and place where possibility flows. The people telling us that this is a time of scarcity are getting wealthy with words. There’s an audience for everything, even that thing that we’re telling ourselves to go be. Decide what to be and go be it, as the song goes.

      We ought to give ourselves a gift these last few months of the year. Do the creative work and put it out there for the world to see. Make a bold statement in who we will be today, and build on it in our following days should we blessed with enough of them. Tempus fugit: time flies. Do it now before it all slips away. If action is identity, just what will we think of ourselves if we don’t act now?

    • The Unexpected Guest

      Before you cross the street
      Take my hand
      Life is what happens to you
      While you’re busy making other plans
      — John Lennon, Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)

      This year will go down as the year of falls in our family. There have been a lot of them, and each brings with it the siren call of life happening, no matter what our plans were a moment before. We must then be resilient, knowing the falls will come, knowing life is all curveballs and fickleness.

      The time to build resilience has already passed when life happens. We ought to be ahead of it as best we can, that we may persevere and grow from the fall instead of spiraling down the slippery slope. It all comes down to how easily we can pivot when those other plans drop in for an unexpected visit.

      We see the future in each stumble that our aging elders make. In the big scheme of things, we aren’t that far off from fragility ourselves. All we can do is defer it as far into our future as we can. Life will happen sooner than expected, it’s the bounce back that gets harder. Each day is our opportunity to build resiliency and flexibility into our lives, that we may one day receive the unexpected guest as prepared as one can be in such moments.

    • What Our Situations Hand Us

      They say that these are not the best of times
      But they’re the only times I’ve ever known
      And I believe there is a time for meditation
      In cathedrals of our own
      Now I have seen that sad surrender in my lover’s eyes
      And I can only stand apart and sympathize
      For we are always what our situations hand us
      It’s either sadness or euphoria
      — Billy Joel, Summer, Highland Falls

      We would be naive to believe that every day would be sunshine and roses. We must build ourselves up to become resilient, accept our fate whatever it happens to be, and manage our situations as best we can. Amor fati indeed.

      If there’s a problem with the world today, it’s this feeling of entitlement and privilege that develops through comfort and distraction. Collectively we lose our capacity to manage the waves of challenges that life throws at us. We build resilience through stressors in our lives, just as we build perspective and empathy by getting out of our own heads and seeing what the rest of the world is dealing with. It turns out quite a lot, actually, and we aren’t the center of the universe after all.

      Philosophy isn’t an escape, it’s a set of tools that help us manage whatever situation we happen to be in now. It tempers us when things are going well, and keeps us afloat when we feel like we’re drowning in it all. It turns out there is a time for meditation, and there is that ultimate power to choose our response between stimulus and response, as Viktor Frankl pointed out to us.

      Somewhere between sadness and euphoria is our normal state. We go through life learning lessons, adding tools to our kit that we may use when we plummet into challenges or soar into bliss. We learn what we can control or influence and what simply happens no matter what we do. Amor fati is simply accepting it all for what it is. We are human after all.

    • Making Full Use of the Decade

      “Don’t try to be young. Just open your mind. Stay interested in stuff. There are so many things I won’t live long enough to find out about, but I’m still curious about them. You know people who are already saying, ‘I’m going to be 30—oh, what am I going to do?’ Well, use that decade! Use them all!”
 — Betty White

      If life is a series of time buckets, we ought to be making the most of each bucket we happen to reside in at this particular stage of our life. My entire life transformed from 10 to 20, and again from 20 to 30, and so on to now. The decade I’m in has been revelatory for the transformation it has brought to my life and for the speed with which it’s going by. It all flies by, we just have to make full use of the time.

      Each decade is a climb, and climbs are filled with setbacks, false summits, detours and exhausting ascents that seem to go on forever without relief. Alternatively, we might look at the decade as meandering through a maze, encountering all sorts of interesting or even terrifying paths, with a series of dead ends we must back away from, before we reach the other side. Whatever life means to us, it ought to be exhilarating and interesting as we begin each day, for this stage of our lives is rapidly coming to an end, and the next is just around the corner.

      The key is staying interested, as Betty White pointed out, and with our interest sparked getting fired up for the next. To explore what lies just beyond where we’ve been thus far is a lifetime adventure which we can all subscribe to. Be bold! This next decade will fly by too, and what will our memories be then? We must exploit each leap into the unknown for all it offers in order to live a full life.