Alexandersmap

    Blog

    • We Write to Share

      Every little bit of writing counts, I should think. This post, dropped much later in the day than the norm, ought to count just as much as the one dropped before the sunrise. Yet it feels different. Writing is as much about ritual as it is about content. We seek the truth in our words either way, but it feels more world-weary towards the end of the day. I think most optimists are morning people. The realists and pessimists tend to sleep in, as if not wanting to face the day.

      We write to share. It doesn’t matter if it’s perfect, it never will be. All that matters is publishing and living to fight another day. It doesn’t matter that we’re nodding off from too much food and drink and work for one day. All that matters is clicking publish and feeling like we didn’t let ourselves down today. We don’t half-ass the work, but we do the best we can given the circumstances.

      Today’s circumstances call for a quick post and an optimistic nod to the future. I’ll soon tackle more chronicles of figuring things out and stumbling upon beauty. For now, I’ll simply celebrate shipping against all odds.

    • Coming to Our Senses

      “Slow down and taste and smell and hear, and let your senses come alive. If you want a royal road to mysticism, sit down quietly and listen to all the sounds around you. You do not focus on any one sound; you try to hear them all. Oh, you’ll see the miracles that happen to you when your senses come unclogged.” — Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      The world wants us to focus on it. It calls to us constantly. Sure, those notifications on our phones and smart watches and other electronics are designed to capture our attention. Our to-do lists grow relentlessly longer. The demand for our attention has never been greater.

      There’s nothing wrong with letting it all drift away.

      Unclogging our senses brings us to them. Focus intently on a task at hand, or nothing at all. Recognize what matters when we get out and listen to nature, or our own voice. Walking is the great sifter of souls, shaking the nagging little things away. Why don’t we walk more?

      We think we’re too busy.

      We have so much noise in our lives that we don’t hear our own voice. We must sift it all away and find what really speaks to us. What is a better use of our time than listening to our own calling and taking meaningful action towards change? We can’t set our compass if we don’t step out into the world and find out where we are right now.

    • I Saw Tranquility

      “Deep in the forest there is something sacred that exists without a perceptible function. This is the central core, the navel of the world, and I want to return to that place.” — Hayao Miyazaki

      Last month I walked through a forest with several coworkers on a group hike. One of them commented that the naked trees were spooky and reminded him of The Blair Witch Project. I looked around and saw something completely different. And two days later I doubled down on that place and hiked alone in the dark before dawn with a failing headlamp. The things we do for love.

      So much of the world is what we perceive it to be. I may find tranquility in a stand of trees, someone else sees a buildable lot and the trees themselves as a commodity to haul off to the mill. America was built on such vision. Thankfully there are people who saw the land as something timeless and preserved it. Were we to level every forest where would we ever find ourselves?

      The trees are beginning to leaf out in the Northern Hemisphere, transforming the naked landscape. Soon the forest will hide things that are apparent in colder months. Leaves bring deep shade and mystery to the forest. Often what we see appears distinctly different from one person to another. What the forest is really showing us is not itself, but our own nature. My hiking friend that day saw horror in the naked forest. I saw tranquility.

    • The Value of Work

      “Understand the superior value of getting what you want through hard work.” — @robertgreene

      Want a bit of perspective on work? Spend a weekend digging holes for fence posts, raking the yard, hauling bags of cement or other manual labor. That was my weekend, and I’m grateful for the reminder of what can be done with applied effort. But you sure feel it the next day. Thinking on your feet and or tapping on a keyboard can be pretty stressful, but usually your whole body doesn’t ache the next morning.

      The thing is, I enjoyed the manual labor as much as I enjoy writing or helping people solve problems in their business. Paying a little sweat equity now and then is good for the soul. Our bodies weren’t designed to sit on a chair in front of a monitor all day. Getting out and doing what needs to be done offers a chance to transform a small piece of our world.

      Work is closing the gap between current state and desired state with deliberate action. It’s not office politics or how much money you make or dress code or how long your commute is, these are job-related nuances that attract or detract from the real purpose. To make a meaningful contribution for the collective good. That might be digging holes for fence posts, or it might be building a presentation for a meeting, but we ought to add value to it through our effort.

      Unhappy with the gap between here and a desired state? We don’t always want to hear it, but the answer is often simple. Get to work.

    • The “What’s Our Fire” Exam

      “Proper examination should ruin the life that you’re currently living. It should cause you to leave relationships. It should cause you to reestablish boundaries with family members and with colleagues. It should cause you to quit your job.” — @naval

      We march through our day-to-day life without serious thought about the big picture. What really matters to us, and are we moving towards that? Sometimes examination tells us we’re on the right track, sometimes we find more smoke than fire. But we ought to sort out what’s going on either way.

      Examination doesn’t invite trouble, it offers a lifeline. We get in the habit of saying things that won’t rock the boat. I’d suggest that the boat ought to be rocked now and then. There’s nothing wrong with a spring cleaning for the soul. Purge all those pent-up resentments and simmering anger and give them air to breath. They’ll either ignite into a bonfire or smother for lack of fuel. But we can’t just live every day ignoring the growing inferno without being burned alive from the inside-out.

      Socrates famously said that “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Are we meant to be a torch or merely kindling for someone else’s dreams? Think of the things that we accept in our life that are frivolous and inconsequential on the surface, and worse, distract us from the things that might be life-changing given the chance. The thing that makes Naval’s statement incendiary is that we may find we’ve just been kindling all along. Isn’t it fair to ask, what is our fire, anyway?

    • Coffee Indebtedness

      How do you earn your first cup of coffee in the morning? Or do you set the table for your day with that first cuppa, creating a debt that must be paid back with sweat equity? I’ve always used the latter process with coffee, but lately I’ve been thinking that maybe it ought to be the former.

      Maybe that’s the trick, simply get a good workout in right off the bat, no wasting time. Get right to the tough stuff. Get all Jocco Willink about it and take a picture of my watch and sweaty workout gear. Not today, mind you, but someday when I don’t need this first cup quite so much as I do now.

      Habits are funny things. We begin our day with ritual, we end our day with ritual, and in between is a chaotic mix of reaction and routine. Where do you stick your workout? How about your writing? And what of that immersive reading? Just what makes a day successful for you anyway?

      All these questions come to mind with that first cup of coffee. By the second cup the day is underway, the writing is at least partially complete. The first boxes are checked on that to-do list. But there’s still that nagging question lingering in the back of your mind… have I paid back that debt to my coffee yet?

    • Chickadee Advice

      In the golden hour before the dawn the black-capped chickadees talked amongst themselves, adding more and more high-pitched “dee-dee-dee’s” to their song the closer I walk to them. I’m the intruding loner early in the morning and this is their warning to each other. I may live here, but this isn’t my backyard—it’s always belonged to the birds since the time of dinosaurs. I’m just the latest affront to their ritual. Knowing my place, I behave and sit still to take stock of the waking world around me, assessing the frenzied week and contemplating the week ahead. A bit of stillness listening to chickadees is welcome.

      We choose what to pay attention to. Away from the din of urgency and outrage we might hear our own voice. We choose how we’ll react to whatever happens in our days. Each quiet morning offers a sabbatical of sorts. We need a bit of stillness now and then. A measure of calm between our storms to set the sails for what comes next. In stillness we decide what to do and be next.

      In the hushed quiet hour before the sunrise, those dee-dee-dee’s say something entirely different to us humans, if we’ll listen carefully to the call we’ll hear our own voice: Decide what you’ll be, be, be! Go on and see, see, see!

    • The Meaningful Routine

      Routine is yet another English word with a couple of meanings. It can work in your favor, a ritual of habits that get you through your day in productive fashion. And it can be used to evoke the commonplace (“Yet another routine day”). As with words like habits and ritual and discipline, your routine is what you make of it. Surely there are a whole lot of self-help gurus who love to dole out healthy portions of advice on routine. But getting beyond the transformational power of routine as a magical shortcut to all of your dreams (ack), what is it to you and me?

      “Perfection is a theory. You cannot be a perfect human being, perfect artist. You cannot be a perfect husband, you cannot be a perfect father probably and probably I am not. But go through your daily routine with hope you will be a little better in all respects, and do something meaningful” — Mikhail Baryshnikov

      I like Baryshnikov’s take on routine. Let’s not make more of it than we should, but recognize that the things we do daily matter in bringing us to somewhere more meaningful than where we began the day. Each day is another step towards better. Each step is part of our routine. Simple, right?

      Routine is on my mind yet again, because some of mine are working really well, but others aren’t getting established to the level that they must. A bit more emphasis on fitness would be beneficial, but it gets lost in the shuffle. Writing the blog is a cornerstone activity, but writing that potentially great novel is more sporadic. If we are what we repeatedly do, then it follows that we won’t become what we consistently aren’t doing.

      All this speaks to the need to assess our routines and make changes to reflect that new compass heading we want to follow. Without getting all self-helpy, routines are both our greatest ally and our greatest enemy. That makes what we do with our routine… meaningful.

    • Feed the Spark

      “Again, we are daily forced to choose between depression and anxiety. Depression results from the wounding of the individuation imperative; anxiety results from moving forward into the unknown. That path of anxiety is necessary because therein lies the hope of the person to more nearly become an individual. My analyst once said to me, “You must make your fears your agenda.” When we do take on that agenda, for all the anxiety engendered, we feel better because we know we are living in ‘bonne foi’ [good faith] with ourselves. Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the perception that some things are more important to us than what we fear.” ― James Hollis, Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places

      James Hollis challenges the stories we tell ourselves to stay on course. We tell ourselves to stick with the plan, to not deviate into dalliances of adventure and irresponsibility, to do what must be done… but is that living in good faith—bonne foi—with our hopes and dreams? What matters most to us anyway?

      The thing is, we each have the promises we make to ourselves about what we’ll do when we get past whatever responsibility has a hold of us at the present moment. Pretty stories about career path and mortgages and obligations. Les mensonges que nous nous disons de continuer.

      We do a disservice to ourselves by limiting ourselves to what feels comfortable. We know we ought to do more and yet hold ourselves back for reasons that feel just real enough in the moment to justify the safe route. We slowly extinguish our life force for the mundane and routine. What a depressing agenda that is.

      Alternatively, we might choose to feed the spark:

      You, sent out beyond your recall,
      go to the limits of your longing.
      Embody me.
      Flare up like a flame
      and make big shadows I can move in.
      — Rainer Maria Rilke, Go to the Limits of Your Longing

      There’s no time to waste, we must be the arsonist with the deadwood in our soul. We must feel the fear of the unknown and do it anyway. We must embrace the imperative to reach our potential while there’s still time. Some things are more important than what we fear.

    • Wanting Wild

      “I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be. It’s impossible not to remember wild and want it back.” — Mary Oliver, Green, Green is My Sister’s House

      If we’re lucky, we never really grow up, we just get a bit more creative with our diversions. I used to crave responsibility, now I try to build enough flexibility in my schedule to chase waterfalls. Intense curiosity about the world around us is the key. Life is a quest, after all, adulting be damned. What are we wild things to do but seek adventure where we might find it?

      “In conclusion, it appears that nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in distant countries.” ― Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle

      Adventure is easier when you’re on the road. You see things all the time that stir your soul. It’s much harder when you’re working in an office or sheltered in place at home. If we don’t venture out into the world we’ll never find out what we’ve been missing. Charles Darwin found adventure on the other side of the world, Henry David Thoreau found it a short walk from his bed. Adventure isn’t about how far you go, it’s about getting out of your own shell. What is a shell but a prison of our own making?

      Wild is always stirring about inside of us. We must want it back in our lives enough to seek it. The world will always ask for everything we’ve got. We ought to be the wild thing that rebels against that and turns towards adventure instead.