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    • Lifestyle Choices

      “You’re a ghost driving a meat-coated skeleton made from stardust; what do you have to be scared of?” — @rat_sandwich

      Funny quote, and doesn’t it resonate? Each of us knows that it’s now or never. We must live while there’s time to do things. That the only answer is to be bold in our lifestyle choices. Do what resonates and forget the rest. Yes, we know this to be true, but are we following through? We’ve got to feel the urgency to fly.

      The thing is, it’s an easy thing to tell ourselves to be bold, it’s a harder thing to be it. But bolder may be reached in a big leap or through increasing our audacity incrementally every day. Before we know it, we’re actually bold, or at the very least, bolder than we once were. This is how we begin to live properly.

      “Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly. What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      Bold doesn’t mean to run away from everything, not to me anyway. We may live a larger life without being reckless with all that we hold dear. Bold is a lifestyle choice realized in all of our moments. It takes courage to look our eventual death in the face and choose to dance, now, while we can.

      All that matters are the choices we make today. Yesterday’s me is dead, and today everything changes. This is the only way to grow out of who we once were into who we are meant to be. Who is that person, and what’s the first step to meeting them? Together, we’re writing one hell of a story.

    • Beyond the Same Old

      “The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year.” — John Foster Dulles

      I first encountered this Dulles quote 25 years ago. I know this because I wrote the date in pencil right next to it. I was a different person then in countless ways, and exactly the same in others. Some positive, transformative growth has happened in that time, and some stubborn habits that hold me back still have a hold of me even now. We all have things that carry us forward or hold us back in our lives, and mostly that’s between our ears.

      If I were to track broken promises to myself over that time, I’d see the same ones appear over and over. We can focus on such things and beat ourselves up, or celebrate the ways in which we’ve grown into a better human. If life has taught me anything, it’s to identify the positive systems, habits and routines that make us incrementally better and do more of those things. There will always be problems and challenges in our lives, the question is whether we’re just repeating ourselves or actually evolving into a person who is more adaptive, resilient and wiser than the person we were before. If so, our problems and challenges will evolve into different ones, indicating progress.

      The alternative to new and greater challenges is having the same ones. That’s as clear an indication of stagnation and being in a rut as any. When we’re in a rut we ought to climb out as soon as possible before it becomes our grave. Countless people go to their graves wishing they’d done something transformative in their lives. We should live our days with Henry David Thoreau’s warning from Walden in mind:

      “Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously course labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.” Which led to his most famous observation, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

      So what occupies us? What are our own factitious and superfluous labors distracting us from moving past the problems that have nagged us over and over again? We must live creative, bold lives that we may break from the rut altogether and transform ourselves for the better. To be successful, deep down in our own minds, is to transcend who we once were to become something greater.

      The thing is, we know all of this, and yet we still stall out here and there. Our epitaph ought to be more than “steady but unremarkable”. Progress towards remarkable is measured in the value and contribution we bring to the world; to be useful to others and ourselves, and to move that investment ever higher. What is our verse? What is our dent in the universe? What ripple will carry well after we’ve checked out? Do more of that to move beyond the same old problems.

    • The Linen of Words

      All day I work
      with the linen of words

      and the pins of punctuation
      all day I hang out
      over the desk

      grinding my teeth
      staring.
      Then I sleep.
      — Mary Oliver, Work

      Life is change, and our why pivots with it. We may channel this into creative work and find out something about ourselves in the process. One more day blessed with the opportunity to dance with our why to produce a what before we sleep.

      I track the journey from here to there and publish it free for all to see. Some days our journey takes us to faraway, sometimes the journey has us turning inward from a familiar place. We have the luxury of time some days, and the urgency of just a few minutes to spare other days. They all add up to the catalog of work published—our contribution to the Great Conversation.

      This blog post feels incomplete to me, like there’s far more to wrestle with before it’s fully fleshed out. And yet I’m about to publish it anyway. In a way that’s a good metaphor for our lives. We’re all just incomplete souls trying to reach some conclusion that makes sense before we reach ship this work and move on to the next.

      The work will end one day, but [apparently] not today. This linen of words is strung together in a streak of days; breadcrumbs of a life. Words are the glue that holds our collective history together, binding you and I together just as surely as it binds the generations before and after us. That feels more salient than just another blog post.

    • The Truth, and All That is Otherwise

      “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” — Mark Twain

      I live in a red town, the red hat MAGA red that makes normal folk a bit weary. This is most noticeable in the signs and flags displayed well before the election announcing support for the former guy who wants to be the next guy that he may pardon himself and impose his version of payback on those who would make him accountable for his actions. Perhaps necessary for him, not necessarily for the rest of humanity. I tend to find the truth somewhere in the middle, ignoring the two extremes altogether. Sadly this doesn’t seem to be the norm.

      The internet created so much abundance in this world, but abundance isn’t always a good thing. The genie is out of the bottle now, so how do we balance the truth with all that is otherwise? The old expression, “trust but verify” only works when you can trust the place where you’re verifying the information you’re wondering if you can trust. When you use the same search engine for everything, how can we be sure anything is true?

      Modern life is making fools of us all. We ought to be focused on the massive challenges humanity and this planet face, instead we’re believing our ears instead of our eyes on every conspiracy theory, rumor and innuendo we stumble upon. When future generations look at us, will they shake their head in disbelief at the con job we were all sold on?

      If I began to tell you what the truth is, you should immediately put up your guard. None of us knows the truth about everything, and those who tell you they’ve got it all figured out are usually the ones that we should all be most skeptical of. We really only know the truth about ourselves, and most of us bury that too. The irony in all of this as that fooling ourselves and others seems to be one of those timeless truths about humans we will never quite shake. But hey, don’t take my word for it.

    • Emergency Room Poetry

      “I don’t know if I will ever write another poem. I don’t know if I am going to live for a long time yet, or even for a while.
      But I am going to spend my life wisely. I’m going to be happy, and frivolous, and useful….
      To rise like a slow and beautiful poem. To live a long time.”
      — Mary Oliver, Fletcher Oak

      Hours waiting quietly in an emergency room, alongside the patient dozing on a bed nearby, her husband dozing in a chair next to me, and a constant stream of activity feet away as the frailty of humans is displayed in one example after another. But not just frailty—resiliency is also on display. So many people fighting for better health and another day. We have only to see the staff in an emergency room in action to know that the best of humanity lingers among us.

      It’s unspoken, but acknowledged. You assess the people around you and the suffering they’re dealing with in this particular moment in our collective history. They do the same with you. What brought us all here? Most often not how we expected this day to go. Yet here we are. Amor fati.

      The waiting rooms in hospitals usually have televisions broadcasting something uncontroversial, like cooking shows. There’s already enough tension in such places without pouring gas on the fire. But inside the locked door where treatment happens (or where you await it) there are no such distractions as cooking shows. It’s here that people learn to listen to themselves again, or glance at others, or most often, text and scroll with the outside world, far from this place.

      I chose Mary Oliver. Poetry in the quiet moments awaiting answers, awaiting treatment for those I support, those who have supported me on my own down days. Here I sat in awe of doctors and nurses doing what is routine for them. Asking questions and texting updates when there were any, feeding crackers to the patient and joking about sneaking gin and tonics in. Whatever it took to make the moment better. To be useful in a challenging moment is all we can ask of ourselves.

    • To Be Where I Have Been

      Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face
      And stars fill my dream
      I’m a traveler of both time and space
      To be where I have been
      — Led Zeppelin, Kashmir

      We walk on familiar ground most days. Even the avid travelers tend to cross their wake more often than one would expect. I’ve gone through the same security line countless times at the airport on journeys to faraway places, just as sailors note the mouth of the river as the beginning of their next passage. The destinations change, just as we do, yet that which we’ve seen before sends us off or welcomes us back.

      Each day at home is a routine of familiarity. This may be seen as reprovisioning the body and soul (and wallet) before the next voyage, or a welcome embrace back to where we feel we belong. I plot my next trip even now, yet still grow a garden. We nomads are complicated creatures.

      There are voyages to places, and voyages in our personal development. We need both to feel complete on the journey. Perhaps at our final destination we’ll finally feel satiated, but I believe we just get tired. Growth is our ongoing mission, start to finish, wherever that ends up being. We may have hopes and dreams and a clear path to take us there and still never arrive at any of it. Then again, we may just stumble upon it and realize we’ve arrived sooner than expected.

    • Proper Work

      “How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly, looking at everything and calling out Yes! No! … Imagination is better than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” — Mary Oliver, Yes! No!

      I saw some pictures of friends off on some beautiful hike over the weekend, and other friends reawakening their sailboat before setting off for adventure. My own activity this weekend was less inspiring. Instead of adventure, I found some new soreness this weekend, earned with a pressure washer and a tall stepladder navigated to high places to make the house shine a little brighter. Sometimes our proper work is doing chores that have been nagging us for awhile, that we may return our focus to the universe yet again.

      The thing is, when I walked the pup later in the afternoon when the sun was shining just so, the house smiled back at me. We become what we put into the world, and a bit of housework does the body and soul good. It may sound silly, but I can look at a sparkling clean house and say “I did that” just as proudly as if I’d hiked up Mount Washington. The memories are different, but every journey set out upon that is completed counts for something.

      Proper work is highly subjective, but in the end it’s the things that we apply focus to that moves us forward. Writing this blog—to me—is proper work. So is tending the garden and washing the dishes and calling the customer you know is angry because it’s the right thing to do to hear them out and help them move to a better place. To be present and engaged in each thing that we do matters a great deal, for it’s the stuff of life and we only have the one go at it.

      What we say yes and no to in our days becomes our identity. When this day is complete, what will it say about us? We ought to slow down just enough to see the path we’re on, that we may know where we’ve been, and perhaps, where we’re going next. And so if you’ll excuse me the blog is now complete for the day, and it seems I have even more work to do.

    • The Yes Behind the No

      I recently looked at a boat, thinking it would be a very nice time to shift back to boat life. I’ve since backed away from that particular boat, for now, that I might make the most of the ripening moments at hand. The boat and I have an understanding that we may meet again someday. If it’s meant to be.

      We say yes to some things knowing that we’re saying no to other things. That’s the lesson every child must learn to become an adult. We can’t have it all, no matter how much money or power we attain in our lives. There’s always a no hiding behind a yes.

      We all know some people who should be adults who refuse to take no for an answer. Give them enough power and they’re capable of making life miserable for the rest of us. Wars are started because people can’t stand a no. But no’s will always be there, mocking us as we grab every yes, creating yet another no.

      Like a heartbeat, drives you mad
      In the stillness of remembering what you had
      And what you lost
      And what you had
      And what you lost
      — Fleetwood Mac, Dreams

      The very best humans are those who love the yes they’re living, with a gentle nod to the no they’re leaving to whither on the vine. That’s not a call to settle for less than we’re capable of, merely a nod to knowing when you reach your dreams and loving them for what they are. The yes will always be there, awaiting the right time. If it never arrives perhaps it wasn’t meant to. The most essential thing, I think, is to be fully aware of the yes we’ve let into our lives.

    • Foundations

      “Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.” ― Carl Jung

      Navigating years as they unfold may make us more intelligent, or less so, depending on the lessons learned along the way. I’m shocked at the distinct lack of intelligence displayed in some people my age or well past it. I’m impressed with the brilliance and maturity of some people much younger than me. I’m sure I shock them at times too by what I don’t know at my own age. Such is the journey through time for each individual.

      We all ought to make more mistakes along the way if only to figure out that we should take another path to becoming. Fear of mistakes is what keeps us from going anywhere at all. There are times in our life when we debate whether to take a hard left instead of staying on a familiar course. Both are deeply impactful, but which elevates our experience the most? Life is full of such forks, and most follow the path well-travelled. And that makes a difference too.

      We don’t learn and grow by staying the same. We must challenge ourselves in new ways, that we may build a stronger foundation from which to see the world differently. Our lifetime of learning and experience, reflected and acted upon, carries us to a greater and more profound identity. It’s right here in front of us, where we might ask once again, what next?

    • Insert the Grateful

      Gratitude
      Sometimes all you need is
      Gratitude
      Just try and hold on to
      The city lights
      Sunrise, long drives
      Late nights, shady groves
      The love we know
      Isn’t that what matters most?
      These things aren’t a given
      They’re the heartbeats of time
      A songbird in the wind
      The wind in the pines
      — Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors, Gratitude

      We humans are particularly good at focusing on what we don’t have, often at the expense of the abundance we have all around us. The beautiful thing about living fully aware in the moment is that you notice those things that might have been missed in rushing off to the next. We ought to know better, but looking ahead anticipating something better is part of our identity.

      I’m not particularly good at doing those gratitude journals. Usually at the end of the day I’m just trying to insert one last positive habit that moves me forward like Duolingo, flossing or reading before I doze off. Maybe the answer isn’t to assess what we’re grateful for at the end of the day, but to insert the gratitude into small moments as they unfold around us. It helps to remind ourselves to stick around awhile in this moment. After all, savoring is only done in the present. And here it is!

      Look around at all that is beautiful in our lives, not just the things we’re antagonized by. It’s only a beat longer to pause and acknowledge to ourselves that this particular moment of beauty and light is a blessing before we move on. Here lies happiness.