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    • A Curmudgeon Meets Wonder

      “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” — Walt Disney

      I visited Disneyland yesterday. Admittedly, I’m a reluctant visitor to all places Disney, yet I’ve never been to one of their resorts and had a bad time. Sure, there are plenty of reasons to avoid ever going to Disney again, but life is what we make of it, and dammit if they don’t force a smile on even the most curmudgeonly of visitors. If that curmudgeon was me, he had more fun than he expected to.

      I’m not going to make this a travel blog about Disneyland, but let me tell you there were a few jaw-dropping moments for me. Everyone should experience the Incredicoaster and Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at least once in their lives. For all my own resistance to that Disney magic stuff, there’s no denying the thrill of a great roller coaster or the wonder of a stunningly immersive experience. When we encounter excellence in this world in any form, our natural reaction is wonder.

      “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.” — Walt Disney

      And that brings us back to the bold act of doing something extraordinary in our time. What audacious things stir in our mind, crying for attention? What is our work in progress, continuing to grow and change shape as our vision of what is possible changes? We may take inspiration from the boldness of a Walt Disney and be bold today with our own vision, if only to discover what’s possible if only we were to finally take action.

    • A Day Among Days

      “Yesterday nobody dreamed of to-day; nobody dreams of tomorrow. Hence the weather is ever the news. What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us thus, letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      I caught up with a neighbor yesterday. It seems that he quit his job a year ago to write and I never realized it. He simply did his outdoor chores, came and went and never talked about what he did the rest of the time. Now he’s going back to a job and debating whether to publish his writing or to

      remain anonymous. I encouraged him to publish even as I failed to mention in our conversation that I’ve published something every day for years. Who’s the anonymous one?

      The same day a business associate encouraged me to apply for a VP position in his company. I didn’t say no, but I definitely didn’t say yes either. Am I a creative person if I chase titles? Does my work suffer if I don’t explore all of my options? A day writing is similar to a day climbing the corporate ladder: what we produce determines the value we perceive in the time spent. Just what defines personal excellence for us anyway? There’s your value.

      Each day greets us with questions like these. And honestly, aren’t they really about what to do with our brief time? Whether we rise to meet the moment or let the opportunity slip away comes down to a combination of mindset and routine. Thus, our attitude, habits and grit determine the day. Stack enough together and we build a life. As we greet each new day with the tools we have at our disposal, we ought to remember to see this one like a tree in the forest: a day among all our days, but unique just the same.

    • An Authentic Poet

      “And I tell you that you should open yourselves to hearing an authentic poet, of the kind whose bodily senses were shaped in a world that is not our own and that few people are able to perceive. A poet closer to death than to philosophy, closer to pain than to intelligence, closer to blood than to ink.”
      — Federico Garcia Lorca (translation by Steven F. White)

      Federico Garcia Lorca was a Spanish poet who was either assassinated or murdered at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. The historian in me thinks about such things as wars and the silencing of voices forever through violence. The student in me seeks out the poetry that was so incendiary that someone was prompted to silence the poet. The philosopher in me sees that we are all on the road to find out, and it we would be prudent to use our own voice before it too is silenced by the infinite beyond.

      In my favorite Navy pilot’s last year on earth, he took me aside and told me that he liked my blog. He said he didn’t think I had it in me to quote philosophy and poetry, because these were things that I’d buried deep within while sorting out how to be a working adult in a world very much focused on churning forward. My only question to myself in that moment wasn’t about how to answer him, but rather, what took me so long?

      A couple of thousand blog posts later, I’m still sorting through things. I’ve realized that I’ll be doing that to my last day on earth, physically or mentally, whichever takes me first. I’ve become less a working adult and more a lifetime student, and the identity fits me just fine, thank you. Walking the pup last night, feeling the pollen burn my eyes, I wondered about the future, plotting moves and countermoves like a chess player, with me the pawn. For every action there’s a reaction, but a good mental map shortens the gap between stimulus and response.

      My favorite Navy pilot was an avid reader and likely wasn’t awed by my writing style. He was simply pleased with the progress he saw in my journey, noting a leap forward he hadn’t anticipated from me. That doesn’t translate into a lack of faith in my leaping ability, more an acknowledgement that I hadn’t shown much of an inclination to transcend the normal path. I still think about him when I write, wondering if he’d note the progress. We can promise more for ourselves, but we must learn to meet that promise through boldness and action. To do otherwise would be inauthentic. And that’s not who we’re striving to be, is it?

    • Body and Soul

      “And here let me interrupt the conversation to remark upon the great mistake of teaching children that they have souls. The consequence is, that they think of their souls as of something which is not themselves. For what a man HAS cannot be himself. Hence, when they are told that their souls go to heaven, they think of their SELVES as lying in the grave. They ought to be taught that they have bodies; and that their bodies die; while they themselves live on. Then they will not think, as old Mrs Tomkins did, that THEY will be laid in the grave. It is making altogether too much of the body, and is indicative of an evil tendency to materialism, that we talk as if we POSSESSED souls, instead of BEING souls. We should teach our children to think no more of their bodies when dead than they do of their hair when it is cut off, or of their old clothes when they have done with them.”
      — George MacDonald, Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood

      Truth be told, I’m not a particularly religious person, I’m more a pragmatic realist with a mix of transcendentalist and stoic tendencies. But I do believe that we are all souls moving through this world in bodies that are merely vehicles for the ride we’re on. Some are blessed with better vehicles than others, but a good maintenance plan makes a big difference in how the ride goes. Likewise, the playlist we have between our ears makes this ride a pleasant journey or hell on earth.

      The quote above was falsely paraphrased as a C.S. Lewis quote: “You don’t have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body.” That’s certainly more concise and a better fit for the sound bite world we live in, but it’s simply irresponsible to blindly quote something without doing a little research to find the true source. Call me old-fashioned if you will, but the truth matters, especially in a world of MAGA nuts. We may tell ourselves anything we want in the moment, but eventually we pay the price that truth demands.

      So what is our mantra as we zip through this lifetime of ours? Just what kind of playlist do we have on anyway? We ought to consider changing it up now and then, if only to hear a different perspective and challenge our assumptions. We can always go back to what we were listening to again later, but will we ever hear it the same way? We must learn and grow and become whatever we were meant to be while we have the time. There is no putting off for another day what must be developed today.

      The older I get, the more I realize that health matters more than age. A healthy body is an extraordinary gift—a superpower, really, that enables us to move through space and time in ways that someone without a healthy body cannot. And the same can be said for a healthy mind. To neglect either is irresponsible. We’re all just building a foundation that will crumble in time. A foundation built on poor nutrition for the mind and body is nothing but a sandcastle waiting for the tide to wash it away. We may nurture by our choices a level of antifragility with which we may stand against the inevitable waves that will wash over all that we’ve built.

      So if the soul isn’t something we have but the sum of who we are, we ought to work on increasing that sum. We are all a work in progress moving through this world in bodies that will one day fail us. What remains in the end isn’t the body, but the soul. Identity, if you will (and a topic for another day, as this post is already growing long). So we are each a soul residing in this body, moving through life and making choices about what to do with this opportunity. Make the most of that realization.

    • Creating State Changes

      “On the day of judgment, surely, we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done; not how well we have spoken but how well we have lived.” ― Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

      Yesterday I saw a moose. Now mind you, I’ve seen moose before, but never from the kitchen. In this case, my mother’s kitchen, visiting with my siblings on Mother’s Day. The young bull was just passing by through the backyard and woods on his way to somewhere else. If you want to experience a state change, throw a moose into a family party and see what happens.

      I’m typing this as I undergo another state change: the pollen at the moment is creating a desperate need for tissues. If I was smart I’d run off to the desert or sail across the ocean this time of year, but instead I suffer through a few weeks of sniffles and sneezing. All for want of a few flowers and a sense of place.

      And the scale is telling me another state change has crept up on me, which prompts a counterstrike to my current state with more exercise and fewer empty carbs. We become what we repeatedly do, to borrow from Socrates, and doing fewer reps in favor of more chews is no way to build the body of an olympian. And so another pivot is in order, back to a daily routine that sustains desired health, fitness and well-being.

      The thing is, we know what we must do to change our state. The trick is in the doing. We must be action-oriented if we are to do anything in this world. All talk and no action is a life of self-deception, with the outcome a state of disrepair and dysfunction. Dis is of Latin origin, and means a reversal or place apart from the origin of the word. Dys is Greek and simply means bad. Thus finding repair and function have changed for the worse. Whether we use the Latin or the Greek, we’ll find ourselves up the creek without a paddle unless we create a state change.

      And that brings us to action. We must live our philosophy and do the things we say we must do. To do and be, not simply to sit this one out in our brief go with life. Living well is putting our money where our mouth is—it’s walking the talk. We live in a state of being we’ve helped to influence, and sure, we can’t control everything, but we can get off our butts and do something to change our current state when it needs changing. So don’t just say, but do.

    • What We Do Not Know

      “We shall either find what we are seeking, or free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.” — Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine

      Some of us remain lifetime students, some feel they have it all figured out. It often depends on how insular a life we choose to live. The comfort zone of insularity is nothing but a weighted blanket, and no great leaps occur while we’re curled up underneath it. We must venture into the unknown and challenge our assumptions if we are to grow and become something more.

      Imagine the brittle hollowness of a life with all the answers? Being a lifetime student is a delightful journey of discovery. We may be curious and not act on it, getting so busy with other things as we do. And then one day something sparks our curiosity and we seek answers. Writing a blog surely kicked my curiosity into another gear. One question answered leads to another awaiting attention. Writing is a thrill when we are seeking to fill something within ourselves and share it with our fellow students.

      Renault used the quote above twice in her book. Once as something Socrates said, then as a direct quote from Plato. No surprise, really, for a student to be saying something the teacher has said before. We are all turning the same questions around in our minds. Is it any wonder that the insights of one generation should be embraced as their own by the next? We all think we’re so different from those who came before us, when all we are is a different draft of the same creative work.

      I have a stack of books resentful that yet another book should leap ahead of them, gathering dust as they are awaiting my interest to return to them. All those books on shelves represent the aspirations of who we once were, looking towards a brighter future of enlightenment. That potential still resides there on the shelf like buried treasure, should we return to it one day.

      We will all leave this world with unanswered questions. Like books on a shelf we never got to, even with the best of intentions. It was always meant to be this way—we just have to discover that fact at our own pace.

    • If We Are To

      “Which was the braver, the one who left, or the one who stayed?”
      ― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

      Craven’s book was made into a movie that I think about sometimes. As an upperclassman I watched it in a class taught by a great professor who I wished I’d stayed in touch with. Now that I’m the age that some of those great professors were at then, I sometimes wish aging wasn’t a thing at all—that we might play by a different rule as humans where accumulation of experience might bring us together in the same place and time.

      Aging is a thing. And we do have an opportunity to come together with people of our own time, as those giants from our past grow more distant by the day. Or rather, we do. The person we remember is trapped in the amber of those moments. We simply catch up to where they were once. Who’s to say how far they have gone since? And who’s to say how far we may go ourselves? We know that answer is hiding in plain sight.

      We must move on from who we once were if we are to become something else. If we are to strive to meet our potential. If we are to dare to reach closer to personal excellence. There are a lot of “If we are to’s” in a lifetime. We learn that excellence isn’t static, it’s a carrot on a stick just out of reach but making us hungrier by the day. Sometimes we’re so busy reaching for the carrot we forget we’re satiated already. Sometimes we tell ourselves we’re satiated just to stifle the ache of hunger.

      We play by the rules made by someone else or we step off the trail and blaze our own. What makes the person who steps away any braver than the one who stays to keep it all together? The answer lies in the question itself: What is it that we keep together anyway? What is it that we step away from? Are we trapped in the amber of who we once aspired to be or still striving to reach another version of ourselves? Bravery is facing these questions squarely and having the agency to do something with the answers. Whether we stay or we go, we must dare to grow.

    • Quiet and Clear

      “Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.”
      — Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

      If we’re lucky, we’re born being the center of attention after our big birthday debut. That attention is inevitably diluted, but the hunger for it remains. Some crave attention so much that they’ll do anything to keep it. The world stage is full of such characters. The rest of us find our voice in ways big and small. Real power comes when we recognize that attention doesn’t matter as much as influence does.

      I try to move through this world a listener. Two ears and one mouth, as the saying goes. Yet I’m often the one who speaks up in a group, not to be first, not to be loudest, but because I’m engaged. It follows that when we truly listen, we become interested. The world could use far more interested and engaged listeners, so why not be one?

      Awareness develops when we give ourselves the space to find it. Constantly trying to fill empty space with chatter in a conversation is a lot like rapidly skimming the page trying to get the gist of what a poet is trying to say. We aren’t immersed in the moment and so we miss far more than we believe we have. The opportunity for understanding drifts away in a staccato of words.

      To try to understand everything is to understand nothing. And so we must learn to filter out the noise and favor comprehension. What has this person got to say? How do we respond? Attention is fleeting, but insight offers lift. We rise together when we learn to discover the quiet truth in what each has to say.

    • The Work Itself

      Is it time for the next project
      because the clock or calendar
      say it’s time,
      or because the work itself
      says it’s time?
      — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

      I have people in my life who think it’s eery when I can hear someone pull into the driveway when everyone else in the room hears nothing. Yet I struggle to hear people in a crowded room. It’s a different kind of hearing, I believe. The former is more about feeling or sensing a change. The latter is picking out one voice in a crowd and completely hearing that person.

      What does all this mean? Maybe that I’d be a great therapist but a lousy waiter. Or maybe simply that I ought to get my ears checked one of these days. We must learn what our strengths are, but also our weaknesses.

      When we do work that doesn’t matter to us, we feel the grind. Time drags and it all feels meaningless. Even work that once felt exciting changes as we change. We drift from the purpose that brought us there. In that drift, we often find ourselves asking, “Where do we go from here?’ The answer is whispering, but we don’t always hear it.

      When we are wrapped up in work that matters, we sense the path we’re on is the right one. We are attuned to our creative voice or muse as it whispers to us. Sensing it’s what we were meant to do in this moment, transcending time and place. Flow happens. And if we’re lucky, so does that elusive byproduct, magic.

    • Summing Impetus

      ““The impetuous wind can ignite the fire or put it out.”
      ― Regina O’Melveny, The Book of Madness and Cures

      I was thinking about moments, which led me to momentum, which brought me to P (p = m v) which brought me to impetus (which is where the P is derived from in the equation). Impetus in turn brought me to Regina O’Melveny, which brought us here. That’s the truth of the matter. And this is how the mind of a writer works when we begin with a blank slate.

      Honestly, I’m too busy with work to bother writing at all. And yet there’s nothing more important for me than to sit down with myself and sort through things, catch a few (but seemingly never all) typos and release this to the world. Some days I exceed my average reader count, some days it lands with a thud, but either way I’m on to the next blank slate. And this is how we move through life.

      When we know just how fast the time is going (tempus fugit), and how we are only granted just so many days to do with what we will, we must then seize these moments as our own and make the most of them. That’s what living is to me. We are either stoking our fires or watching them peter out from inattention. The days fly by either way.

      An editor is silently screaming as they read this blog post, and I offer them my sincere apologies. Too many parentheses, too many commas, and the post is all over the place. This is what writing unfiltered brings to the table, and it’s beautifully effective in drawing out thoughts and ideas that would otherwise lie dormant. But as a finished blog post? Goodness. I ought to cut the entire mess down to the O’Melveny quote and leave well enough alone. After all, what is the impetus of this post anyway?

      Remember that formula; p=mv? It means momentum (p) is equal to mass (m) times velocity (v). We are what we choose to focus on and repeatedly do. The impetuous wind can ignite the fire within us or put it out. But we have agency. We must keep stoking the fires that mean everything and let the winds of time and persistence fuel a life of purpose and fulfillment. There will never be a better time to attack our why than now. After all, we are the sum of our days.