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    • Of More and Enough

      “Our love of our neighbor—is it not a lust for new possessions? And likewise our love of knowledge, of truth, and altogether any lust for what is new? Gradually we become tired of the old, of what we safely possess, and we stretch out our hands again. Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some more distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: The Joyful Wisdom of Life, Love, and Art

      I’m currently managing the chaos that comes with some home improvement work. Every change has a price to be paid, and temporary chaos is our toll. The constant desire for improvement demands payment in one form or another. Today’s toll is tomorrow’s pleasure. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

      There’s a reason why those house hunter and renovation programs are so popular. It’s the same reason some of us have an urge to travel to new places all the time, to try the latest trendy restaurant, to buy a bigger boat, to hike to new summits, or to day trade looking for that perfect stock to fall in love with. Divorce lawyers specialize in the consequences of unchecked avarice. Because we humans tend to lust for something beyond what we have. Even the pursuit of personal excellence (arete) is a pursuit of something more than what we possess now.

      As Nietzsche put it: to become tired of some possession means tiring of ourselves. Unchecked avarice is a weakness. To temper the unrelenting desire for more and realize that one has enough is a path to happiness. Good luck with that. Our consumer-driven world fuels a constant desire for more, different and better. It takes conscious willpower to unplug from that and appreciate exactly who we are, with what we have, right here and now.

      I’ve written about my wanderlust before. I’m chagrined by the single passport stamp I’ve gotten this year, compared to last year when I visited seven countries. I forget sometimes that I’ve traveled from coast-to-coast this year, seeing places and doing things that I’d once said I’d get to someday. Add in a few significant home improvement projects and the picture becomes clearer. It’s been a good year in more ways than it hasn’t.

      Comparison is the death of joy, as the saying goes. Simply enjoying the abundance of all that one has and have experienced ought to be enough. When we compare we turn our attention from all we have to what we don’t have. The math will never work in our favor when we compare, because what we don’t possess will always outnumber what we do have.

      Still, there’s so much more to see and do and be. And time is ticking away so very quickly. Is it any wonder that we have this urge for more, now, before it’s too late? We are growing beings, living a brief life before we slip into infinity. We ought to seek growth for growth’s sake. To learn and experience and build is how our species has made it this far. But we’ve also made it this far by eventually settling down and growing roots. A sense of place is uniquely gifted to those who stick around for awhile. The hunger for more is our blessing and our curse, depending on how much we control it.

      That quiet desperation Thoreau spoke of is as real as any possession we have. Desperation comes from not feeling control over one’s destiny. Not following one’s dream to it’s natural conclusion. We grow frustrated and seek relief in the fresh and new, buying impulsively, renovating relentlessly, comparing even when we know it’s a fool’s game. We each deal with the same old avarice within, while trying to be grateful for all that we have in our lives.

      As with everything, balance is the key to a joyful life. We must necessarily seek growth, knowledge and experience to fulfill our potential before the music stops, but we must also learn when we’ve been satiated. To keep consuming after we’ve had enough is gluttonous. To keep wanting bigger and better and different is avarice, unchecked. The gods don’t seek arete, they already have it. It’s we humans who are always seeking more. What is enough in this lifetime? Finding our way to that place may lead us to what we’ve been searching for all along.

    • The JFK Memorial, Hyannis

      “I believe it is important that this country sail and not lie still in the harbor.” — John F Kennedy

      When I was a kid, Hyannis, Massachusetts was the place we’d go to walk Main Street and buy some candy. When I got a little older it was the place to hang out with college friends or to catch a ferry to Nantucket. Hyannis isn’t quaint or quintessential Cape Cod, it’s a bustling village in the town of Barnstable. I practice active-avoidance here the way locals avoid tourist traps anywhere in the world. But I’m not a local, just way too familiar with the place.

      And yet I’d never visited the John F Kennedy Memorial. It’s a quietly-dignified and understated nod to the President who once sailed in the harbor this memorial overlooks. Finding myself with a little time to spare, I fell back on my old habit of seeking out the most interesting and often overlooked places wherever I was at the moment. And this moment brought me to Hyannis.

      I remember having a glimpse of the entrance to the Kennedy Compound from the back of a station wagon as a kid, but to me that’s like watching the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. That’s not for me. Far more interesting is an offseason visit to a quiet memorial to honor the brief, brilliant flame that was JFK.

      The memorial features a fieldstone wall with a placard of JFK. Appropriately, it faces the harbor. There’s a fountain with the quote noted above engraved around it. In the offseason it’s simply a drained pool. I’m sure in summer it’s lively and impressive. But for my purposes, its stillness was appropriate for the somber occasion for the memorial. While it celebrates the life of the man, it also reminds us of all that we missed when he was assassinated that day in Dallas in 1963.

    • The Two Sides of a Crisis

      “When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters – one represents danger and one represents opportunity.” — John F. Kennedy

      Search that quote by JFK and Google AI will let you know that it’s not completely accurate. The character for “danger” is right, but the other character apparently doesn’t mean “opportunity” so much as “chance” or “point of change”. I say whatever—it’s mostly on point. And that point is, while understandably focusing on the risks associated with any crisis, don’t let the underlying opportunity to learn, grow or pivot that the crisis represents slip away.

      My day started with a series of work-related fire drills that needed to be addressed immediately. Where do we start when so much is coming at us at the same time? The answer is to prioritize the one that cannot be deferred, and then the next, and so on. Breaking the urgent down into manageable tasks allows us to focus on what we can control.

      “Prioritize your problems and take care of them one at a time, the highest priority first. Don’t try to do everything at once or you won’t be successful” — Jocko Willink

      Every day offers both order and chaos. To skate the edge between the two is challenging, but maybe that is why we are here, in this time and place. It’s our crisis to manage. That unique ownership bestowed upon us may be seen as a curse, but isn’t it also a gift? We simply need to figure out what that silver lining is and leverage the heck out of it after we put out the fire.

      “Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this.” — Homer, The Odyssey

      There is danger in every crisis, but there’s also a chance to set things straight somehow. Homer had it right. And so did Winston Churchill when he told the British to keep calm and carry on. A calm mind has the ability to focus on priorities and get things done. Viewing a crisis as an inflection point from which positive change may unfold is a healthy, productive way to step forward from however many steps back we’ve just dealt with. The character developed in a crisis is our own. Just see it through.

    • Of Sharks and Auroras

      Some people are shark people. My bride is one. Shark people follow every shark sighting, have the Sharktivity app on their phones, watch Jaws every time it’s on and are completely locked in on Shark Week. The fact that there’s a week+ of programming dedicated to sharks tells you that there are a lot of shark people out there. I appreciate sharks, but I rarely think about them until the shark people mention them yet again. On Shark Week I sequester myself in the office with a good book.

      Some people are sky people. I’m one of them. I have a ritual of walking the dog after dinner and spend most of the time looking up to see what the sky is doing. And it’s always doing something interesting. I have an Aurora app notifying me at all times of night. My favorite movie is Local Hero (if you know you know). Like any self-respecting sky-gazer, I follow things like meteor showers and eclipses and the occasional comet. And naturally I closely monitor solar activity that offers opportunities to see the aurora borealis.

      We all have something we’re fascinated with. Call it a harmless pursuit of something that is larger than our particular niche. Those shark people are fascinated with the serial killers of the sea—mysterious creatures that emerge from the deep to challenge our belief that we are at the top of the food chain. Meanwhile, we sky people look up to the universe for perspective and enlightenment. Who’s to say which is the better pursuit? Do we draw inspiration from cold-blooded killers* or the heavens above?

      * Of course I’m just kidding. I appreciate sharks too. It’s the shark people I’m poking fun at.

      Aurora Borealis

    • Beyond Clever

      “There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.” ― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

      Clever is one-upmanship. It’s not really listening to what someone is saying, it’s waiting for them to stop talking so you can say something to show how on-the-ball you are. Clever is different from bright and funny. It doesn’t take very long to know you’re in the presence of someone working to be clever. Like porn, we know it when we see it. And we aren’t the better for having stumbled across it.

      I used to work to be clever, until I began to see that clever was weakness on display. It’s a way for insecurity to escape and join the conversation. Whoever really said that it’s “better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.” was on to something.

      But then I changed again. When everyone is silently waiting for someone to speak up, there ought to be someone who speaks up. Not to be clever or foolish, but to be engaged. To draw out the perspective of another soul and mix it with our own, just to see what develops. Sometimes nothing much develops, and sometimes there’s magic. Who’s to know which unless we practice a little alchemy?

      The practice of conversational alchemy utilizes empathy and focused listening to draw out deeper conversations with others. Which sounds like a clever way of saying that one is a good listener. But being a good listener doesn’t mean much without having something to offer to the conversation as well. Listening skills are one of the leading indicators of success in life, but so is a willingness to go out and experience things from which to build one’s own knowledge and skill, insight and perspective.

      Unless we have a career as a therapist, socialite, salesperson or investigator, aspiring to be a conversational alchemist shouldn’t be our primary aim. But it’s a life skill worth developing to maximize the experience of living through deeper and richer conversation. We ought to engage with others and learn from their experience as well if we are to reach our own potential within the tribe. The tribal experience isn’t everything, and surely not the only path to personal excellence, but engagement with others offers a broad and rich life, perhaps more than simply going it alone.

      Henry David Thoreau, retreating to his cabin by Walden Pond, had regular visitors and a curated ability to communicate with others. That perspective made him a better writer, even as his inclination to retreat to the woods made him an oddball to some in the community. But that retreat also made him a better writer. We can be both engaged with society and strategically removed from it. The right balance is intuitive. Listening to ourselves is another essential skill developed over time.

      “Seek first to understand, and then to be understood.” — Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

      There’s a reason that seeking to understand makes us highly effective people. Each person we effectively engage with becomes another ally in our growing tribe. It was never about being clever, it’s always been about development of the self in a social world. We may sometimes have a desire to go free solo, but in reality we’re all in this together. Our bond is somewhere well beyond clever waiting for us to reach it.

    • 50 Years: SS Edmund Fitzgerald

      Does anyone know where the love of God goes
      When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
      The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
      If they’d put 15 more miles behind her
      They might have split up or they might have capsized
      They may have broke deep and took water
      And all that remains is the faces and the names
      Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

      — Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

      I’d be remiss to let the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald pass without a mention. It would be a footnote were it not for the Gordon Lightfoot song that made ship and crew immortal, but tell that to the families. We all pass eventually, preferably peacefully in our sleep a long time from now. An abrupt, tragic end was not on anyone’s mind when those 29 men sailed off into history. One wonders what their final moments were like, but what is certain is that all hands were lost and the ship broke in two. It was the final straw for shipping on the Great Lakes, prompting higher safety standards and oversight. And perhaps that is the ultimate legacy of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

    • A Brief, Salty Moment

      I love a great beach as much as anyone, but given the choice, give me a rocky ledge with an steady ocean roll crashing into it. The bigger the swell, the higher the foamy spray, the happier I am to be there to witness it. This eternal battle between land and sea will go on as long as there’s an ocean. We only get to witness if for our finite moment—roughly equivalent to the time as that foamy spray leaping into the air for a brief, salty moment before returning to the sea. What is a few seconds or a hundred years to infinity? All the same. It is us that feels the thrill of the brief flight.

      Knowing the score as we do, we might choose to be a little saltier today. There is nothing but now. Make a big splash.

    • Sunrise at Sea

      When the mild weather came,
      And set the sea on flame,
      How often would I rise before the sun,
      And from the mast behold
      The gradual splendors of the sky unfold
      Ere the first line of disk had yet begun,
      Above the horizon’s are,
      To show its flaming gold,
      Across the purple dark!
      — Epes Sargent, Sunrise at Sea

      I’m not often at sea for sunrise, but as an early bird snug up against the eastern coast, I go out of my way to find a sunrise over sea whenever possible. Put yourself in the way of beauty, as Cheryl Strayed’s mother whispers. And so I rise.

      Getting an early start to the day has its perks, but also its price—generally paid at a time night owls find hilarious. Precious night owls! They don’t know what they’re missing. What’s missing is the crowd. And in that solitude we may hear the whispers of the coming day. We may witness the miraculous beginning of a new day of light and consequence.

      Lately I’ve wondered what to do with the time after I click publish on this blog. One answer is to keep on writing. Another is to keep things the same—a measure of stability in an uncertain world. We have agency in how our day —and our life—unfolds. Is this enough, or have we only just begun? Whatever the answer, don’t waste the day away staring at the horizon wondering when to begin.

      To show its flaming gold,
      Across the purple dark!

    • To Do Bold Things

      “All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.” — Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

      Risking all that we’ve built for some uncertain future is a fool’s game—at least that’s what we’ve been taught by our mothers and other well-meaning influencers in our lives. But tell me, without risk when exactly will we leap? We must develop our leaping ability through a series of calculated risks. This, friend, is our hero’s journey personified.

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

      Culturally, we celebrate the risk-takers because we know deep down that the leap they’ve taken is available to all of us in some form or fashion, but the leaper is unique for having done it. We may be inspired to take risks having witnessed theirs, or we may recoil back into habits of safety and assurance. We learn something about ourselves in either case.

      We all take calculated risks at some point in our lives—even our mothers risked it all to deliver our sorry ass into this world. It’s okay to be careful, and it’s good to play it safe in certain circumstances, but there are many times when we ought to let it ride. To go for it when the leap is worthy of a bold measure of risk honors those who risked it all to make our lives possible, and ultimately it honors our future potential and eventual legacy. We become the type of person who does things like this.

      Boldness is developed. But so is suffering. Decide what to be and go be it.

    • And So On

      The Lorax: Which way does a tree fall?
      The Once-ler: Uh, down?
      The Lorax: A tree falls the way it leans. Be careful which way you lean.
      ― Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

      I saw a bumper sticker on a car at a red light that was meant to goad the left. Something along the lines of: Straight. Conservative. Christian. Gun Owner. Is there anything else I can piss you off with? I looked at her in the mirror as she smoked a cigarette like she had to beat the light, then threw it on the pavement to burn out and roll around in the traffic. I thought to myself, maybe a few more things. If I ever wanted to concern myself with that level of self-celebratory misery anyway.

      We are each leaning the way we lean, however things may fall. I don’t put bumper stickers on my own vehicle, but if I did, it would be in the form of a question. Perhaps borrowing from old friend Mary Oliver, who asked the ultimate question we all ought to ask ourselves today and every day in The Summer Day:

      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?

      Plans have a way of changing, because life changes and so do the living. When I was younger I was a master planner in all the things I would do one day. I’ve learned to stop planning so much and simply do. Do something right now that tilts that future possibility in our favor. Want to write that novel? Write. Want to lose 20 pounds? Move and make better choices in what goes in your mouth. And so on.

      And there’s the thing: And so on. And so each of our days is filled with habits and ritual, on and on to wherever they will take us. Be sure to lean in to the right habits and rituals. We are what we repeatedly do, as Aristotle once said and this blog has repeated, well, repeatedly. Aristotle quotes would make great bumper stickers too (tell that to the spent cigarette litterer).

      November is already a week old, and candidly, it’s not slowing down anytime soon. Life leaps forward even as the soul asks us to slow down and take it all in. To do a lot of things in a lifetime requires us to lean towards positive habits and productivity. But all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. When we lean into any one thing too much we tend to lose our balance. Don’t forget to fold something precious into each day.