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    • Discipline and Delight

      “Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.”

      The quote above is attributed to Abraham Lincoln. I won’t spiral down the rabbit hole debating whether that’s true or not while the truth lies there awaiting attention. The truth of the matter is that we humans often wrestle with short term pleasure versus long term rewards. Our days are each some version of that famous marshmallow experiment in which we must choose between gobbling up the treat right in front of us or abstain for a future reward of twice the treats. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, right? Most people choose the treat in front of them.

      The choice isn’t really about whether to choose discipline over delight, but whether to choose to delight in a long term over a short term pleasure. Every temptation offers its version of “pay me now or pay me later”. Indulge in that ice cream now, just don’t complain about the pants being too tight later. Washboard abs may (or may not) be worth the price of saying no right now when our taste buds are screaming “Yes!”

      Constantly deferring one’s desires is a recipe for a dull life. It may be okay to say yes to that treat now, if we remember that there is some price for it right down the road that we must pay. Life isn’t a freeway: There’s always a toll. We ought to be happy to pay it if we really want something.

      There’s a story we tell ourselves about who we are and who we will become. Is what we want now consistent with that storyline or drawing us off the path? Should we be on that path in the first place? Decide what to be and go be it.

    • Delight Is in the Details

      “The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.” — William Morris

      Our level of interest in the details of life dictates how much we get out of it, and yes, how much we are delighted in the living of it. Case in point, I am as interested in the proper capitalization of the title of this blog post as I am with the view out the window I find myself next to as I write this near a bay alive with choppy fetch, bouncing boats and hunting birds soaring above.

      Why should we care about every little detail? Because it’s the stuff of life! More precisely, the stuff of our life. This, friend, is it. And making something of it is our purpose. Indeed, the devil is in the details, so draw delight from the lot of them. That is the recipe for an expansive life.

      We are each collectors of days, with a stack of them making up our lifetime. Within each day in turn are a collection of moments and minutia that are the stuff of life. Paying more attention to that stuff allows us to appreciate all that we have or have held as uniquely ours. Gratitude and delight follow closely behind awareness of all that is.

    • Like Day-Blind Stars

      When despair for the world grows in me
      and I wake in the night at the least sound
      in fear of what my life and my chidren’s lives may be,
      I go and lie down where the wood drake
      rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
      I come into the peace of wild things
      who do not tax their lives with forethought
      of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
      And I feel above me the day-blind stars
      waiting with their light. For a time
      I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
      — Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things

      Labor Day weekend. Where does the time go? Relentlessly into the past. Whatever we’ve done, wherever we’ve been, it’s done with. It all recedes into memory.

      And what do we make of the state of things? This hot mess of a world defies reason. Who ever said it was meant to be reasonable anyway? Nobody said the universe would bend itself to our every whim. Nobody said life was fair. If it were the poets and saints would live forever, instead of the worst of us. Amor fati, friend: accept what is and change what we may control. Let everything else sort itself out.

      Like day-blind stars, the beautiful will emerge in time. Sometimes where we least expect it. Sometimes from deep within ourselves. And e when a poet or singer or singular voice of change passes, reminding us of what they’ve left for the world.

    • The Impeded Stream (RIP Wendell)

      It may be that when we
      no longer know what to do
      we have come to our real work,
      and that when we no longer know
      which way to go
      we have come to our real journey.
      The mind that is not baffled
      is not employed.
      The impeded stream
      is the one that sings.
      — Wendell Berry, Our Real Work

      It’s been a rough year for poets and singers. It seems the beautiful souls slip away from this chaotic place where the ugliest thrive. Or is it that we just care more when the light goes out? And when a light goes out, who will carry the torch next? Why not us, friend?

      Which leads to the question, what will we do? For all the confusion and obstacles that life throughs at us, we work our way through it all, somehow. Persistence and belief in our direction are the keys to growth. A stream carves more deeply with persistence and time. So it is that we ought to keep the work flowing, despite all that is thrown at us along the way.

      Beauty doesn’t die, it simply finds another place to grow.

    • No One Exists Alone

      All I have is a voice
      To undo the folded lie,
      The romantic lie in the brain
      Of the sensual man-in-the-street
      And the lie of Authority
      Whose buildings grope the sky:
      There is no such thing as the State
      And no one exists alone;
      Hunger allows no choice
      To the citizen or the police;
      We must love one another or die.
      — W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939

      Today marks the anniversary of the start of World War II, when Germany invaded Poland and triggered a series of events that would turn the world upside down. We’re still living with the impact of that war, and all other decisions involving war and times of tenuous peace. Humanity will always be imperfect. Knowing this, we must always strive for inner strength and resiliency in our own journey through life.

      September means something different to each of us. Foliage and harvest for some of us, back to school, a shift in focus towards the elections. I have my own thoughts on September, but really, it’s just another month further along the path. What we make of it isn’t entirely up to us, but some important part surely is. Decide what to be and go be it.

      Deciding is an individual act in a world that lumps us all together into groups. Perpetuate the myths of us versus them, or embrace a more courageous uncertainty of trust and collaboration. Not naively leading the flock over the cliff, but instead finding common ground. in the end, we must love one another or die.

    • The Wild Air

      Live in the sunshine, swim the sea,
      Drink the wild air’s salubrity
      — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Merlin’s Song

      Having spent some time in a big city over the weekend, I admit to a renewed appreciation for the wild air of my quiet town. I love being in the city while I’m in it, but love leaving it all the more. Give me the relative quiet solitude of a less urban lifestyle.

      The world needs more wild, secluded places. Urban sprawl is slowly choking us into madness. Get outside, where we can breath, feel the sun on our skin, and bathe in the beauty of nature. That’s my kind of wild.

    • The Alexander Hamilton Farewell Tour

      “Those who stand for nothing fall for everything.” — Alexander Hamilton

      An interesting, if slightly morbid twist on travel is to visit the graves of famous people who died young, and combine it with a visit to the place where they met their demise. Some places, like Normandy, with the D-Day beaches and cemeteries, are obvious opportunities to combine the two. Other opportunities sneak up on you through serendipity.

      A visit to Metro New York afforded such an opportunity. Walking past Trinity Church on the way to Ground Zero and the 9/11 Memorial, we realized the opportunity to pay our respects to Alexander Hamilton at his gravesite in the graveyard adjacent to the church. As with most graveyards, we walk in history along ground that has largely remained the same since the interred last saw daylight. In Lower Manhattan, with modern skyscrapers all around you, the opportunity to walk amongst 400 years of untouched history is sobering.

      The next day, we took the ferry from Manhattan over to Weehawken, New Jersey to the place where Aaron Burr shot him in the most famous duel in American history. To see the rock where Hamilton bled out on encaged at the top reminded me a bit of Plymouth Rock. Who knows if it’s really the rock or not? But it offered an opportunity to see roughly where he died, which was about 20 feet above the Hudson River.

      It turned out all that climbing wasn’t necessary to actually see the Weehawken Dueling Grounds, but those grounds are either train tracks or otherwise paved over at this point. No matter, the views from the Hamilton Memorial were absolutely worth the climb up the stairs to the top of the cliff. It turned out to be a fine way to say farewell to New York and its famous resident too.

      Alexander Hamilton’s memorial
      Eliza Hamilton
      That rock
      The million dollar view from Weehawken

    • We Are What We Do

      “Our dreams betray us” — Anton Myrer, Once An Eagle

      What do our dreams actually say of us, but who we desire to be? For all my talk of productivity and purpose, I dream of boats and faraway places. Polar opposites, I can here the maternal characters in my life say. So which is me, and what is simply talk?

      We dream of being writers or pro athletes or travel lifestyle YouTube influencers. We dream of washboard abs and marathon finishes. None of that is who we are, it’s nothing but what we wish for until we pay the price of greatness; the daily, consistent, habitual work that lifts us up from our dreams and carries us to our destiny. Do or do not, there is no try, as Yoda put it.

      Dreams betray our aspirations and desires. They hint at a possible future, but simply hoping to hit the lottery leads to a life of dashed dreams and lingering regrets. Making the intangible tangible begins with doing the hard things that a dreamlike life demands. So wake up and get on with it.

    • Something

      “I am only one, I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” — Edward Everett Hale

      Absorbing the latest foolishness in the world, I wonder whether I ought to care more. The thing is, I care a great deal about everything, but I can’t control hardly any of it, so I focus on something instead. That, I believe, is the trick to getting through life with the soul intact. The nicks and bruises of everything may sting and surely are unpleasant for the logical mind, but remember that everything cannot get past a hardened mind. Alternatively, we may let something in to nurture and grow.

      Decide what to be and go be it. Just who do we wish to become in future versions of the self? We’re flying along towards the future anyway. What something today will make the biggest difference in who we will be then? If we stop focusing on everything, something more essential becomes easy to focus on.

    • A Thrilling Something

      Do you still remember: falling stars,
      how they leapt slantwise through the sky
      like horses over suddenly held-out hurdles
      of our wishes—did we have so many?—
      for stars, innumerable, leapt everywhere;
      almost every gaze upward became
      wedded to the swift hazard of their play,
      and our heart felt like a single thing
      beneath that vast disintegration of their brilliance—
      and was whole, as if it would survive them!
      — Rainer Maria Rilke

      August is ending, and so are longer days. I don’t mind the darkness so much, for it opens up other opportunities. Have a look up and see all that we miss scurrying about in the daylight. Just this morning the brilliant kaleidoscope of sunrise greeted the pup and me as we ventured beyond the threshold. She had her nose to the ground, while my own was pointed at the skies. We survey all but the middle, the pup and I.

      The Perseids came and went this year, with the inevitable ill-timed overcast skies blocking the show at peak where I live. Still, I saw a few shooting stars this month—enough to keep me looking for more. A meteor is a shock to the senses as it streaks across the sky. Where a moment before there was vast sameness, for an instant there’s a thrilling something burst upon the scene, before it disappears as quickly as it came.

      We aren’t so different from shooting stars, are we? We think we will live forever until we realize we won’t. That realization in itself is a jolt to the vast sameness of living. Memento mori. Make this streak through the dark a little brighter, buckaroo! We ourselves are a thrilling something, if we seize the day. Hurry now: the ride goes quickly.