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    • In September

      I saw you standing with the wind and the rain in your face
      And you were thinking ’bout the wisdom of the leaves and their grace
      When the leaves come falling down
      In September when the leaves, come falling down
      — Van Morrison, When the Leaves Come Falling Down

      The puppy is having her first autumn, and in New Hampshire no less. She’s entered a place of magic and grace, playing for a short time only, beginning with the last of the harvest and ending with the chill of Halloween. These are the days. She spends them chasing squirrels and the falling leaves. I spend them seeing the world with a new perspective once again.

      Life is change. Autumn offers change in abundance. We dance with it or go about our business as always, but we ignore it at our peril. Blink and you miss it, as they say. That goes equally well for the years flying by as it does for the foliage. The peak in most of New Hampshire is in early October, before things brown out and the leaves come falling down. The season is over before we know it, so don’t blink: step out into the world fully aware of the gift.

      Our own seasons are playing out as well. We must celebrate the days as they greet us, forever embracing our place in the world. Puppies awaken with a zest for life, and shouldn’t we too? The leaves whisper their advice as they return to the earth: dance with our season of magic. Carpe diem.

    • Inflexible Disciplines

      “I have always believed that exercise is not only a key to physical health but to peace of mind. Many times in the old days I unleashed my anger and frustration on a punching bag rather than taking it out on a comrade or even a policeman. Exercise dissipates tension, and tension is the enemy of serenity. I found that I worked better and thought more clearly when I was in good physical condition, and so training became one of the inflexible disciplines of my life. In prison, having an outlet for one’s frustrations was absolutely essential.” — Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

      Life spins along at a rapid clip. It’s easy when we’re busy to push some things to the side and realize one day that we haven’t done something essential for some inexplicably long time. Habits we’ve folded into our identity can slip away in a few weeks of inaction. If we are what we repeatedly do, we are also what we repeatedly don’t do. So we must zealously hold on to the things we want in our lives. I can’t help but think of Nelson Mandela as I write that. He had a rigid exercise routine throughout his life that began at 05:00 every day. This carried him through his worst days in prison through his best days as President of South Africa. Who am I to use excuses for not being more disciplined?

      This idea of inflexible discipline is the key. We all must have our line in the sand of what we will always do or not do. This is our core identity. For me it includes writing and publishing something every day, along with a key set of other habits I track daily. A fitness routine is woven into that essential habit list, but it comes and goes like the breeze. As with writing, it has to be a box that must be checked every day. And as with writing, it’s better to check that box early in the morning before life’s distractions stack up against us. Like Mandela and others in human history who represent a disciplined life of fulfillment and transcendence from the ordinary.

      Our actions determine who we are and will be. It seems that being inflexible with ourselves may be the difference between reaching a desired identity and forever punting it away. Decide what to be and go be it, as the Avett Brothers put it so well. Being it begins today and every day.

    • We’re All Carried Along

      In the middle of the night
      I go walking in my sleep
      Through the desert of truth
      To the river so deep
      We all end in the ocean
      We all start in the streams
      We’re all carried along
      By the river of dreams

      — Billy Joel, The River of Dreams

      Some people seem to remember every dream. Some of us remember precious few. Is it the sign of intelligence to remember? Is it a sign of peace of mind to forget? Who’s to say?

      This is post number 1919, a river of words placed just so, to join the countless other words swirling through space and time for as long as there’s an Internet and a pale blue dot. Words are our dance with infinity. And I have to re-read most posts to recall what I was saying at the time. That my words are deeply familiar to me is reassuring, but I’m not that person who remembers everything. I’d be a terrible actor, trying to remember his lines. Yet I can sing an old Billy Joel song I haven’t heard in years and largely get it right.

      Memory and dreams are funny things. Is this too few active brain cells or too much focus on focused on this day and what’s to come? I’m not sure, but I’ll live as deeply as this dream carries me, and keep writing about it, carried along with the current of time to the ocean of infinity.

    • A Few More Times

      So before we end
      And then begin
      We’ll drink a toast to how it’s been
      A few more hours to be complete
      A few more nights on satin sheets
      A few more times that I can say
      I’ve loved these days
      — Billy Joel, I’ve Loved These Days

      When we love the days we’re passing through, it becomes easy to believe that they’ll always be just as they have been. But we know this to be untrue. We see the changes in those around us, and in ourselves. Life is about the passing from these days to whatever will be next, and so on and on, until we too pass. This is our song, and the band will one day play on without us. So it goes.

      It occurred to me that I haven’t spoken to two people recently who were part of every waking moment of my life when they were growing up. A few text messages, a brief “hello, I’m thinking of you” now and again. We all get busy: our children move away to build their lives, our parents and siblings and closest friends move across the dance floor and out of sight, coworkers change jobs or retire, and even our favorite barista or waitress moves on to other things. Life is change.

      A puppy came into my life, changing my world for the better in most ways, but changing my days profoundly. There are things that must be done when you have a young one in the house. There are things you must consider when you go out for any amount of time. There are few things more disruptive than this, yet so fulfilling at the same time. Puppies, like children, fill empty spaces and time in chaotic and beautiful ways.

      This week we finished a bathroom renovation that took entirely too long to wrap up. It became an ongoing joke that the two-week project might become a two-year project. Other than adding a puppy or baby to your life, a home renovation project is one of the more disruptive ways to flip your routine upside down. This summer we managed to do two of those change agents at the same time. No wonder it feels at times like I’ve lost my bearings.

      But just like that, the puppy is settling in, the renovation is done, and summer is over. We blink and we miss it. So don’t blink if you can help it. Yes, I’ve loved these days, but don’t they just fly right by?

    • Top to Bottom

      “On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.” — Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

      Collectively, we tend to elevate some people in society to positions of power and influence. Some people crave power at all costs. And luckily for them, some people want to follow a compelling leader at all costs. This following takes many forms, from religious to political to celebrity. There’s a belief that some people are above us because they’re born into a certain family or went to a certain school or have a certain position that infers authority.

      And yet we’re all human. We all hit the birth lottery and will eventually pass from this world. We all carry the weight of expectations for who we might be in this world because of the stories we and society tell us based on nothing but commonly held beliefs. But stories change all the time, as people do.

      We ought to evaluate the stories we tell ourselves now and then as a level-set. We’re all just people, from the top of the heap to the bottom, and doing the best we can to figure things out as we move through life. We do have a say in how our story goes, and so ought to set our aim higher. Decide what to be and go be it.

    • Rising to Meet the Stars

      This is the hour, O soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
      Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
      Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best:
      Night, sleep, death, and the stars.

      — Walt Whitman, A Clear Midnight

      We each must sacrifice something in our days. Some of us favor the dawn. If an early bird misses out on anything, it’s the stars. “Get up earlier,” I hear you say. Indeed, and so I do some days, greeting the sky in all its sparkling glory. We are stardust, after all, and part of the essence of the universe. We must rise to meet it.

      Whitman apparently favored the midnight hour. We are each different and yet the same. When you think of yourself as stardust and energy you find the link in the chain between people, no matter when they lived on this pale blue dot. Our time happens to be now.

      The days so quickly erased, we march ahead. We know this to be true, but hurry along anyway. We ought to linger in more moments. We ought to rise to meet the essence of who we are, and might be. This is the hour.

    • Swapping Idols for Vanaprastha

      “The first ashrama is brahmacharya, the period of youth and young adulthood dedicated to learning. The second is grihastha, when a person builds a career, accumulates wealth, and maintains a family. This second stage seems fairly straightforward and uncontroversial, but in this stage the Hindu philosophers find one of life’s most common traps: People become attached to its earthly rewards—money, power, sex, prestige—and thus try to make this stage last a lifetime. Sound familiar? This is another description of being stuck on the fluid intelligence curve, chasing Aquinas’s four idols—money, power, pleasure, and honor—that lead to self-objectification, but that never satisfy.
      To break the attachment to these idols requires movement to a new stage of life, with a new set of skills—spiritual skills. The change can be painful, Acharya said, like becoming an adult for a second time. And it means letting go of things that defined us in the eyes of the world. In other words, we have to move beyond the worldly rewards to experience transition and find wisdom in a new ashrama—and so defeat the scourge of attachments. That ordinarily occurs, if we are diligent, around age fifty.
      And that new stage? It is called vanaprastha, which comes from two Sanskrit words meaning “retiring” and “into the forest.” This is the stage at which we purposively begin to pull back from our old personal and professional duties, becoming more and more devoted to spirituality and deep wisdom, crystallized intelligence, teaching, and faith.” — Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength

      Arthur C. Brooks seems to be everywhere at the moment, bouncing between podcast interviews like mad as he hits the circuit to discuss his latest book with Oprah Winfrey. I’m a step behind that book, still lingering with the one he published last year quoted from above. But based on the interviews I’ve listened to, it feels like the themes from one book flow right into the next. That I’m lingering so long on the transition from fluid intelligence to crystallized intelligence tells you all you need to know about my own particular stage of life.

      Books are stepping stones. The path I’ve been on in my reading leads me from one book to the next, and one interview with the author to the next, which points out more source material to dive into, and so on. Life is about growth and becoming. How we cross the stream depends very much on the stones we land upon, and where they lead us next. At some point in our lives (if we reach awareness) it feels natural to stop chasing idols and begin finding wisdom.

      So here we are, figuring out this journey to becoming what’s next for us. The ashramas listed above are one clear indicator that nothing we’re sorting through is unique to us, it’s a human condition of growth and change and reconciliation with the entire process. Writing surely helps, but do does reading and seeking out the perspectives of those who have gone there before us. This is the time in my life when diving deeply into spirituality and wisdom feels like the natural next step. Apparently I’m moving into vanaprastha, with the urge to walk out into the forest but still carrying the obligations of that stage of earthly rewards, grihastha. How about you?

    • All the Miracles

      “To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings—it’s all a miracle. I have adopted the technique of living life from miracle to miracle.” — Artur Rubinstein

      We get tired sometimes, and forget about miracles like being born at all, in this time, relatively healthy and of sound mind. We’re blessed, but still find things to complain about, to compare ourselves against, to make us feel less of a miracle than we are. Isn’t that a shame? We ought to dabble in magic and dance in the miracle of where we are, and instead we dwell on the incremental differences between us.

      I went out in the rain for a walk with the puppy. She’s not so much a puppy now, but still curious and a little fearful of the unknown things around her. But she loves the rain tickling her skin and the feeling of cold, wet grass on her belly. We can learn a few things seeing the world through the eyes of the youngest among us. Puppies and toddlers experience the miracle differently than adults do. We know it’s not practical to dwell on every little thing—we’d never get anything done! But what are we really doing anyway?

      Now and then I get tired of things as they are. Routines are made to keep us in line, but are inherently routine. That we take all the miracles around us and dull them down to average is very adult of us. But is it any way to live?

    • Talkin’ to Myself

      Talkin’ to myself and feelin’ old
      Sometimes I’d like to quit
      Nothin’ ever seems to fit
      Hangin’ around
      Nothin’ to do but frown
      Rainy days and Mondays always get me down
      — The Carpenters/Adam Williams, Rainy Days and Mondays

      Rainy days and Mondays never really drag me down. Sure, we’ve had way more rain than we should this season, while others aren’t getting nearly enough of it. I can fret about climate change but I don’t usually care that it’s raining or sunny on any given day. Likewise, I don’t worry all that much whether it’s a Monday or a Saturday, as each is a gift. The key is whether you feel in control of your days or whether you feel someone else is controlling them. We can’t control the passing of time or the weather, only our reaction to it. The jury is still out on whether we collectively have the fortitude to do anything about climate change.

      I saw a friend the other day who parroted the dangers of “mass murderers swarming crossing the border and descending upon innocents across the country”. I didn’t have the energy to get in a debate with him, having learned during the last two elections in the United States that people are going to believe what they believe and you just can’t force an alternate story line upon a zealot. It made me sad to see another one gone though, reminding me of that closing moment in Invasion of the Body Snatchers when you realize someone you once believed in had switched over to the dark side. Sometimes you just want to scream. But like the weather, this is a reaction we can choose or opt out of. Instead I focused on what we had in common.

      The quality of our lives is always going to be about who is controlling our time and our belief system. When we accept that some things are out of our control, we learn to work with what we can. Amor fati. Our beliefs, on the other hand, can be developed independently of what those around us may believe. We may yet become who we want to be in this life, and we ought to have faith in others to find a way forward too.

      Lately my posts have been all over the place in both content and when they’re published. It’s a sign of a complicated life, perhaps, or maybe it’s just the time bucket I happen to reside in at the moment. Either way, it’s documented and best viewed through the lens of time. What I’m sure of is that I’ve often wanted to quit, but just keep writing anyway. That’s how life works too. Just keep showing up and doing the work and things usually work out in the end. Nothing to be down about at all, really. Just one soul in a wild world, talking to himself.

    • Meeting the Changes

      “A talent for following the ways of yesterday is not sufficient to improve the world of today. — King Wuling of Zhao

      When you habitually surf waves of change as part of your identity, few things really surprise you in the world. But now and then the world throws even the most antifragile person for a loop. Even Superman had kryptonite to knock him down to human now and then.

      The thing is we all need to be willing to change, and meet it head-on, in order to fully optimize our lives. But we all get comfortable with being comfortable too. These two opposite states lend themselves to discomfort in the best of situations and emotional distress when we spiral into deep internal conflict over the changes.

      Part of being a functional adult is developing adaptability and a willingness to pivot when necessary. Think about all the changes we’ve seen in our lifetimes. Think about how much change we’re going to be faced with for the balance of our lives. Change happens. Our role is to change with change.

      When I was a teenager I learned the trade of drafting. To be a draftsman combined a love of architecture and mechanical detail with a love of art and creating something from scratch. The thing is, the trade was dying quickly even as I learned it, moving to CAD and beyond. To have learned such a trade seemed frivolous in hindsight, but I learned much more than how to draw lines on a piece of paper. I find myself still using some of the skills I developed then, like reading a set of blueprints to understand the scope of work needed for a project. Talking with architects and engineers, I find I know their nomenclature and what they need to complete a project. But on the whole, that drafting skillset is dead and gone.

      I could mourn the passing of a career path I once coveted, or embrace change and leap from one to the next until I arrive at a place I can add the most value in. Sure enough, that eventually happened, and I continue to build on new skills until one day they too become less relevant and I’m faced with the need to pivot once again. This is the way of the world. The ways of yesterday are not sufficient for us to become what we will be tomorrow. We can never rest on our strengths, but we can use them as a foundation for who we may become next.