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    • Start Again

      The birds they sang
      At the break of day
      Start again
      I heard them say
      Don’t dwell on what has passed away
      Or what is yet to be
      Ah, the wars they will be fought again
      The holy dove, she will be caught again
      Bought and sold, and bought again
      The dove is never free
      Ring the bells that still can ring
      Forget your perfect offering
      There is a crack, a crack in everything
      That’s how the light gets in
      — Leonard Cohen, Anthem

      For all the madness and imperfection in the world, this is our time in it. We may still let the light in and find our way again. This theme has snuck into my awareness a few times in the last few days, in social media posts, in video clips from commencement speeches, and engraved on a bench overlooking Rockland harbor in Maine. It seems everyone is reaching for something, and whispering to those who follow how to find their way. When we open ourselves to the universe, it will tell us all we need to hear.

      We know the world is imperfect just as we know that we too are imperfect. We ought to stop counting our flaws and focus on the things we’re doing right. Work on the good things, let the rest fall away like bad relationships. And aren’t the imperfections we focus on nothing but a bad relationship that we can’t break away from? Let it go already. Start again with the clean slate of a fresh outlook.

      Imperfections are beliefs about the things we don’t have in our lives. None of us are born whole, we each have something within us that is imperfect. My own list is uncomfortably long—but so what? Focusing on what we don’t have in our lives is the surest path to misery. Discomfort is good when we apply it to changes we can influence, but undermines us when applied to focusing on who we’ll never be. That person doesn’t exist and probably shouldn’t—they’re just a character in the story we tell ourselves about our place in this world.

      “When you cut water, the water doesn’t get hurt; when you cut something solid, it breaks. You’ve got solid attitudes inside you; you’ve got solid illusions inside you; that’s what bumps against nature, that’s where you get hurt, that’s where the pain comes from.” — Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      The trick, it seems, is to be more fluid in our perception of ourselves. Joyfulness is found in awareness and acceptance. Being aware of our imperfections and the gaps between who we are and who we wish to be is healthy and may lead to positive change. So is accepting that sometimes the gap is just there to show us who we aren’t meant to be. Ring the bells that still can ring.

    • Pup Cups

      We have an active 1-year old puppy with a high level of energy and an even higher metabolism. She has developed into a tirelessly enthusiastic frisbee player, an avid hiker and a joyful walking companion. And she has a sweet tooth that none of my previous dogs had. She’s never met a pup cup she didn’t love.

      For those who aren’t familiar with pup cups, it’s basically soft-serve ice cream served in a dog-friendly cardboard cup, usually with a small dog bone on top. Our pup pulls that right out of the way and devours her ice cream treat. The bone is inevitably buried for later wherever she can hide it. Just the good stuff for the pup.

      The thing is, I also like ice cream or gelato, but throwing the frisbee isn’t burning the same amount of calories as chasing it does, so more often than not she’s enjoying her treat while I watch. If you want to see a highly-focused individual in action, watch a puppy lick a pup cup to oblivion. There’s no distraction when it comes to ice cream. In fact, anyone who struggles with living in the moment ought to consider adopting a dog. Every day brings a lesson in the delight of now.

    • The Routine

      You know the old expression, “how you do anything is how you do everything”? Every day I find the truth in it. When we half-ass our way through life, we live a half-ass life. When we put our best into our most important things, we seem to align something with the universe that grants us our best experiences. The lesson is to stop half-assing and do the best we can with every opportunity. Reality is, we’re human and inevitably we’re going to settle into (and for) the routine.

      Lately I’ve been looking at June 1 as a date to begin a new workout routine. This coincides with a fundraiser I’ll be doing this summer, but I’m asking myself, why wait? What’s stopping me from simply starting the routine now and continuing it when the fundraiser starts? And why does my mind need a cause to rise up to instead of simply doing the workout every day without fail?

      We fall into habits just as easily as we fall out of them. The trick is to engrain it into our identity, that we do the things we know we ought to do without mind games. If we’re capable of brushing our teeth and flossing every day, or writing a blog for that matter, then if follows that we’re capable of investing the time to exercise every day or do some other habit that makes us better humans. We’ve already created the proof that we’re capable of following a routine by not doing something we know we ought to do in the first place. So just do it already. Today is even better than tomorrow for the essential things in our lives.

    • Ideas, Dogma and Individuality

      “All leadership takes place through the communication of ideas to the minds of others.” — Charles Cooley

      “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” ― Steve Jobs

      If there’s one thing that will define this time in our collective history, it’s the division of people into one camp or another. It’s all dogma and posturing, with little basis in actual reality. Stories are powerful, and “people like us” is compelling precisely because we don’t want to be perceived as “people like them”. It’s all just stories, amplified and accelerated by technology perhaps, but still just stories. We believe what we believe, and choose to follow those who make us feel like we belong to something bigger than ourselves. Sometimes the results are extraordinary, and sometimes they’re a tragic stain on human history.

      The key for you and me is to know that we’re always being sold on a story, and to separate ourselves from the passion of the moment to find the truth within ourselves. That’s easier said than done, especially when the people we surround ourselves with start singing the same song as the lead singer. Who doesn’t love a good singalong? It’s only when we sober up that we realize how foolish the whole thing was. That’s what the passion of the crowd will do, and it’s challenging to remove ourselves from that mosh pit once we’ve been swept into it.

      There’s no doubt that individuals get swept up in the events of their time. Sometimes self-determination isn’t in the cards. But sometimes it is. Logic and reasoning may not be as fun as chanting and clapping and doing tomahawk chops seems to be, but it removes us just enough from the zealotry of the moment to think more clearly about who we want to be. This applies equally to any group-think activity: political, religious, regional, familial and cultural. When we become part of the tribe we may identify with certain beliefs and behaviors as normal and acceptable, while we quickly judge or dismiss rival beliefs and behaviors as naive at best or abhorrent in more extreme circumstances. Wars have been carried out for less.

      The story we tell ourselves about who we are defines us and our place both in the group we find ourselves in and in history. Decide what to be and go be it, but know the risks from making the choice of the individual: ostracized, berated and occasionally burned at the stake. That’s exactly why most people simply go with the flow. But we ought to remember that there’s a price for every decision.

      The thing is, individualism aside, we all want to be part of something larger than ourselves. Being a contributor to a meaningful organization or cause feeds our purpose for being here in the first place. When we separate ourselves from dogma and popular opinion and find that we align with the mission we’re joining, extraordinary things may happen. There’s power in teamwork and shared objectives, after all. We just need to be in it for all the right reasons.

    • What’s Good For You

      James, do you like your life?
      Can you find release?
      And will you ever change?
      Will you ever write your masterpiece?
      Are you still in school
      Living up to expectations, James?
      You were so relied upon
      Everybody knows how hard you tried
      Hey, just look at what a job you’ve done
      Carrying the weight of family pride
      James, you’ve been well behaved
      You’ve been working hard
      But will you always stay
      Someone else’s dream of who you are?
      Do what’s good for you
      Or you’re not good for anybody, James
      — Billy Joel, James

      Following the dream someone else established for you is the surest path to the quiet desperation that Henry David Thoreau wrote about in Walden. We must eventually break free of those expectations and follow our own path to find ourselves. For some of us, it comes years after school and many rungs up a few too many ladders in a career of figuring out why this thing or that didn’t quite resonate for us the way we thought it would when we stepped onto it. For me, the writing was always the thing I should have done but for the things I thought I had to do.

      Billy Joel has been on a heavy rotation on the playlist lately, and his question to old school friends seems to pop up frequently. Will you ever write your masterpiece? Will you always stay someone else’s dream of who you are? Tough questions, but the thing is, the answer reveals itself over time.

      Most of us grow out of other people’s expectations eventually. Most of us work to master something important to us, even if it’s a hobby. I speak to people who light up when they talk about their garden or hiking the same mountains over and over again or playing pickleball—whatever—and the joyfulness of the pursuit to mastery is obvious.

      Will I ever write my masterpiece? Who knows? But we find the things that work for us and pursue them with a focus that only love of the pursuit derives. At some point, it doesn’t matter what other people’s expectations are, only that we are doing what we love to do in the time that we have. That’s how to live a life.

    • Ready Now?

      “It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.” — Hugh Laurie

      It’s a theme woven deeply into the fabric of this blog: do it now. I repeat myself not to bore the reader but to remind myself to keep one foot moving forward even as the other is anchored in the moment we’ll soon leave behind. There is only now… and yet we often wait anyway, deferring to tomorrow what we ought to do today. The timing never feels right for some things, and definitely not right for some other things. The stars rarely align just so.

      One of the reasons I publish this blog every day is to maintain the habit of urgency. Writing first thing in the morning most days, I feel incomplete until it’s done. Depending on the circumstances of the moment, I usually stack another daily habit or two on top of the writing to feel like I’ve really done something with the day. This small blog isn’t going to change the world, but it changes my world every single day.

      We must break the habit of deferring to tomorrow what we may do today. Sure, we must also be fiscally responsible and learn the skills necessary to navigate the world we aspire to enter, but we must stop using such logical things as excuses for not doing anything. Small steps forward are still steps forward. And when we develop this bias towards action, when we grow into our future, we surprise ourselves with the momentum.

      Beliefs are formed through routine. Our future positive or negative outcomes are directly linked to what we do now. So it makes sense to stack today with the actions necessary to turn tomorrow positive. Ready or not, the future is coming. Carpe diem, already.

    • About Time

      ‘In headaches and in worry
      Vaguely life leaks away,
      And Time will have his fancy
      To-morrow or to-day.
      — W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening

      I tend to track time differently than I once did. Now I measure time by the length of my hair or fingernails (weeks versus days since my last trim). I don’t generally look at the clock before calling it a night, for what does time have to do with how tired we feel? Nor do I set an alarm to awaken, I simply wake up. In many ways, I woke up years ago to the folly of time, even if I still follow the rules and show up early (as any civilized adult ought to aspire to). In this way, you might say my relationship with time is complicated.

      When we see time for what it is, something inside us shifts. We become collectors of experiences and embracers of moments rather than maximizers of minutes on the schedule. For all my focus on productivity, at the end of the day I only care that I’ve done the essential few things that move the chains forward for me in the direction I wish to go. The rest float away like all the other past initiatives.

      Writing every day forced me to become an efficient writer. There’s no time to waste on things like writer’s block when you must ship the work and get on to other things. Similarly, other things I do every day become automatic for me, that I may check the box and move on to other things. If that sounds transactional, well, so be it, but it doesn’t mean it’s not the most important thing for me in those moments doing it. When we give something our complete attention for the time necessary to complete it, we may surprise ourselves at just how quickly we can do the work.

      One of the people who works for me was stuck on a presentation he had to deliver to the team, simply overwhelmed by how to structure a slide deck and what to talk about. After being his sounding board for all the built-up stress and despair over the unfairness of having to do this in the first place, I made the deck for him in 30 minutes and quietly sent it to him to personalize in his own way, that he might focus on more important things than a peer presentation. When we get wrapped around the pole on the details of things that aren’t all that important in the end, we waste our time. If experience has taught me anything, it’s to quickly create solutions to problems that I may go back to spending time on more important things. Spending time on my employee wasn’t a waste of my own time, it was an investment in his. I’ll take that trade-off.

      The thing is, I recognize the place that he’s in now in his life. Ten years younger than me, with family obligations that can overwhelm you when you’re just trying to get through the day—I’ve been there, done that. My doing his homework for him wasn’t meant to take him off the hook so much as to show him a clearer future. My priority is to develop an employee who can assess the nature of a commitment and allocate the appropriate amount of focus on it, that he may move on to more essential things. Looking back, I’m sure someone did the same for me once upon a time.

      Life always comes back to our operating system. When we ground ourselves in stoicism, we know that time flies (tempus fugit) and we must therefore seize the day (carpe diem). There’s no time to waste on how we feel about the matter. In the end, the quality of our life is measured in how effective we are at navigating the small things that we may accomplish the big things. What’s bigger for us than using our brief time on this earth on things that matter most?

    • Finding So Good

      “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” — Steve Martin

      We’re into graduation season once again, so Steve Martin’s advice seems to come up more frequently now than at other times of the year. It’s great advice: get exceptionally good at anything and people will naturally be drawn to you to do the thing you’re really good at. Be average and swim in the pool of mediocrity hoping to stay afloat. The choice seems obvious!

      The trick is to get really good at something that enough people want. If you make the world’s best grilled cheese sandwich, people will line up to try it and post pictures to prove they were there to savor it. If you’re the best in the world at selling wooden pencils, you may scrape out a modest living but every day is a struggle to make the pencil relevant again to people who long ago moved on to typing and signing with a pen. We must surf the edge of relevancy in our choice for so good.

      I post this on a Monday—how many of us are excited about that thing we’re really good at? Does it move the chains forward in a world that is increasingly bickering about what the rules are? When we one day retire from the career we’ve built for ourselves, will our peers say there will never be another quite like us, or will the next person up quietly slip into our role and adjust our old chair to fit? Seen in that light, have we chosen the right thing to be so good at?

      The thing is, there’s still today to be exceptional and to try a different path. We may choose to be an exceptional parent or soccer coach or gardener or blogger first. We may choose to write our own rules about what so good means to us and those most important to us in our lives. That may not make us famous for our grilled cheese sandwiches, but perhaps locally famous within the circle of souls who complete our world. Fame and money can’t buy you the love of your family and friends, only transactional attention. Transactions are the opposite of engagement. Who get’s ignored in this world when the transaction is complete? Our aim ought to be more staying power than a family photo for the Christmas card.

      We are average at most things we do in life, and if we choose wisely and invest enough skill and attention to it, really good at a very short number of things. A guy like Steve Martin chose to be really good at comedy, acting, playing the banjo and writing. I’d bet that he’s got a great family life too. That requires a lot of focused energy on one thing at a time, but he’s done it. We can look at people in history with a similar track—Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo de Vinci both come to mind—who pull this off. These are exceptional lives that rise above the average.

      So what of us? We may not be graduating this month and posting pictures with proud parents, but we are beginning again in whatever path we’ve chosen. We ought to listen to the call to greatness and choose what will define this next stage of our own lives. To ignore it would be a waste.

    • The Splendid and Meaningful

      “This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.” — Rudyard Kipling, Kim

      “As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all, and make it your own possession. We must seize what flees.” — Seneca

      Lately I’ve had a good run of splendid days. Not every day, mind you, but surely enough to make the year memorable when you reflect upon the sum. These are days we’ll remember—and so we must remember to live with this in mind. Be bold while we have the currency of health, wealth or time to do something about it. Most of us will never have all three at the same time, but chances are we’ll have one or two in abundance at any singular moment in our lives. We must use this currency wisely.

      I’ve been known to post a lot of pictures of whatever adventure I happen to be on on my social media timeline. Perhaps there’s too much of a good thing, but for me it’s about capturing the essence of the moment at hand in the best way available to me at the time. Images and words are the best way for me. If I overshare I do it with two people in mind: the one who can’t do the adventure I’m doing for lack of available currency (again, not always financial) and the one who chooses not to spend the currency they have in the moment. For the former I’m bringing them along on the adventure, but for the latter I’m hoping to shake them loose from their frugality before their currency is gone forever.

      I’ve had the opportunity to travel with people who have lost the currency of health and it always makes an impression on me. Did they simply wait too long or are they giving it their best shot with the currency they have left? The answer means a great deal to the outcome. We must know our limitations but be unafraid to stretch beyond our comfort zone. The people I shake my head in disbelief at are those who defer their lives beyond the limits of their available currency. Do it now! There is no tomorrow when the well runs dry.

      The last couple of days I’ve been sequestered with a book, my bride and our dog for a soggy weekend. The currency being spent is time, and I’ve delighted in the long walks and chapters of reading completed simply because I had the time available to do them. Splendid moments don’t have to be expensive or exclusive, but they ought to be meaningful to be worthy of the currency spent on them. We must remember to seize what flees.

      Just another sunset, or blessed with another sunset? Attitude is everything.

    • Tell About It

      Instructions for living a life:
      Pay attention.
      Be astonished.
      Tell about it.
      — Mary Oliver, Sometimes

      “If you give away everything you have, you are left with nothing. This forces you to look, to be aware, to replenish.” — Paul Arden

      Writing is simply a practice for tracking and amplifying progress in this bold act of becoming what’s next. There are no advertisements or subscription fees or hints to go buy whatever it is I’m selling that day. There’s simply a trail of breadcrumbs in the form of a daily blog for those inclined to follow along to see what this fool is up to now.

      More than that, it serves as a vehicle for sharing my attention and awareness and growth when it would be easier perhaps to just consume my share and leave the words for others. Who really has time to follow yet another blogger in this crazy world anyway? Viewed as a daily ritual leading to self-improvement and a greater awareness of my place in this world gets me closer to why. But it’s more than that, for wouldn’t a journal serve the same purpose? No, there’s something in the act of sharing everything that opens up the mind to receive more.

      To live and then to tell about what we’ve encountered along the way is to expand our lives beyond ourselves—beyond our time and place and circle of trust, and connect with some soul who may never know you but for these words. Like the tide ebbing and then flowing again, we are refreshed, alive and connected with the rest of the universe as soon as we click publish. We owe it to ourselves to have something to say in that moment. That each post may just be our last implores us to do our best with it. Living with urgency brings vibrancy to the otherwise mundane possibility of another today (sort of like yesterday). Fully aware and ready to share what we see with others forces our senses open. To find something new to be astonished about today seems a lovely way to move through a life, don’t you think?