Alexandersmap

    Blog

    • Life is Sweet

      They told you life is long
      Be thankful when it’s done
      Don’t ask for more
      You should be grateful
      But I tell you life is short
      Be thankful because before you know
      It will be over
      ‘Cause life is sweet
      And life is also very short
      Your life is sweet
      — Natalie Merchant, Life Is Sweet

      The very first time I saw the VH1 Storytellers video for this song I was getting dressed in a hotel room in California preparing for a busy day on a business trip. By all accounts it was a day of hopefulness and adventure. With the lyrics running in my head, it became the soundtrack forever associated with a tragic event in American history for me. That was the day that Columbine happened. I’ve been wrestling the song back from that event ever since.

      There are people who will go to great lengths to apply their own brand of miserable to the world. But life can be beautiful if we offer a different perspective. We may not have as many days, or as many good days, as we’d want out of life. But the gift is there for us to celebrate should we take the time to unwrap it.

      Returning from a business trip last night through Washington DC, flight again delayed and overbooked, as they all seem to be nowadays, I glanced at the television monitors showing rolling footage of another tragedy, this one the Titan submarine that imploded on a Titanic dive. We all know that life is short, and the untimely deaths of people making the most of their lives can be shocking. Perhaps that’s why everyone slows down when passing an accident scene, or tunes in when breaking news occurs. Each day offers the opportunity to affirm our beliefs in the darkest nature of humanity or the very best within us. What do we focus on in the moment?

      Memento mori. Carpe diem. We know the soundtrack. Dance with life while the music is playing.

    • All is Well

      “I conclude that all is well,” says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.
      All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols… Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. — Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

      Fidelity has two meanings, of course, but in the case of Sisyphus, it’s verism—we humans must embrace the entirety of life, not just the beautiful but warts and all. That means the drudgery, the pain, the elation and the wonder. As with Sisyphus, this is our curse, but also our purpose. We’re here to do what we can with the circumstances life delivers to us. Amor fati.

      There are a lot of people who would rather dabble in distraction and conspiracy theories, rather than face the rock and push. The realist finds clarity in verity and derives purpose in the push. Some days grind us to dust. Some days fill us with joy. Each is a gift we may not fully realize. Sometimes the gift is surviving to fight another day. So it is. We have but to react to it in the moment and find that bit of hope that keeps us going to we push again. All is well, friends.

    • The Story Continues

      “Nothing in my past life fills me with the vain desire to repeat it. I have never been anything more than a mere vestige, a simulacrum of myself. My past is everything I never managed to become. Not even the feelings associated with past moments make me nostalgic; what one feels is of the moment; once that is past the page turns and the story continues, but not the text.” — Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

      I confess that reading Pessoa is a struggle for me. I am a different person than he was, trying to engage with the world and not just be a witness to it. Still, I press on with his book, off and on, working to finish it one of these days. James Joyce said that life is too short to read a bad book, and I generally subscribe to that theory. The thing is, I don’t believe that The Book of Disquiet is a bad book, it’s just not a book that resonates with me at this moment. Yet here I am, quoting it anyway, precisely because some of what he writes does indeed resonate with me. Perhaps that’s enough in the end.

      If you could, would you repeat a chapter of your life? When you think back on who you were at the time, would you do it again? In a life well-lived I should think you’d consider it for a beat or two. I might go back to a time of peak fitness and all the time in the world. But what is the trade-off? Would you do it all again the same way, or would you stray off the path into something different? It’s easy to remember the best of ourselves, but what of the worst?

      Give me today, thank you. Give me the next chapter of this story, not the earlier chapters that merely set the stage for who I’ve become. There’s nothing to the past but faded memories and the things that got away from us. We can only do something meaningful with today, building on the momentum that brought us here. Life is a progression, not a regression. Our best days may yet be ahead of us.

    • The Traveling Stoic Meets a Flight Delay

      “Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.” — Henry Miller

      There’s no better time to practice stoicism than during business travel using the uniquely out-of-your-own-control limbo of domestic flights. Short delays become long delays, longer delays become cancellations, soon you begin to feel that creeping realization that we’re all just pawns on a chessboard. Who dreamed up this hellscape anyway?

      Amor fati. This is the moment when a deep breath and stepping outside ourselves clarifies. After all, enjoying life, even the grind of travel going badly, begins with knowing it’s all a game. If the why isn’t compelling enough to stay in this particular game, change the game. This applies equally well to the long term as the short. Life is altogether too brief to linger longer than absolutely necessary in the inconsequential.

      Walking helps more than visiting the bar. Seeing how many steps you can get in pulling your carry-on throughout the limits the airport sets for you is a more productive game than sampling the drink menu. Seeing how other people react to the same challenges you’re presented with is interesting, but who wants to live constantly comparing yourself to others? It’s better to take a walk, removing yourself entirely from that part of the chessboard to see how the game is going elsewhere. This offers an immediate change of state, both in what you pay attention to and the changes a bit of exercise offers.

      The things you see in an airport terminal when you have the time to wander can be fascinating…. Or at least interesting enough to make you forget where you could have been otherwise. The thing is, we are here, now, in whatever circumstances life throws at us. So buckle up and enjoy the ride.

    • The Magic of Applied Attention

      “We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.” — Charles Bukowski

      There is a Persian lime tree growing in a large pot on the sunny deck behind my house. This spring there were more than a hundred blossoms on this tree, each developing into tiny fruit that promised a bumper crop of limes. But after a particularly angry thunder storm and torrential downpour dozens of those tiny fruits scattered the deck, their tart potential over before they really began. While mourning the loss of so may limes, I took solace in the dozens of fruit still developing on the tree. It seems the tree had culled itself that it might focus on the ripe potential of the fruit that remained.

      We each bear so much in our lifetime, holding on to things we ought to shed to focus on the essential few. It’s okay to let go of the trivial, that we might nurture the truly important things in our lives. Letting go is painful, but not as painful as diminishing our best work by carrying more than we should.

      Little by little,
      as you left their voice behind,
      the stars began to burn
      through the sheets of clouds,
      and there was a new voice
      which you slowly
      recognized as your own,
      that kept you company
      as you strode deeper and deeper
      into the world,
      determined to do
      the only thing you could do —
      determined to save
      the only life that you could save.
      — Mary Oliver, The Journey

      The night after the thunderstorm, I spent an evening with friends, throwing axes at a target drawn on a wooden wall and building fragile wooden castles in the air (Jenga). There is a unique strategy for each, naturally, being so very different from each other in practice. But there are also similarities. Besides each pursuit using wood, it was the act of applied attention that is common to both. To be good at either you must simply get out of your own head and focus on successfully completing the task at hand. One might utilize this in every pursuit, from writing to navigating any of the essential tasks that fill one’s day.

      We ought to cherish our time together, forgetting the trivial affronts that life throws at us. We ought to find our own voice in a world full of people waiting for us to shut up that they may say something clever. We ought to direct our attention inward, to the ripe potential of our own ideas, calling us to truth and clarity. We know, deep down, that we won’t survive this, but if we give ourselves the time to focus, we may just yet produce something substantial anyway.

    • On Father’s Day

      Father’s Day means something different when you’re a father. You learn to view your own father(s) through a different lens. After all, parenthood and marriage change us, and how we react to such changes has a profound impact on everyone within the nuclear family. Most would agree that to sire children is the easy part, but it doesn’t make one a father. You have to earn that part through presence and perseverance.

      My bride points out that Mother’s Day is not for the person who is the mother, but for that person’s mother. It surely applies to fathers as well. When you’re a parent, it never should be about you, only those you care for and protect. Nobody said it would be easy, let alone about us. It’s never really been about us anyway. Parenthood teaches this more than anything. Living for others makes us good humans, not just good parents, don’t you think?

      My own fathers, and I count two as fathers, weren’t fully ready for the role but did the best they could with the opportunity. I try to honor the best in both of them in my interactions with others, especially my own children. You become aware that many don’t rise to meet the role, and appreciate those who do. The ego truly is the enemy when it comes to being a great father. You know one when you meet one, and do what you can to be one.

      Father’s Day means something entirely different when your father slips away from you. Dementia, death, obligation or indifference are all forms of slipping away. Eventually something pulls our fathers away from us. Once you’ve experienced this, being fully present with our fathers while we have the opportunity seems the only way to truly honor and thank them for being a part of our lives.

      Happy Father’s Day.

    • Accumulated Value

      “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” — George Bernard Shaw

      “Those were steps for me, and I have climbed up over them: to that end I had to pass over them. Yet they thought that I wanted to retire on them.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

      There are times when doing nothing seems better than stumbling along making one mistake after another. There are times when standing still seems far more attractive than sliding sideways off the cliff. We are progressing one step at a time, even as some of those steps feel like a plateau. What are we reaching for but some better version of ourselves?

      As we grow and acquire skills and knowledge we become more useful. Our usefulness to others is a trade-off of sorts, a curriculum vitae of accumulated value used to trade our time and applied energy to the greater good, or at least a paycheck and a place in the room where it happens. But that accumulated value also applies to our usefulness to ourselves. We reach our potential through the climb.

      I spoke with an old college friend recently. Conversations with people you haven’t seen in a long time turn into a gap analysis: What have you done in the time between then and now? Relationships, children, jobs, affiliations, beliefs and habits all fill the gap, determining who we become. Some people grow apart, some grow together. Life is a game of place and time, yet we still have a say in who we might be. The thing is, a conversation like that allows us to see the gap in ourselves too. Those steps passed over summarized as growth and setbacks, lessons learned or missed, all bringing us here.

      Do we like the view? We must remember that we’re simply passing over another step. It’s helpful to ask what value we’re accumulating in this present state, and how that might ease our ascent to the next. For the journey continues this day.

    • Only Action Satiates

      “Nothing comes merely by thinking about it.” — John Wanamaker

      When I was just starting out in my career I began collecting books that purported to show the way. We’re all trying to figure out the way, aren’t we? Bold titles like Unlimited Power, Maximum Achievement, The Magic of Thinking Big and Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive all promised the secrets to a bigger life. I still keep these books on a shelf as a reminder to myself that words in a book don’t carry you to your dreams, actually doing the work does.

      We live in a world that rewards decisive action. Fortune favors the bold, as the saying goes. But what we boldly act upon matters a great deal. Choose wisely. Plan the work and then work the plan… so much advice thrown at us in this lifetime.

      We know that purpose and productivity go hand-in-hand. Figuring out the former is essential to being effectively engaged in the latter. But all this thinking about it is detrimental to getting things done at all. We must begin. We must produce something and ship it, learn from that experience and begin again. Rinse and repeat. Having a bias towards action isn’t a call to run around in circles, it’s a call to stop planning to have a great life and get to it already. For there is no tomorrow.

      All this italicized word soup points to the script that runs in one’s head when you spend a career reading about how to be successful. There’s nothing wrong with a clever sound bite if it runs in your head as you do the work that leads to where you want to be. Most self-help books are formulaic, written by people trying to capture financial success for themselves by showing you the secrets only they seem to know. If you’ve read one you’ve read them all.

      Stop searching for the formula for success and develop and reinforce positive habits. Read great literature instead of formula books. Find a fitness routine that you can use for a lifetime. Be the person who brings people together instead of the person climbing over the dreams of others in a reach for the big prize. Write things down and track your progress, and learn to pivot when you see the course is wrong. And yes, take action every day towards the attainment of meaningful objectives at the expense of the trivial pursuits life dangles in front of you.

      Success isn’t a formula, it’s a meandering path of figuring things out one day at a time. We aren’t here to merely think about where we ought to go, we’re here to do something with our time. Success word soup isn’t very filling at all—only action satiates.

    • On Nature and Being… Courageous

      “The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.”

      “If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also, you will have betrayed your community in failing to make your contribution.” — Rollo May, The Courage to Create

      We are humans because we stray beyond nature to decide what to be, and, if we’re truly bold and courageous, perhaps we may even go be it. Just as a tree or a cat are influenced by their environment, determining to a great extent what they become, we too are influenced by the circle we’re rooted in. Yet we have free will and the opportunity to step out of that circle. This is the very nature of being human.

      We don’t always get to choose whether we can step out of our circle. Beliefs and courage alone only determine how we react to our environment, not what the outcome is. Persistence and luck have a say in the matter too. Viktor Frankl survived as much because he was lucky as because he courageously chose how to react to the stimulus he was presented with. The universe has a say in everything, but we have an opportunity to improve our odds by rising to meet the best version of ourselves under the circumstances.

      “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
      ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

      Thankfully, most of us will never face the horrors Frankl faced. Instead we face our own demons, relentlessly chipping away at our foundation, eroding confidence and commitment. This betraying of ourselves is the greatest crime of our lifetime, holding us in circles of our own making. Being bold in the pursuit of who we are isn’t an act of defiance, it’s a lifeline.

      The thing is, we all hear the call of what to be, even if we don’t always know what that looks like. If there’s one thing I’d tell anyone looking for answers, it’s that a “successful” person doesn’t have all the answers either, they only have momentum. We’re all just figuring things out as we go. We might have a direction, we might even have a plan, but nothing is realized without action and momentum. The lesson? Keep pushing the flywheel. Just make sure it’s the flywheel we want to be pushing, because momentum works for us and against us.

      Courage is the urgency of identity, acted upon. There’s nothing more tragic than a person questioning their identity and purpose and holding themselves back from a bold leap. We have an imperative to live as best we can, and contribute our verse. We must summon the courage to step into who we might become, however small a step that might be, and then step further still.

    • The World Lies Waiting

      “Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.“ — Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

      “The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not.” — Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

      When those who have achieved mastery in their craft leave this world, what are we to do but reflect on their work? But something else stirs in their passing: Memento mori. A whispered reminder that we too will slip away one day, work and dreams of what might be be damned. It’s now or never, friend. Carpe diem.

      This is the urgency of living. This is the call to produce that which must be finished in our time. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. But the world deals in reality, not dreams. We must realize the best in us through our actions.

      We must make the most of our days.