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    • Facing Reality

      “Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.” – Søren Kierkegaard

      There’s no doubt that, for most of us, reality is a handy place to anchor. We all must face the reality of living in a world that doesn’t go out of its way to cater to us. And yet, we all know people who anchor themselves to delusional stories instead of reality.

      We ought to fully experience all that life has to offer, but we all see things we’d rather not include in our lives. Mass shootings (welcome to America!), war, racism, toxic television… who wants any of that crap to be part of our reality? Still, we must face it just the same if we’re ever going to transcend it.

      We have a hand in the reality we live in. We don’t have to accept all that we experience, but we must acknowledge it and choose how we react. Life has its problems, but it also has its fair share of wonder.

      I wonder, what do we dwell on?

    • Shall We Sparkle?

      “The last stars will die out 120 trillion years from now (at most) followed by 10^106 years of just black holes.
      Condensed, that’s like the universe starting with 1 second of stars and then a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion years of just black holes.
      Stars are basically the immediate after-effects of the Big Bang. A one-second sizzle of brightness before settling into an essentially endless era of darkness.
      We live in that one bright second.”
      — Tim Urban (@waitbutwhy)

      When we think of our infinitesimal smallness in this context, in relation to the stars and the eventual endless darkness of the universe, we might feel a bit overwhelmed by it. We might feel existence itself is pointless in the vast emptiness to follow… this. Then again, we might celebrate the spark of time we’ve all collectively lived in—you and me and every human who ever existed or ever will in a brief spark of magnificent light. Doesn’t that feel a bit more extraordinary?

      If infinity is endless darkness, and we aren’t currently residing in said infinity just yet, we ought to settle into the moment and savor it. We think we’ll live forever. Well, forever is somewhere beyond that 120 trillion years, isn’t it? Forever is folly. The only thing that matters is this instant.

      Shall we sparkle?

    • Love and Limes

      In the empire of the senses
      You’re the queen of all you survey
      All the cities all the nation
      Everything that falls your way
      There is a deeper world than this
      That you don’t understand
      There is a deeper world that this
      Tugging at your hand
      Every ripple on the ocean
      Every leaf on every tree
      Every sand dune in the desert
      Every power we never see
      There is a deeper wave than this
      Swelling in the world
      — Sting, Love Is the Seventh Wave

      We’re aware of the hate-mongers pitching their mantra of fear and scarcity and race theory. We’re aware of wars and desperation and greed even as we wake in relative peace, paying for the sins of the world with higher supply chain prices and a distinct and distressing shortage of limes due to climate change and drug cartels playing games. What are we to do in this scenario? Hoard? Buy more ammunition and higher fences?

      Maybe the answer is to be better ambassadors of truth and understanding. To embrace our community, warts and all, and make something of it. To go out into the world and embrace cultures distinctly different from our own and show them that we’re not as bad as what they’ve heard about us either. Maybe we ought to double down on love and respect.

      The carefully curated news washes over us, wave after unrelenting wave. We either accept their view of the world or we make one of our own. They say that the seventh wave is the largest of all, the one that surfers seek out and sailors watch out for. We might think of it as the wave that will wipe us all out or the wave that will wash away all the madness in the world. I guess the answer lies in which wave has the most mass and momentum as it heads for the beach.

      Creative optimism and a healthy dose of love ought to trump hate and madness. When life gives you lemons make lemonade. When it gives you limes make margaritas. But let’s stop all this bickering and enjoy a drink together. For we have work to do.

    • How Much Alive

      “It matters not where or how far you travel—the farther commonly the worse—but how much alive you are.” — Henry David Thoreau

      Sitting outside, listening to birdsong in the magic hour before the world shook the cobwebs off, I watched a couple of large birds fluttering tree-to-tree. I wondered at them, thinking perhaps pileated woodpeckers who tend to behave this way, or maybe a couple of young turkeys waking up from their roost. Definitely not hawks on the hunt. Black and white with a bit of duck-like appearance to them, I quickly exhausted my list of possibilities and remained mystified. The binoculars and camera remained safely in the house where they offered the least amount of help in the moment. So I quietly thanked them for their visit and released them from my attention as they worked their way away from my own perch. I may find out yet who my visitors were, but it wasn’t our moment for a proper introduction.

      We aren’t meant to know everything, but we ought to be curious. We all seek answers in this world. We climb to high summits, fly to faraway places, seek solace in the new. Shouldn’t we celebrate the world as it comes to us? Why do we feel compelled to fly across the globe? Because we know it’s out there, and like those birds, once we’re aware of that fact we want to know a bit more about it.

      Thoreau traveled too, he just wasn’t collecting frequent flyer miles or navigating security lines. He sought faraway places relative to his time and place, traveling to Cape Cod and Maine and paddling down the Concord and then up the Merrimack Rivers. He sought what was just out of reach just as we do. Credit the pace of travel if you will, but he didn’t postpone his aliveness for when he arrived at his destination, he encountered it in each moment along the way. Shouldn’t we do the same?

    • Get Outside

      If you can’t decide what you want to do
      If you can’t stand what people say to you
      If you can’t see when your eyes are open wide
      If you ask yourself what your doing and there’s no reply
      Get outside
      — Robert Palmer, Get Outside

      Sometimes you reach the end of the day and you don’t know what you’ve done with it. You check the boxes, have the conversations, do the work… and everything seems off anyway. These are days to get outside and feel the world.

      Yesterday, after entirely too much madness in my life, I walked outside to seek answers in the blooming lilacs. Like so many flowering woody plants their blooms are here today, gone tomorrow. Yet their fragrance is one of the most familiar of all. They make their mark on the world and recede from the scene as summer heat approaches.

      I want to tell them not to go. Stick around a bit longer. But of course this isn’t the way the world works. The lilacs remind us not to blink. It’s now or never, friend. Get outside and linger with them before your opportunity is gone. How many more lilac seasons do we have left in us anyway? We throw out our days as if our account is unlimited.

      Why do we spend so much of our time indoors when the world whispers to us in this way? We ought to be more present with the larger world. We ought to embrace the changes that wash over us whether we want to pay attention or not.

      The lilacs will surely return again next year—but will we be here to enjoy them? To every thing there is a season. The future is a fool’s game. Our moment is now. Get outside and find it.

    • Where Deep Roots Grow

      From the bottom of my heart
      Off the coast of Carolina
      After one or two false starts
      I believe we found our stride
      And the walls that won’t come down
      We can decorate or climb or find some way to get around
      Cause I’m still on your side
      From the bottom of my heart
      — Jimmy Buffett, Coast of Carolina

      Long-term relationships are about finding the space to grow together. We’ve all seen examples of couples who find a way to make things work because they want to make it work. We’ve seen the opposite too. The thing about walls is they’re always there—we either find a way around them or we let them close us off from the people who are most important for us.

      Relationships work when we break down barriers. They fall apart when we let the barriers define the relationship. None of us has to think too long about a friendship or romantic relationship that suffered from one or both parties seeing the differences of opinion but not the way around it. Nothing grows very well in a tight box.

      We live in a world that amplifies our differences. What might grow if we knocked down a few walls instead of throwing up more? The very question prompts a new level of thinking, doesn’t it? Thinking in possibilities instead of limitations opens us up for deeper relationships, wider experiences, and stronger bonds.

      It brings us to a place where deep roots grow.

    • Gone From My Sight

      I am standing upon the seashore.
      A ship at my side spreads her white
      sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean.

      She is an object of beauty and strength.
      I stand and watch her until at length
      she hangs like a speck of white cloud
      just where the sea and sky come
      to mingle with each other.

      Then, someone at my side says;
      “There, she is gone!”

      “Gone where?”
      Gone from my sight. That is all.
      She is just as large in mast and hull
      and spar as she was when she left my side
      and she is just as able to bear her
      load of living freight to her destined port.
      Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

      And just at the moment when someone
      at my side says, “There, she is gone!”
      There are other eyes watching her coming,
      and other voices ready to take up the glad shout;
      “Here she comes!”
      And that is dying.
      — Henry Van Dyke, I Am Standing Upon The Seashore

      When we lose someone, what do we miss the most? Their physical presence? Or their fresh perspective? They may always be with us, even without these things, but these things matter too. They matter deeply.

      When we lose someone we lose the essence of that person in our lives. Yet we still feel them with us. It’s not our time to sail off over that horizon. But we wonder at just what’s over it just the same.

      In time…

    • Something Mighty and Sublime

      Rest not!
      Life is sweeping by
      go and dare before you die.
      Something mighty and sublime,
      leave behind to conquer time.
      — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

      Goethe once wrestled with the desire to accomplish great things while enjoying the comforts of a bourgeois lifestyle. By all accounts he succeeded in transcending the ordinary with his writing. And what of us? Are we so comfortable in our domestic lifestyle that we fail to seize the moment? Are we doomed to be the forgotten masses or will we create something mighty and sublime in our time?

      These are grandiose expectations for a lifetime. Who are we to rock the boat when there’s such good sailing? We ask of life what we will, it hands back harsh unfairness and tempting distractions and entertaining beguilements that quickly rob us of the one thing that matters most: time. What of it? Plenty of people have transcended all of these things and more. The only thing we can control is our focus and consistent effort towards the achievement of our hopes and dreams.

      “Do or do not. There is no try.” — Yoda

      There’s no judgement in these words, just the facts. We have our time and then it will be gone, intentions be damned. We must ask ourselves, in the quiet moments of truth, what is it we wish to do before it all ends? Rest not! Get to it already.

    • Roots and the Road

      “Be good and you’ll be lonesome.” — Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

      I’ve had this quote in my mind for a decade or two, floating about in the back of my brain. It sneaks back to the front now and then, mostly as a taunt to be more adventurous. Some may say I don’t need a prompt like that.

      A healthy dose of mischief leads us into all sorts of adventure. A healthy sense of place leads us to a life of meaning. There’s a happy medium somewhere in between. We ought to be a bit adventurous, but ought to have something that grounds us too. How we weigh that out is different for each of us. We’re never really lonesome when we’re running towards something.

      Last weekend Twain’s words drifted back front and center as I walked through a local greenhouse. It comes down to whether to plant tomatoes. If I plant them this year it signals I’m locked in to this place for at least another season. If I forgo the tomatoes, you might say I’m free to roam.

      Life is more complicated than that. We aren’t locked into a life by the crops we plant. But it sure feels like you’re rooting yourself to that plot of land while you’re planting them. That chicken manure sure smells a lot like commitment when you’ve caught the adventure bug.

      Still, I do love a good tomato.

    • Time for a Friendly Visit

      When a friend calls to me from the road
      And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
      I don’t stand still and look around
      On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
      And shout from where I am, What is it?
      No, not as there is a time to talk.
      I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
      Blade-end up and five feet tall,
      And plod: I go up to the stone wall
      For a friendly visit.
      — Robert Frost, A Time to Talk

      Imagine the audacity of pressing deadlines and the urgency of the moment pulling us away from what is most important. And we willingly do it, thinking there will be another time when we’re less busy and feeling less obliged to do what clearly must get done. Where do we best spend our time, if not for furthering relationships with our fellow time-travelers?

      We hear about rampant depression and a longing for something tangible. There’s nothing tangible in the comments section of those popular social media platforms. We must meet each other face-to-face and sort out the world together, or together we’ll spiral deeper into chaos. To do this requires nothing more than meeting halfway. Doesn’t that idea feel as antiquated as the horse in Frost’s poem? Yet it remains the obvious answer to the problems of the world: diplomacy, compromise, mutual respect and understanding. These aren’t signs of weakness, in fact just the opposite: they betray inner character and a measure of emotional development.

      We are the diplomats, you and me. We walk across the minefield of distrust and find common ground. Seeking first to understand, and then to be understood. There’s nothing easy about this in a world that rewards mic drops and jaw-dropping tweets, but the world has always been divided between those who make all the noise and those who quietly keep things from falling apart.

      Imagine if we all simply stopped shouting and began to listen instead?