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    • Meet Me on Common Ground

      Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
      and rightdoing there is a field.
      I’ll meet you there.

      When the soul lies down in that grass
      the world is too full to talk about.
      — Rumi

      There’s no secret that the world feels more divisive, more aligned against the perceived slights, threats or opinions of another group. But then you read a Rumi poem and see that none of this is new. The divisions are merely perceptions, a game of king of the hill gone wrong.

      It’s so much harder to meet halfway when the stakes feel so high. To find the things that we have in common, the things that unite us in this fragile dance with infinity. We’re all in this together, whether we like it or not.

      Compromise is perceived as weakness by some people on the edges. Their strength, if you want to call it that, comes from the extreme. What do you do with such people? It’s easy to say we’ll meet halfway, but what do you do when you get there and they haven’t budged? Do you cross that halfway line and step to the other side? I think you have to agree to disagree on the point of contention and find another place to meet. We must find common ground. For it’s always there if you look for it.

      The real power lies in numbers. At the heart of it, we’re all humans, dancing alone on the edge of the abyss. Connection is all we have to hold this all together. Step away from the edge, meet me halfway. Maybe not on everything, but the most important thing. Our shared humanity.

    • Dancing to Your Own Beat

      “What and how much had I lost by trying to do what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?” – Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

      You know the kind of dancing I avoid the most? The kind where everyone gets up and does the same thing in a coordinated way. The Hussle, the Electric Slide, the Macarena… you get the idea. And it’s not because I’m especially magnificent doing my own dance moves. I’m a Clydesdale dancing amongst Fillies out there. But I find the group participation dances to be a great time to get another drink.

      We dance with the shortness of life, conforming as we must because we’re social beings and dependent on one another to survive and thrive. But why should we fall in line when we can follow our own path? Why do what’s expected of us in this brief spark of independence before we rejoin infinity?

      The more I recognize the chafing between expectations and personal direction, the more I encourage others to break free and dance to their own beat themselves. Not a celebration of reckless behavior (you can’t be swinging around like a wild man on the dance floor), but a nod to find your own rhythm and way of expressing it. We’ve all lost so much time already, haven’t we? Get out there and dance already. But do it in your own way.

    • Relegating Social Media to the Shelf

      I’ve been actively using a strategy of keeping the things that draw my attention the most just out of reach. I first started doing this with Facebook, or Meta, or whatever they fancy themselves as now. I deleted the app off my phone and only have it on an old iPad that sits quietly amongst some old notebooks on a shelf. I don’t take it with me anywhere, it just sits there like a book on the shelf that I refer to now and then. And two months later I find I don’t think about that platform very often at all.

      Surely I’m missing some posts, some clever banter and the addictive content they recommend to you to keep you on their platform as long as possible. But I don’t have a fear of missing out. Instead I have a quiet mind that can focus on other things. When I do think about it, I’ll pop on, wish people a belated happy birthday, like a few posts and get out of Dodge as quickly as possible. Living with social media in such a way seems to work well.

      It’s worked so well, in fact, that I’ve just done it with Twitter as well. Now, this one was tougher for me. I use Twitter as a news feed, as a source of information I find valuable, and to pick up quotes and poems I might not have seen otherwise from great minds who collect such things. But I found it all too easy to just pick up my phone and scroll. When you find yourself in such a time suck death spiral, your only choice is to pull yourself out or crash to the ground. So Twitter is now relegated to the shelf with Facemeta.

      I know the pushback — these platforms connect us to the world, they bring us joy, they inform… and I’ve bought into each just as quickly as I buy into the belief that having a dram of scotch is okay after a long day of business travel. Life is hard enough as it is, why subtract some harmless joy?

      The answer is that I’m not subtracting it, I’m putting it in it’s place. On the shelf, in a place of honor amongst the books and notebooks I refer to on occasion. Here, it remains valuable as a source of entertainment, information and connection. But it’s not in my hand as I stand in line for a coffee or at the market. Instead I use that boredom time to look around at everyone else staring at their phones, or noticing the people who choose not to succumb to it. People like me.

      Since nature abhors a void, that scrolling time gets filled with other things. More deep reading, more thinking, but mostly more observation and listening to the world around me. Like a plane flying through cloud cover into the brilliant sky above, you don’t know what you’re missing until you break free. And all that other stuff? It’ll be there on the shelf waiting for you when you return.

    • Silent Companions in the Wind

      Look at the flowers, so faithful to what is earthly,
      to whom we lend fate from the very border of fate.
      And if they are sad about how they must wither and die,
      perhaps it is our vocation to be their regret.

      All Things want to fly. Only we are weighed down by desire,
      caught in ourselves and enthralled with our heaviness.
      Oh what consuming, negative teachers we are
      for them, while eternal childhood fills them with grace.

      If someone were to fall into intimate slumber, and slept
      deeply with Things—: how easily he would come
      to a different day, out of the mutual depth.

      Or perhaps he would stay there; and they would blossom and
      praise
      their newest convert, who now is like one of them,
      all those silent companions in the wind of the meadows.
      — Rainer Maria Rilke, The Sonnets to Orpheus, II, 14

      I caught glimpses of the sunrise, spectacular and flamboyant, dancing with clouds and still water, on the train from Boston to New York. I lamented the missed opportunity for an Instagram-worthy photo while stifling the urge to pull out my camera phone to give it an attempt. No picture from an iPhone through dirty chatter-proof glass flying across the landscape at 50 miles per hour was going to capture the magic of the moment. So I let it pass, like so many moments, into memory.

      I don’t come often enough to Rilke, who spun his own magic a century ago. I may visit with him more often this year, hopefully not with the overindulgence I’ve displayed with Mary Oliver poems, but… enough. This is a year for magic and becoming reacquainted with the world. For venturing forth and rekindling our eternal childhood.

      We all want to fly. What holds us back but fear and heaviness? Shouldn’t we reach for the sky and dance with our silent companions in the wind? Fragility doesn’t stop nature, though everything has its time. Knowing this, but choosing not to be paralyzed by it, shouldn’t we all climb out of this mutual depth and make these different days?

    • The Forest Knows

      Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
      Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
      And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
      Must ask permission to know it and be known.
      The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
      I have made this place around you.
      If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
      No two trees are the same to Raven.
      No two branches are the same to Wren.
      If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
      You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
      Where you are. You must let it find you.
      — David Wagoner, Lost

      Walk out into the woods in silence, listening to the trees around you, and you’ll know the truth. Climb up high into the mountains, well above the trees, and hear the whisper in the wind. You’ll hear it up there too. Sail out beyond the sight of land, out where the swells make you feel small and inadequate. Hear the swish of water under the hull, the waves curl and splash away in salty celebration as you see your place in this world. The answers are out there, waiting for you to listen.

      We surround ourselves with the buzz of distraction, the white noise of modern life, to avoid hearing the silent call that urges us to follow. It’s a tempting mistress, this Siren, and drives so many to the rocks of conformity. Fall in line! Do your job! Stay on point! Bide your time!

      Time is irrelevant in the universe. Trees and mountains and the sea don’t mark time, they dance with infinity. Don’t you think, should we be so bold, that we should too?

    • Beacons

      “The books I read are like the stone men built by the Eskimos of the great desolate tundras west of Hudson’s Bay. They still build them today, according to Farley Mowat. An Eskimo traveling alone in flat barrens will heap round stones to the height of a man, travel till he can no longer see the beacon, and build another. So I travel mute among these books, these eyeless men and women that people the empty plain. I wake up thinking: What am I reading? What will I read next? I’m terrified that I’ll run out, that I will read through all I want to, and be forced to learn wildflowers at last, to keep awake.” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      These stone beacons, called Inuksuk by the Inuit, are like cairns for hikers above tree line. Dillard’s description, borrowed from Mowat, stirred my imagination. I’ve used a similar analogy of stepping stones across a stream in this blog before but I love this concept of books guiding you across a barren landscape. Each of us moves through our days, finding beacons that show us the way, or, if we need it, how to get back to where we started.

      It made me wonder, reading Dillard’s words, what are my own beacons? They come readily to mind. And I smile at the recollection. For they’ve been guiding me all along through the starkest and stormiest of days. Reliable and ringing truth in my most uncertain moments. Beacons save us when all hope seems lost.

      And then, I wondered, what beacons am I building?

    • To Be a Philosopher

      “You must be one man, either good or bad. You must cultivate either your own ruling faculty or externals, and apply yourself either to things within or without you; that is, be either a philosopher, or one of the vulgar.” — Epictetus, The Enchiridion

      Do you ever wonder why the Stoics are more popular than ever? Why would Epictetus, who died in 135 A.D. be relevant today? Why would Marcus Aurelius, who died in 180 A.D. be so revered? Or Seneca, who died in 65 A.D.? I believe it comes down to a few key reasons: First and foremost, they wrote from a very human perspective that is still relatable no matter what millennium you’re passing your time in. Second; if it weren’t relevant it would have long ago been vanquished to the trash heap like the lesser work of millions before and after them. And finally, you might also say they gain a lot of momentum as the great men and women who followed them referred to them for wisdom and inspiration. And if it worked for them, why not us?

      On our journey from the vulgar, callow juvenile inside each of us to the refined, philosophical sage we may wish to become, we learn to cultivate discipline. Discipline draws us deeper into our true selves, structures our lives in such a way that we might accomplish a few things and bring us closer to becoming who we want to be. To stop looking from one shiny object to the next and focus on what means the most, now, and when we reach that stepping stone find the next.

      Will our own work become timeless, or vanquished with the lesser work of millions? We’re dealt an unfair hand trying to measure up with the greatest thinkers of the past. That’s not stoicism, that’s upward comparison. Comparing yourself to others leads to unfocused misery. It’s better to compare yourself with the person you used to be instead. Stoicism is a quest to become the best person you can be in your short time on earth. Ultimately everything we do shows the way for those who follow us. Just as those great Stoics did. If it’s transcendently great it might become timeless. But it’s not for us to decide such things.

      Our only purpose is to maximize our potential in the time we’re given. To cultivate our own ruling faculty and apply ourselves to becoming what we might. While we may.

    • The Incremental Path

      What might we accomplish in our brief time here should we apply ourselves towards it? Is accomplishing itself a worthy pursuit, or is experiencing the better path to walk down? I believe in fully experiencing life, but without setting a course and working diligently towards a calling who are we but sheep waiting to be sheared?

      I wrote about this of reaching for excellence recently, and perhaps write about it too frequently. But a blog is a sorting place of ideas and observations, shared experiences and insights. Since that post, I’ve added some additional habits to the daily accountability list in my pursuit of my own personal brand of Arete. I’m incrementally further along in that time, yet the path to excellence is long. Who says how far down the path I can reach? Does it doesn’t matter as long as we’re progressing down the one that matters most to us?

      Ars longa, vita brevis (Art is long, life is short)

      Don’t look now, but we’re already 2.5% through the year. What was it we wrote down as our resolution for the year? How’s that going for you? Isn’t it fair to ask? Creating that cadence of accountability is the only way to stay on the path. There are few big leaps forward on the journey to excellence, the path is incremental. And what we do next matters more than what we did yesterday.

      Looking back on what I’d set as milestones for this year, I can see that the milestones have mattered in my daily action. Maybe you don’t always feel like brushing your teeth but chances are you do it every day anyway. We know what matters most, but most beat themselves up if they break a streak of working out or don’t lose ten pounds in the first week of a diet. Would you stop brushing your teeth if you missed a day? No! You’d brush them as soon as you got up the next morning! Similarly, getting back on track is all that matters on this incremental path to excellence.

      Even the masters fall short of excellence. Who are we to expect it of ourselves? But when you turn around and see how far you’ve come, you recognize that the path takes you so much further than you’d have come otherwise. And the experiences you have along the way are richer for the pursuit.

    • Layers

      You might say that winter brings simplicity, laying bare and naked the world outside. Living things have two choices in winter; to fatten up and sleep it off or to hunt for food to keep the furnace burning. Hibernate or keep moving. Survival, simplified.

      In warmer climates, or warmer seasons, you might get away with a single layer or even less. When it gets cold you add layers until you reach a level of comfort. Proper layering is an acquired skill, and there’s a special joy that comes with getting out of a warm bed or sleeping bag and scurrying to add enough layers to reach comfort before the lingering warmth dissipates. You essentially trade one cocoon for another.

      Hikers know the layering dance all too well. Start slightly overdressed and begin to shed layers as your core warms. Reach colder, windier summits and the layers come back on again. The layers ebb and flow like the surf as you cool and warm with motion and micro climates. And in this ritual an underlying celebration for each layer as it comes and goes.

      We celebrate the complexity of layers in other ways. A story is always more interesting if there are layers of complexity built into it. Conversation that is simplistic is boring. The most interesting people we meet have many interests, can hang with you on many topics, and raise the bar to a level you seek to clear yourself. You think back on conversations like this and marvel at where they took you.

      Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a warm day with the sun on my skin as much as anyone. But I’m not sure I could live that way all the time. Give me the chill of early morning, or when the sun drops down below the horizon. Give me frosty window panes and seeing your breath in the crisp air. The simplicity of winter is deceptive. There’s more going on than meets the eye. The beauty of the season lies in its layers. It will kill you just as easily as it will awe you with its stark beauty.

      So it goes with life. We go deeper for meaning in our lives, for lives at the surface are shallow and inconsequential. When we wrap ourselves in layers of interests we might thrive in even the coldest of days. A layered life is a resilient life. We’ve all learned the value of that, haven’t we?

    • Snow Storms and Omicron

      “It snowed. It snowed all yesterday and never emptied the sky, although the clouds looked so low and heavy they might drop all at once with a thud.” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      And then the snows came. If yesterday’s post was about the distinct lack of snow in the region, this morning brings the heavy accumulation of snow. Expected, hoped for, and now here. The timing could be better (it can usually be better), but the blanketing of snow is a blessing for those of us who embrace winter.

      During those first winter storms, people who know a thing or two about snow are hyper-focused on preparation, stocking food, filling gasoline tanks and cannisters, and changing plans to adjust for the new reality of a storm on the way. As winter progresses, and one storm leads to another, we tend to get hardened. It’s just snow, just like the last storm and the one before that. They all blend together and winter fatigue sets in. Around here there’s nothing worse than an April snowstorm, just when everyone is sick and tired of snow.

      In this place and time in the pandemic, every conversation I hear is related to COVID. We’re all sick and tired of it, but, like an April snowstorm, everyone is dealing with it yet again. What do we do about it? Prepare as best you can, shelter when you ought to, and venture back out when it’s safe to do so. And that, friends, sounds a lot like a snowstorm during the morning commute. We recognize the logic in taking measures to stay safe, or we don’t. This pandemic once again feels like it might drop down on all of us with a thud.

      Here we go again. We all want normal, whatever that means now. Just remember that spring will come. For better or worse, these are days you’ll remember.