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    • The Climb of a Lifetime

      “Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed.” — Charles Schulz

      The trick is to defer rounding that hill into decline for as long as possible. My personal goal is to be a fit and witty centenarian. Whether that’s in the cards is up to fate, but we all ought to have goals in life, shouldn’t we? Prolonging the active, healthy and vibrant years seems as worthy a goal as any.

      Those people who say it’s better to burn out than to fade away forget the third choice: living a fit, balanced life for as long as we can keep the party rolling. Good habits carry us higher up the hill, bad habits make us round the top more quickly than we’d want. Reckless behavior makes us stumble before our time. We know all of this, we just need to look up now and then to see what we’re straying into. When it comes down to it, we are what we repeatedly do, as the saying goes.

      “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” — Martin Luther

      As a gardener, I see the parallels to living a good life: Get out there rain or shine, ensure that the roots are well fed, nurture the good and weed out that which will create problems later, ignore the rest. And most important, keep investing in the future. We are tending to a garden we may never harvest, but there’s magic in the act of tending it anyway.

    • Of All We Make

      The potter
      innocent of all
      he makes
      how could he know
      his bowl would hold the moon?
      — Peter Levitt, The Potter

      Inevitably, for every high when everything seems to click, we find ourselves in a low when everything seems to be off kilter. Working through the down days brings us to the other side. The trick is knowing you aren’t quite through yet and to take yet another step forward. We aren’t simply in it for ourselves here, planting breadcrumbs and such—we’re here to grow, that we might offer more to those who need more from us.

      We don’t always know what will come of our work, only that we may do it. Making it better than yesterday ensures we’re climbing. We ought to know that the climb is bringing us to the right mountaintop, but every false summit is a lesson too. Making sense of all we make is impossible while we are in the act of making it. What we need is a moment to look around from the vantage point reached. We know when our work resonates. We know when it doesn’t. To charge ahead without a glance at our compass will have us running around in circles.

      Joseph Campbell referenced the Krishna’s dictum and observed that “the best way to help mankind is through the perfection of yourself.” Perfection will always be elusive and just out of reach for us mortals, but we’re all works in progress, aren’t we? Every day is one more humble attempt to do something positive in this world through our advancement. To stall now would be a disservice to ourselves, surely, but also to those who quietly root for us from the corners of our lives. Keep going.

    • Creative Living

      “Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.” ― Albert Camus

      There are days writing when everything comes slowly, like a chore we didn’t want to do and resented each step until completion, when we felt the surprising satisfaction of having finished it. Today began with distraction and chores and not much thought at all to writing. These are the moments when you just have to begin and see where it takes you. The muse, having felt ignored, eventually concedes that you’re back again.

      I know that some of my best work falls flat when it’s published. What resonates with me doesn’t resonate with most people, just as the things that are popular—pop songs, fashion, celebrity gossip—don’t resonate with me. This is only problematic if I want to linger in such circles, or have my creative work become popular. When we follow our own path sometimes we’re shocked by the solitude, but find the path far more to our liking. We ought to go our own way, if only to see where it leads us.

      Creativity leads to more inspired living, just as more inspired living feeds creativity. There’s nothing new in this idea, but isn’t it good to remind ourselves now and then that this path is ours for a reason? Make it beautiful and share it. Whether others deem it beautiful is beside the point. Creative living is a habit just like anything else. We live and learn and grow and share, then repeat it again tomorrow. Incrementally, something beautiful may indeed emerge from our life’s work.

    • 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?