Alexandersmap

    Category: Community

    • Table of One

      “We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

      I went to a restaurant last week for dinner. We sat under a covered patio on a beautiful night, hard surfaces all around and a low buzz of conversation reverberating from table to table throughout the space. Halfway through dinner a group sat at a table nearby and began loud talking to each other, and I listened as the rest of the tables reacted. We all want to be heard, and the natural inclination is to raise your own voice. The restaurant transformed right before my ears to a dull roar.

      We live with technological amplifiers that drive our differences home, stir the pot and separate people into us and them. The world is full of voices seeking to be heard, and people will amplify differences for attention and profit. Just like that restaurant, we find ourselves in a place where the only way to get attention is to shout. But when everyone is doing the same thing you reach a point of diminishing returns.

      The thing is, that group that sat down looked like a fun bunch of people. So did the people at the other tables. I might be slightly biased, but so are we. But we were all placed in a position where we were competing to be heard against the other tables around us. Each expressing themselves to an audience that was finding it hard to follow along.

      The world has never felt more separated. Yet each of us are connected and largely the same. With similar hopes and dreams and a basic need to be heard and understood. Our separateness is an illusion. We were all on the same patio, in the same restaurant, no matter which table we sat around.

    • Telling Stories

      “The true beauty of a story is not in its apparent conclusion but in the alteration in the mind of the reader that has occurred along the way.” – George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

      The more I live, the more I see the connection between success in any pursuit and the connection you make with your audience. And this connection is directly related to the gravitational pull of our stories. When I was a shy kid I’d avoid telling stories because it put me squarely in the center of attention. I no longer worry about being the storyteller, because I’ve realized over time that the attention isn’t really on me at all, but on the story I’m telling.

      Think about the last time you were listening to a powerful story. You were pulled in, compelled, maybe even fascinated. Each of us wants this kind of connection. Each of us wants a story to resonate. Each of us wants to be part of something. And when you have this level of audience engagement you’re halfway there. Just don’t let them down.

      It goes without saying that this applies to writing as much as it does to a speech or conversation with someone. When you start stacking that pile of words together, who are you doing it for? Yourself? Nobody likes to listen to someone talking to themselves. No, craft your story for someone in your mind. Decide who the audience is and craft something that creates connection and transforms and shapes ideas.

      Humans are either connected or driven apart through the stories we tell ourselves. Stories of religious and political views, ethnicity, sports and a hundred others. The best story tellers sprinkle a magic spell over the audience, drawing them in and making them a part of it. And that’s where the beauty is in a story. And a beautiful reason to master the art of telling it and then use it for good.

    • Remember, and Live Well

      we will be remembered
      in the way others still live,
      and still live on, in our love.
      – David Whyte, Everlasting

      There’s a certain look in the eye of the next generation, both uncertain and certain at the same time. A look that says “I’ve got this” that convinces you that yes indeed, they really can fly on their own. And I wonder at the look I give back, and hope that it reflects their certainty and more than a little love and hope for their future out there in the world.

      It’s buried, but I feel it still at moments like the moment I read the lines of Whyte’s poem above. Moments when I know the laugh and the look and hear the clever retort and hope that I measure up to what you wanted for me in that moment when I flew myself. I’m a work in progress, as we all are, and smile at the stumbles even as I wish you’d seen more from me in your time.

      The act of remembering often takes a back seat to the act of living. Because it’s living that matters today. But it’s in remembering that we bring the best of ourselves forward in the moment. Remembering is our instruction manual for living.

      What memories are we building in those we’ll one day leave behind? How will we ripple through them to those they touch in our absence? It’s a fair ask, and a challenge of sorts; to get it right. To leave a warm mark but never a sting. To make memories that glow and resonate, inform and build.

      We are touchstones in the lives of people past and present. So love in this moment. Remember, and live well.

    • Killing Phantoms

      “I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defense. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. For as I found, directly I put pen to paper, you cannot review even a novel without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex. And all these questions, according to the Angel of the House, cannot be dealt with freely and openly by women; they must charm, they must conciliate, they must—to put it bluntly—tell lies if they are to succeed. Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up the ink pot and flung it at her. She died hard. Her fictitious nature was of great assistance to her. It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. She was always creeping back when I thought I had despatched her.” – Virginia Woolf

      Storytelling is the most human of arts, the one skill that makes the salesperson or the public speaker excel, that makes our living history come alive. And there’s no doubt that Woolf was a great storyteller when you read this excerpt from a speech she gave in 1931. It came to my attention because of one line, the one I’ve bolded, that became a famous quote.

      And what a quote! We all fight our phantoms. Voices in our heads that gently tell us that maybe we should do something less risky, less audacious. Personally, I’m fighting a lazy sloth that keeps whispering in my ear that it’s okay to skip a workout today and eat some cheese. I hate that bastard, but he’s just so persuasive.

      If we agree that storytelling is an art, then what of the stories we tell ourselves? Myths about how the world is and works. We tell ourselves we don’t have time to work out or reasons why we aren’t going after a position we desire or whatever, really, that the voice says is out of reach for someone like us. And we form ideas about how the world works, and the rules that are in place that we all must follow. Which is why we either chafe or become fascinated with those who live outside the boundaries we put ourselves within.

      “I cannot overemphasize enough how much everything is made up and there are no rules.”
      – Tiago Forte

      A statement like Forte’s jumps out at you for the boldness of his words. But don’t we see the truth in it even as we feel the resistance within? For if the way we see the world and our place in it is all made up, what comes next? Chaos?

      “Myths… are stronger than anyone could have imagined. When the Agricultural Revolution opened opportunities for the creation of crowded cities and mighty empires, people invented stories about great gods, motherlands and joint stock companies to provide the needed social links. While human evolution was crawling at its usual snail’s pace, the human imagination was building astounding networks of mass cooperation, unlike any other ever seen on earth.” – Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

      The perception of order in a chaotic world comes from the stories we all agree on. We agree to live together in peace, to pay our bills, to not cut in line, to do our part, to vote and get married and raise children to be good citizens so that the next generation is just a little bit better off than we might be. This is the mass cooperation that Harari speaks of, all myths commonly subscribed to.

      Which is why we become outraged when someone breaks the rules. December 7th, September 11th or January 6th become dates forever ingrained in our minds because the rules of social order were so clearly broken. I can feel the outrage I felt on September 11th or January 6th even as I write this. But outrage doesn’t solve anything, clear thinking does. Stimulus and response, as Viktor Frankl so often reminds us.

      “Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you’re living in an illusion. There’s something seriously wrong with you. You’re not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? “He is to blame, she is to blame. She’s got to change.” No! The world’s all right. The one who has to change is you.”
      – Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      We can’t change the world, but we can change how we feel about the world. We can take meaningful action in our own lives to pivot away from outrage and towards clear thinking. I can ignore the cheese-pushing troll that lives in my head and just go work out. We can see clearly which perceived rules are holding us back from making progress in our own lives and kill those phantoms once and for all.

      It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. But reality is what you make of it. Once you get past those phantoms.

    • Falling Buildings and a Changing World

      We don’t know all the details about that building collapse in Florida as I write this, but what is trickling out in the news indicates that they’ve known there was a problem and they’ve been battling internally to correct it for at least a few years. I imagine a few thought the problem was urgent, a few thought it was overblown, and the vast majority were somewhere in the middle, just trying to figure out what it’ll cost them to fix the problem and make it go away. And then the building answered the question of “how urgent is this?” for them.

      Habits and momentum tend to dominate the conversation we have in our heads about what we do next. If things seem fine, then we keep doing the same thing again tomorrow. But what if that thing is slowly killing us? People quit smoking or drinking all the time because they recognize that these habits, whether in excess or moderation, are part of an identity they no longer want to embrace as theirs.

      The evidence indicates that the world is spiraling down into ecological turmoil , yet humanity doesn’t appear to be doing nearly enough to change it. So when does it shift from an intellectual question to an existential crisis? When it’s your tap that runs dry? When it’s your own home burning? Or when the rebar and concrete holding it all together is crumbling underneath you? If we can’t get people to reach consensus on climate change or the power of a vaccine or the obvious corrosion of your building’s foundation, what chance do we have?

      That old expression be the change you want to see in the world is exemplified in people recycling or maybe driving an electric car or putting solar panels on the roof. You do things like getting vaccinated when it’s your turn and vote for positive change when elections come along. You even buy local produce and pasture-raised meat from a farmer near you. And maybe you even join the condo association board to tackle once and for all the problem with the building you live in.

      But then you feel the resistance to change. The perceived cost of change. You might look around and feel your efforts are cancelled out by the ignorance or bad behavior of others. And maybe you start to wonder whether any of it makes a difference at all. Why fight the fight at all when so many don’t choose to listen?

      If that building collapse tells us anything, it’s that it all makes a difference. That building didn’t care which side of the debate you were on about fixing the foundation, it swallowed them all up just the same. Maybe we can’t fix everything, but collectively we can try. And maybe, if we’re lucky, we aren’t too late. The urgency of now has never been more apparent.

    • More Like a Cardinal

      Contemplating the turf war between a pair of stressed House Wrens and a nonchalant female Cardinal perched a little too close to the nest. I was struck by the similarity between the birds and my relationship with my neighbors. The neighbors are fine people, mind you, but they each do something that I find annoying in some small way. And I realized that I was like the House Wrens reacting to encroachment from the Cardinal. And of course, the neighbors were like the Cardinal.

      The Cardinal was simply existing, but doing so in a way that annoyed the Wrens. And I recognized I don’t want to be like a House Wren at all. I want to be more like a Cardinal. Not necessarily annoying the neighbors with my presence, but in the nonchalant way that it goes through life.

      I realized in that moment that I’m probably going to live in this spot, with a nod to fate, for at least thirty years of my lifetime. By far the longest I’ve spent any time in any place. And I’m a nomad at heart. What brought me to this realization? Comfort? Complacency? Commitment? I’m sure there are C’s I’m missing, but you already know the answer anyway. It’s a bit of each. And this is how communities are formed. People sticking together despite annoying tendencies and a competing urge to try a new place now and then.

      Cardinals don’t migrate. They stick with the place they live in and make it work. House Wrens, on the other hand, migrate to warmer climates for the winter and return when the weather warms up again. Snowbirds versus redbirds, if you will. Both return, but where they’ve been in the meantime is so very different.

      Ultimately, I long to fly like each bird. To fly off but return to the home nest seems appealing. I’m coming to terms with the idea that my travel will be shorter in duration, but perhaps more meaningful knowing I have a place to land in when I return. Maybe that’s enough. And thirty years in one nest is surprisingly closer than I ever imagined.

    • The Great Bunny Escape

      I’m not one to think a lot about bunnies. And I can assure you this post will be a rarity in the relentlessly eclectic world of Alexandersmap. But there’s a story that must be told.

      It seems there are people in this world who buy bunnies as pets around Easter. They seem to believe this is a good thing, sharing cuteness and such with children or lovers or maybe just a self-indulgence – who knows, really? Personally, I’m more inclined to dark chocolate, but some people choose to acquire living creatures as pets. And they love them for all their cuteness. Until they grow bigger and become adult bunnies. And then what?

      Well, they drive through some wooded street far from their own home and abandon that bunny on the side of the road like an old mattress or refrigerator they don’t want to pay to have removed. Classy. And a winning strategy for teaching the next generation how to be responsible adults. I bet these bastards don’t even recycle.

      I don’t believe in fairy tales, but I hope if there’s an afterlife there’s a special place in hell reserved for bunny and mattress dumpers. I imagine, in my darkest moments, it involves lying forever on that dirty old mattress surrounded by millions of abandoned bunnies, each with that wrinkly nose munching vibe that bunnies have, staring with those crazy genetically-engineered pink eyes, while the dumpers slowly spirals into insanity.

      What? Won’t concede me this version of Dante’s Inferno? Could they at least have nightmares about abandoned bunnies scratching at the walls trying to get back in?

      Flight of fancy aside, my work day was interrupted by an animal control officer ringing my door bell to inform me that there was a white bunny in my backyard. I’d heard about this bunny, for it’s been roaming the neighborhood since some A-hole dumped it on the side of the road. Apparently the longer bunnies are alive out in the wild the more they like their newfound freedom. Honestly, I don’t blame the bunny – I’d rather deal with wild predators in unfamiliar woods than that crappy family that bought me like some edible arrangement that could be tossed aside when the only thing left was melon slices.

      Apparently the bunny was spotted in the neighbor’s backyard. For those keeping track, this is the same neighbor’s backyard that featured a goat hiding from a killer bear last fall, so the word was out amongst the domesticated animal crowd that this was the halfway house in town. So the neighbors have animal control on speed dial and they had a reunion in the driveway, spooking the bunny into my own backyard, which brings us back to the doorbell ringing.

      Walking outside, I’m confronted with four animal control professionals with a distinct smell of skunk in the air (they’ve been busy elsewhere on this day). Each had a large net on poles, like a fishing net on steroids. They had the bunny surrounded in the shrubbery and were discussing how to get it out of there when I showed up. The bunny answered for them and shot out of the holly and sprinted towards the deck.

      What I noticed in this moment, if we were to put it in slow motion like a Hollywood movie, is four capable adults with nets watching the bunny makes its move. The nets never descended on the bunny. Which makes me wonder – why carry a net at all? Returning to normal speed, the white bunny was moving at a high rate of speed, impossibly fast for the reaction time of an animal control officer bent over to peer under a holly bush. It seems it’s not as simple as bending sideways to dodge a flying bullet like a superhero.

      The bunny went under the deck and the animal control officers each shrugged their shoulders and packed up to leave. Leaving me wondering what they hell I was going to do with a rogue domesticated bunny in my yard. Come on folks, what ever happened to “Try, try again”?! And sure enough, just as I was thinking this the bunny sprinted out from the deck and around to the front of the yard. I shouted to the animal control officers and the chase was on once again!

      You might be thinking this is where they catch the bunny. No, the bunny ran away again, and the animal control officers once again took their big nets, got in their cars and drove away saying they’d be back when the bunny was back. Back? The bunny is still here, just fifty feet from where it left you! But I knew the truth in this statement, the bunny was here as long as it felt like being here or became a bobcat dinner. They just weren’t going to invest any more time chasing it.

      Sure enough, later in the afternoon I walked out to tend the garden and there was the white bunny, quietly munching on my lawn. Next to it was a wild rabbit doing the same. Each assessed me while chewing the flora, knowing there wasn’t much I could do to stop them. I’m not a bunny killer, they could see it in my eyes. And just maybe, they saw a future together, wild and domestic, living together in bliss. I suppose it’s better than the house of horrors the bunny came from.

    • Since It Must Be So

      “For Sayonara, literally translated, ‘Since it must be so,’ of all the good-bys I have heard is the most beautiful. Unlike the Auf Wiedershens and Au revoirs, it does not try to cheat itself by any bravado ‘Till we meet again,’ any sedative to postpone the pain of separation. It does not evade the issue like the sturdy blinking Farewell. Farewell is a father’s good-by. It is – ‘Go out in the world and do well, my son.’ It is encouragement and admonition. It is hope and faith. But it passes over the significance of the moment; of parting it says nothing. It hides its emotion. It says too little. While Good-by (‘God be with you’) and Adios say too much. They try to bridge the distance, almost to deny it. Good-by is a prayer, a ringing cry. ‘You must not go – I cannot bear to have you go! But you shall not go alone, unwatched. God will be with you. God’s hand will over you’ and even – underneath, hidden, but it is there, incorrigible – ‘I will be with you; I will watch you – always.’ It is a mother’s good-by. But Sayonara says neither too much nor too little. It is a simple acceptance of fact. All understanding of life lies in its limits. All emotion, smoldering, is banked up behind it. But it says nothing. It is really the unspoken good-by, the pressure of a hand, ‘Sayonara.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh, North to the Orient

      The very best part of coming out the other side of this pandemic, fully vaccinated and more than ready to get on with things, is getting reacquainted face-to-face with the people who you’ve built lifetime relationships with. It was seeing my father in person for the first time in two years a few weeks ago. And seeing a group of people I hadn’t seen since Christmas 2019 yesterday. The reunions are always special, and now always involve some version of How was it for you?

      And what then? We part ways and go back to knowing each other from apart. Fresh memories instead of stretching the mind for highlights. Will we see each other again soon or was this a quick stepping stone to another few years, or really, will we ever see each other again? The presumption is yes, because we live in a time where there’s generally a good probability that we will. But what if we don’t?

      Lindbergh clarifies this moment of goodbye and the things we say to each other in the moment. The moment for me is a celebration of what we’ve just shared in our short time together, less a reflection that we might not cross paths again. Call me an optimist if you will.

      The stoic in me recognizes the fragility of the moment. I was at a birthday party yesterday, looked around at all the people celebrating their newfound freedom to be together and saw that nobody was taking pictures. For the record, I do this at every event, and generally I’m the one pulling out the camera phone and taking photos to lock the moment in photographs. For photos are more reliable than memory. Photos travel through time, awakening old memories and even past our lifetimes to introduce us to people we will never meet. Long after our goodbyes and Sayonaras, that picture may still exist.

      Since our separation must be so, I wish you good health and a moment when we might be together again to celebrate this short time with you once again. Reunions seem more tenuous than before, but surely more special than they ever were. So here is my acceptance of fact: this moment will not last, so since it must be so I’m making the very best of it while it does.

      Happy Father’s Day.

    • What’s the Score?

      “Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.” – Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

      I’ve realized recently that the things I was so good at before the pandemic, things like travel and meeting with people, are different now. I’m different now. It’s almost like starting over again. And maybe we all are.

      People are coming out again at their own pace. Lately I’ve been with some people who I haven’t physically seen since the pandemic began. It’s like seeing an old friend from school years later. Filling in the holes in your lives since you last saw each other, figuring out who’s been up to what. Looking someone squarely in the eyes and asking them, so what’s the score? Are you doing okay after all of this?

      Vonnegut has another great quote, one I’ve used before in this blog, about being trapped in the amber of the moment. We’ve all been trapped in amber, and in many ways we still are. The world isn’t anywhere near normal yet, it’s just slowly getting back to it. This amber is tricky to navigate through.

      I’m no longer sure what the score is. All I’m sure about is that the game has changed. We all have, haven’t we? But slowly, we are once again a part of something, and – hopefully – less apart.

    • Choosing to Be

      “Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important, in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

      The ground rules are simple, really. You either embrace where you are in this world or you don’t. Some folks are quite happy with where they landed in life. But if you aren’t amongst the blissful few, you can join the chorus of disenfranchised, low agency complainers whoo thrive on misery. Or maybe choose to be something else. To work on that alternate vision for your one wild and precious life.

      Be means a few things. To be is to continue. Fine. But it can also mean to act. To do. Be is a choice.

      Choosing to be engaged, to be a part of things instead of apart from things, to be alive while you’re living, these are the things that fill the world with your individualism. Your uniqueness. That vibrant otherness that is different from the rest.

      Choosing to be out there, doing things, building things, making connections. Seeing things. Learning to understand and feeling the hunger pangs that come with knowing you don’t know enough.

      If you’re reading this you woke up this morning, which straight off makes it a good start. What will we not settle for? What burns inside us, waiting for us to set free to fill the world with? What will we choose to be?

      This might all feel like fluffy prose. I get that and write it seeing the eye rolls from a few of you. But what’s the alternative to choosing to be something more? Something less? More of the same old, same old?

      Screw that. Be so much more. Go fill the world.