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    • Before Dust

      If we begin to count our blessings we could cull up the very stones
      and bones in the pavement, but we’d never count the dust.
      We distrust what we become.
      — Ada Limón, High Water

      “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust” — Book of Common Prayer

      We know the score. We’re all going to leave this world at some point, and return to the earth. But before we become dust we are alive. And so we must learn to live in our time.

      We ought to be grateful for who we are and what we have, for it is our core, our identity, our foundation for all that we may become. The fact that we are stardust turned into someone who may build a ship capable of taking us to the edge of the universe (or alternatively, to binge watch Netflix) is a miracle. Who are we to forsake miracles?

      To seek answers to the questions of these recurring, if only to find a spark of truth to light the way. We are the next in line to find folly in the human condition. We might simply use our time to seek connection and purpose with our fellow passengers on this voyage through to the unknown. We are blessed with this, after all. Before dust, make something beautiful.

    • The Attentive Student

      “To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self. And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one’s self.” ― Søren Kierkegaard

      For better or worse, the life I built around venturing changed during the pandemic and again when I changed jobs last year. The hotel, air carrier and rental car status and points have faded to nothing. The blog used to feature more travel, and now I venture inward more often than I cross borders. So it goes—and so it must go.

      An inclination to venture is a lovely thing indeed, but it’s the self that we are seeking to find. To constantly be in motion without slowing down to examine the self is evasive. Sooner or later we’ve got to become aware of who we are and what we’re doing with the time we have. My time has grown more productive simply by slowing down enough to be present.

      The travel is booked and will happen soon enough, if fate allows. We can steer the ship but cannot control the wind. Life will determine itself moment-to-moment. Our job is to take it all in and assess where we are and what to do with what we have. From there we venture where we may.

      To know the self ought to be our highest aspiration. So do travel, but also read and meander observantly through the garden and most of all, listen to what the universe is telling us. Each day is a lesson awaiting the attentive student. Bon voyage.

    • Gaps Closed

      “How can you love someone whom you do not even see?”
      ― Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      Sometimes having something to say doesn’t mean we ought to say it. Sometimes keeping those thoughts to ourselves is the best contribution we can make in the moment. A great filter has saved me countless times. A poor filter has derailed me more often than I care to admit (imagine what an unfiltered mind would do if it were running the world? …uh, never mind).

      Writing this blog will not change the world. It’s currently clunky to navigate, impossible to categorize, has horrible SEO, and, if we’re being honest, is a bit repetitive. But it quietly navigates time at its own pace, like its writer, being what it is. And it will be what it will be. With so many choices of which information to digest, you the reader may choose to read or ignore it. Playing with the law of small numbers, we learn to keep score in our own way with the success of any given post. My way is measured in gaps closed.

      This odd little writing habit keeps on going, even when I decide it ought to take a break for a while. Does its quirkiness and place in this world make it a waste of time? Who’s time is being wasted in writing it? Each post is a revelation at best or a meditation on the moment at worst, but they’re each a declaration of who we were when we clicked publish. Writing doesn’t keep us from something else, it’s a path towards a greater self. The more we look the more we learn to see.

    • Be Strong

      And if the darkness is to keep us apart
      And if the daylight feels like it’s a long way off
      And if your glass heart should crack
      And for a second you turn back
      Oh no, be strong
      — U2, Walk On

      What is your theme song when life doesn’t line up in your favor? Walk On is surely one of mine. It’s a reminder to be strong, even when it doesn’t feel like being strong will make much of a difference. It always makes a difference. Sometimes all we can control is how we react in the moment. And sometimes how we react changes everything.

      The key is to transcend the moment, whatever it presents to us, and move to the next. One day at a time, steady and strong, for this entire climb. And when the world feels dark and it all feels futile, walk on until we move past that which would otherwise sweep over us. Face it, for we know we must. But just keep moving forward.

    • End Games

      All human happiness or misery takes the form of action; the end for which we live is a certain kind of action.” — Aristotle

      We must dream, surely, for better things. But it follows that we must then do the things that realize dreams over time. The two must be combined for a full life. To be forever plotting what we might do one day if only for the things that hold us back is fantasy. To grind away at work each day without dreams is to be a slave to the dreams of others.

      It would be a lot easier if the world weren’t such a mess right now. It would be a lot easier if we didn’t have so much going on today. And it would be a lot easier if we weren’t so clever with our distractions and excuses and just got to work realizing dreams. For the hour is getting late and there’s so much yet to do. We know that we ought to get to work.

      “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is now.” — Chinese proverb

      So what is our end game? What dreams stir the soul? Identify the steps that would bridge the gap and immediately get to work on step one, remembering that Sahil Bloom observation that “Anything above zero compounds.”

      Do something each day towards the dream and the dream may be realized. Do nothing but dream about doing and nothing ever happens. Simple, yet somehow so hard to figure out. And there’s the trap: we must stop playing games working to figure out the perfect ending and simply start doing whatever we can with where we are.

    • No Straight Road

      Oh what a crush of People
      Invisible, reborn
      Make their way to into this garden
      For their eternal rest

      Every step we take on earth
      Brings us to a new world
      Every foot supported
      On a floating bridge

      I know there is no straight road
      No straight road in this world
      Only a giant labyrinth
      Of intersecting crossroads

      And steadily our feet
      Keep walking and creating
      Like enormous fans
      These roads in embryo

      Oh garden of white
      Oh garden of all I am not
      All I could
      And should have been

      I know there is no straight road
      No straight road in this world
      Only a giant labyrinth
      Of intersecting crossroads
      — Federico García Lorca, Floating Bridges

      Oh, the twisting, turning road that brought us to here! We believe it would have been easier to have the straight path from there to here, and here to wherever there might be, but that’s not the life we humans have signed up for. We’re here to meander and discover the truth within us, the plot forever thickening, until one day we surprise even ourselves. All we can do is work to make it a real page-turner.

      There are a few turns we ought to have made, it’s clear now. The road looked easier the other way. Easy, it turns out, wasn’t the road to take. Complexity may perplex and frustrate us, but we gain so much for having gone through it. Tell that to the person we once were, as if they’d listen! But that whisper applies to the road ahead, friend. Just what kind of life do we want to look back upon anyway?

      We ought to glance back, but focus ahead. Remembering that we are not just travelers, but builders. We build our life with every choice, one action taken or deferred at a time. So move forward on the path we believe to be right, trusting the choice but verifying we tread on solid ground with each step.

      Tempus fugit, friend. Look up and a third of the year has flown by. How are we filling the time? What kind of road are we on anyway? Knowing the truth that time reveals, be deliberate with these steps ahead, lest we lose the ripe potential of this time forever. There’s still so much yet to be revealed in this epic adventure we call our own. And the road never will be straight or clear. Doesn’t that make it a wonder?

    • Just the Start

      “Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      Happy Birthday to Marcus Aurelius. April 26th is a heck of day to be born (has a nice ring to it I think). But birthdays are just the start: to have done something with one’s time afterwards is the thing. Aurelius did some things and we still talk of him. Not a bad run for him, and surely not all emperors were born to do things. The same for us common folk. Yet we too may rise above the norm.

      Productivity isn’t a call to work ourselves to the bone, but to do work that matters with each day we’re blessed with. To progress in our endeavors towards a higher aim. A successful life isn’t about any single accomplishment, it’s about the process of becoming something more with each day we’re blessed with.

      Indeed, the thing is the living each day. It could all end at any time. Momento mori. That expiration date will come one day, hopefully not today, and we must be aware of our eventual date with death and live fully today. Today is just the start of whatever we have in the balance. Make something of it.

    • A Series of Somethings

      No one can change everything, but everyone can change something. If you choose to live a life with impact, it’s in your control to do so.” — Seth Godin, Powerlessness

      Godin’s post yesterday offered this nugget of wisdom as a reminder that we have agency. We may change something, should we choose to. Don’t ever tell yourself otherwise, for to do so is to rob this world of one more voice of positive change.

      What does change look like? It’s how we treat people. It’s how we treat ourself. It’s holding a standard for how we’re going to move through this world and holding the line on that with every interaction. We’ll fall short of those standards more than we care to think about, but we’ll also rise to meet them. And we’ll realize now and then that we’ve exceeded the old standard and set a new one. In this way we learn and grow and become something more than we were before.

      That person, the something more person, has momentum and influence. We float through life leaving a wake behind us—a ripple if you like. Each day we impact the life of someone. We may impact them, not directly, but by the impression we made on another, who in turn influenced that person—and so on across time. That’s the ripple of influence we may hardly be aware of in the moment. Each is a series of somethings we made out of what would otherwise be nothing. We must not simply fill the void, but fill it well.

      Writing this blog, I may reach a few people I’ll never meet in my lifetime. The intent isn’t to influence you, dear reader, but it also isn’t to shut you out of the conversation. Every day, flying by as they do, the blog is a postcard to the world. Read by some, glanced at by others, ignored by the vast majority. And that’s as it should be. This is part of my something, even if it isn’t everything.

    • Aspiring to Excellence

      “I know you won’t believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.” — Socrates

      “As he valued excellence less and less, he began to lose his skill in assuming it.” — Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine

      For years I’ve been writing this blog, talking of that evasive personal excellence and its ancient philosophy, arete. We know that we’ll never reach it, only to get closer, until one day we release all we’ve gained to eternity. We may view this as an impossible goal and aim lower, or as a worthy height to ascend towards, offering views we’d never see if we hadn’t attempted to go even higher. Most of us tend to stick with attainable goals. And so it is that we are the lesser for having lowered our expectations of ourselves. That truth becomes apparent over time.

      Still, we may reach that time when we recognize what we’ve opted out of and choose to opt in to something more. Just as bucket lists give people who are late to the game a chance to realize some of those dreams deferred for other things, we may choose an aspirational list of personal growth that leads us closer to our potential. We may not run a PR in the marathon as we grow older, but we can fully explore our intellectual potential for as long as our mental faculty allows.

      The key is to determine a higher standard of living for which we will aspire towards, and attempt to exceed our standard from yesterday today. We may be late bloomers whatever our age, but damnit, we may bloom yet. We may aspire to arete, our evasive personal excellence, and grow to meet the potential within us. Life shouldn’t be a series of settlements of our standards for ourselves, but a steady climb to better. Shouldn’t it?

    • Do Interesting

      “Do interesting things and interesting things will happen to you.” — John Hegarty

      The more times I circle the sun, the more I feel that interesting surpasses necessary. The timeline tightens, the world changes as we work to keep pace, and the examples of days spent doing necessary at the expense of interesting accumulate. What is necessary is methodical, logical, practical. What is interesting is radical, bold and audacious. Do interesting.

      For here there is no place
      that does not see you. You must change your life.
      — Rainer Maria Rilke, Archaic Torso of Apollo

      We cannot compare ourselves to others. Interesting isn’t what our favorite YouTube channel is doing this week, interesting is what we do that is a departure from our norm. Interesting is taking “not yet” out of our vocabulary in favor of “why not?” It doesn’t matter what the world does today, this is our life to live in the best way we can with the tools we have at our disposal.

      What are we doing today? Make bold choices, if only for now. Tomorrow we can defer to necessary, should we feel inclined. Today is for something more. Do interesting. There’s no time to waste.