Alexandersmap

    Category: Community

    • Someone Great

      “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou

      I had the opportunity to attend a 40th anniversary party this weekend. I married into the family well after they got married so I wasn’t around for that beginning, but I’ve seen them grow into their relationship, raise children into adulthood and seek out lifetime adventures together. They’re living a life together one should aspire to—present in each other’s lives, adventurous and fun, travelers who arrive in the lives of others when it matters most.

      I’m not the sharpest tack in the drawer, but I know a good thing when I find it. Being someone great in the life of one other life is a great starting point for building a long term relationship. Being great in the lives of your children builds a strong foundation from which they may grow into personal excellence themselves. Being a great friend to someone who is great leads to reciprocal growth for both parties.

      We may dilute ourselves only so much before there’s nothing great left of us. We feel when we’ve entered a vacuum devoid of reciprocity. We must be a friend to the world while understanding that the world will not always be our best friend. The way to stay filled is to find people who return the love and energy we give back to us. Life energy is finite, but infinitely available when we wade into the right stream.

      The trick to any great partnership is sustained momentum built on being present, engaged and equally invested in a hopeful future. For every stumble, there’s a hand lent to getting back up again, for every step forward there’s a hand to lift the other forward with us. Hand-in-hand we may thus move forward through this life together.

    • Let Me Not Defer

      “I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being; let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
      — Etienne de Grellet

      Yesterday I had a conversation with a neighbor I don’t speak with all that much but have known for 25 years. Beyond the casual how are the kids? small talk, we dove more deeply into what’s next for each of us. We’ve both learned the high cost of deferring dreams the last few years—his wife passed a year ago, my family has suffered losses of similar magnitude the last few years. The question is whether we act on the lessons of memento mori or keep on doing the same thing as if it weren’t true.

      Beyond the moment, what have we got? Legacy? I look at old pictures and forget who most of the people in them are. The ones who I remember most are those who were most invested in me. The rest fade away. To be memorable, I suppose, the lesson is to invest in others, isn’t it? Here and now, with all the sincerity and earnestness we can muster, that we may impact their lives in some small, positive way.

      I worry less now about memorable. I’m at a point where living a good life is enough. I don’t feel a need to be remembered as anything but a source of light in a world that is often unrelentingly dark. To add more value to the world, we must learn and grow and be ever more generous with our time with others. It’s no surprise that those who are surrounded by loving people are usually the ones who offered nothing but love to the world. We ought to stop focusing on how we aspire to be remembered and think instead about who we aspire to be right now.

      Each of us is spending currency. Let it not be frivolous, but meaningful. Whatever the future brings for us, we’ll surely find the investment in others will offer our highest return. When well-invested, isn’t love returned exponentially?

    • Songs of Freedom

      Old pirates, yes, they rob I
      Sold I to the merchant ships
      Minutes after they took I
      From the bottomless pit
      But my hand was made strong
      By the hand of the Almighty
      We forward in this generation
      Triumphantly
      Won’t you help to sing
      These songs of freedom?
      — Bob Marley, Redemption Song

      We forget, sometimes, the progress we’ve made generation-to-generation through the years. In my own lifetime I’ve seen the pivot towards acceptance and inclusion, and of course the strong, often violent reaction of those who don’t want to change. It’s always been this way. Still, we progress.

      Call me an optimist, but I take the long view on social change. There is a growing awareness of the stakes, even as there’s been growing momentum on the side of autocracy. Populism swings to and fro like a pendulum, fueled by whatever information or disinformation is consumed. The old ways die, but so do memories, and we often repeat the same mistakes over and over again. It can be frustratingly obvious how manipulated we all are at times.

      Once someone is free it’s pretty difficult to ask them to put the chains back on. That requires force. And there are plenty of examples of that in the world too. Places where democracy never took hold, or extremists grabbed power. It can happen here too, should we let the pendulum swing too far.

      Sure, I’m an optimist, but I can’t even convince some of my closest friends that the guy they want to be king is a conman. These are dangerous times for freedom. Never trust someone who tells you they know what’s best for you. They’re almost certainly talking about what’s best for them. But enough have bought in that half the country thinks we’d be just fine slipping backwards. American authoritarianism has legs and some powerful financial backing.

      Really, I can’t even believe I’m writing this blog. It seems so obvious to so many of us what the logical path is that it’s hard to see that we’re just consuming a completely different information diet than the other half of the country. Half. The. Country… Good God. If there’s one thing true about humans, it’s that we don’t always do what’s logical. And so it’s clear that we have to look to the next generation for help. I think that they’re paying attention. Aren’t they? Aren’t we?

      Logic only takes us just so far. Emotion is what always brings voters out on election day. Won’t you help to sing these songs of freedom?

    • The Given

      “I inherit from the past of my family, my city, my tribe, my nation, a variety of debts, inheritance, rightful expectations, and obligations. These constitute the given of my life, my moral starting point.” — Athenian oath

      If the way we live our lives is based on the routines and beliefs we establish for ourselves over time, the foundation for those routines and beliefs is that which we’ve been given by the circle of people who have surrounded us from our beginning. The desire to break free from that circle begins in our teenage years, but there’s no getting around the momentum of the given. Our very identity is formed by those we’ve been surrounded by. Is it any wonder that some people move away, that they may be someone else?

      When we think about the people who have influenced us most, we begin to understand ourselves more. Our positive and negative voice that quietly whisper to us as a running dialogue, waiting to rise to the surface to make an appearance in our best and worst moments? Given. Our fallback position on everything from religion to politics to underlying feelings about people who are “different from us”? Given. Our lives begin with momentum. But that which is given is merely our foundation. We are the architect for who we become beyond our base.

      “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” ― Jim Rohn

      That circle changes over our lifetime. The gravitational pull of our belief system from when we were a child changes as the circle influencing us changes. When we go off to college or move to a faraway place, we are breaking free of that which once influenced us and placing ourselves in a new, developing circle. Most of us have the personal freedom to choose who we want to be. It begins with who we surround ourselves with, and how we spend our days. Habits and routines are as essential to our becoming as who we started out as in the beginning.

      Lately I’ve been in many conversations about what we’ve been given. Our emotional, intellectual, physical and financial foundation established momentum for each of us. It’s up to us to keep that momentum going from there, but there’s no doubting the impact of the forces that brought us here. It’s easier to become what’s next with a running start than it is from a static position. Reflecting on our own momentum might enhance our empathy for those who start without any. When we think about it, we are all part of the same tribe, aren’t we?

      “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” — Winston Churchill

      We are all part of someone else’s circle. Isn’t it just as fair to ask ourselves what are we giving, perhaps even more than what are we getting? That Athenian oath doesn’t just speak of rightful expectations, but of obligations too. Living a meaningful life demands that we use that positive momentum to pull others up as well, that our circle grows larger. Great societies and cultures are built on such things as this. This is true excellence, for it lives beyond us.

    • Holiday Participation Awards

      “So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.” ― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

      At a certain point in our lives the holidays put a spotlight on the relationships we have. I think of it as the Christmas card display. The friends of convenience make up a big part of the display for the time we’re in the same net, but drift away one-by-one as we grow apart. A few stubborn holdouts keep appearing year-after-year, and those folks anticipate a card from us as well. If we’re still sending Christmas cards to people to let them know we’re thinking of them, chances are they’ll send us one to let us know they are thinking of us too. Send our cards early and we’ll receive a batch from the people who wait to see if we’re sending them one before they invest in the stamp for ours. What we don’t want is to time a card to be postmarked after Christmas, so that race to Christmas Eve is a fascinating case study in human dynamics. For people on the edges of our lives, it’s a game of card-for-card, with your participation award taped to the door frame until a few days into New Year.

      We all know that old expression, “the phone works both ways”, but taken literally, it’s a way of letting ourselves off the hook. We often say it when we’ve lost touch with someone who was always in touch. People drift apart as interests change. There’s no getting around the fact that some people are friends of convenience. School friends, teammates, coworkers, neighbors, soccer parents… all friends of convenience until that netting that holds us together is removed. That’s when we find out who we’re going to invest time in, and who is going to invest time in us. If we don’t like our investments, change the portfolio.. and the Christmas card list. It helps to remember that others are making their lists in a similar fashion. Be the person who receives a card because we’re worthy of it, not because we sent one to them. And accept that some people simply don’t play the game and love them anyway.

      What is the purpose of life? Isn’t it active participation? Humans are tribal, and built to help other humans exist in a universe indifferent to any form of life, let alone our particularly self-absorbed form of life. What makes life meaningful is stepping up and being part of things. To be loved we ought to love. We ought to be in the mix, engaged with others as best we can be in our time. What’s a stamp anyway? Send the card. Or make the call. Reach out and see how people are really doing as we close out another year. We may just surprise a few people who thought we were the ones who had drifted away.

    • A Dream Won’t Chase You Back

      If you got a chance, take it, take it while you got a chance
      If you got a dream, chase it, ’cause a dream won’t chase you back
      If you’re gonna love somebody
      Hold ’em as long and as strong and as close as you can
      ‘Til you can’t
      — Cody Johnson, ‘Til You Can’t

      In America, this week is always distracting. There are so many moving parts before Thanksgiving: Ingredients to purchase and prepare, people to check in with traveling from near and far, furniture to plot out in anticipation of rooms filled to capacity, cleaning (so much cleaning!), and for some of us, work to reconcile before the holiday break. This week is a hectic, wonderfully stressful mess that some of us love more than any other in a year full of blessed weeks.

      We build the life we most want, don’t we? But we can’t control everything, we must be open to the changes the universe presents to us. Who won’t be at the table this year who was there last year? Who won’t be at next year’s table? It might just be us. The underlying message is to do what must be done now. That could be rightly viewed as the overall theme of this blog for most of the last five years. Tempus fugit. Memento mori. Carpe diem.

      Most of us postpone the call or the question or simply beginning what is so much more important than what we’re doing otherwise. Most of us waste time. Henry had some advice for such moments:

      As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
      The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
      — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      We ought to feel the urgency of Thanksgiving every week. Perhaps we’d be exhausted and collapse on the couch eventually, but then again, perhaps we’d condition ourselves to living a larger life—full of love and a wee bit of conflict, anticipation and conversation, and something sweet to cap it all off with before you clean up yet again and look ahead to the next big thing. We aren’t here to kill time, we’re here to make the most of our time together before we lose our place at the table. By all means, seize it (because it won’t chase you back)!

    • Missing the Signs

      After dinner with my bride at a local tavern, she saw a neighbor across the room and went over to say hello. We would see this woman and her husband now and then at restaurants and joke that we never seemed to see them in the neighborhood, where they lived just across the street from us. This time she was having a drink alone, and she explained that her husband had passed away in July with express wishes to not make a big deal of it.

      A big deal of it… We were shocked at his passing and wondered how we’d missed the signs of his absence since then. Construction project at home, a new puppy, friends staying over for a time, and vacation time all conspired this summer to make us less aware, but so unaware that we didn’t notice the absence of a neighbor for three months?

      It turns out we did notice—we just didn’t put it together. Different people mowing the lawn. The trash barrels rolled out at a different time than they used to be rolled out. The pickup truck no longer in the driveway. All of it washing over us as we made our way home.

      When you live in a place for years, you get to know some of the neighbors quite well. You watch their children grow up and move out, you watch relationships end, new ones begin, and people pass away from this world. When you think back, most of the time we’re just a witness to the passing of time, not an active participant in the lives of those around us. Some people leave their struggles behind closed doors.

      The details mattered a great deal, and we reflected on what we missed. How we might have helped more had we only known. We are each on our own journey, shared with others but in the end ours alone. We have some touchstone moments with our fellow travelers that resonate more than others, but it’s up to each of us to weave those into a tapestry of connection. When our time ends, all that remains is the memories and moments that linger with others.

      Our neighbor gave us a sign: Help needed. Too late for her husband but not for her. One more touchstone moment connecting us to someone just across the street but seemingly so far away.

    • Connection in Solitude

      “I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can “see the folks,” and recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for his day’s solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and “the blues”; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      Another example of a Thoreau word-explosion-as-paragraph, and one I wanted to compress into a smaller bite, mind you, but didn’t have the heart to. Henry was never lonely because he surrounded himself with an ample supply of words. His work resonates because he combined so many of them into insightful and timeless nuggets that we still find nutritious today. For a guy who spent so much time alone, he still manages to connect with so many.

      The difference between solitude and loneliness is very much aligned with what we perceive ourselves to be doing with the time. Active engagement in meaningful work, expressed creativity, meditation, exercise and prayer are each forms of reaching outside of ourselves for connection to the greater energy force that hums all around us. I write this knowing the words will come, and I’m but an editor for the muse. How can you feel alone in such moments?

      Many people encountered solitude during the pandemic and were forced to reconcile what it meant for them. I found it to be a time of connection with family, who otherwise would have been off doing their own thing as I did mine. It made no difference whether I was alone in a home office or in a hotel room, for solitude is solitude anywhere—but it doesn’t have to be loneliness. Feeling alone is to look for connection with the universe and finding no answer.

      There’s no doubt that surrounding ourselves with the right people leads to a happier, more fulfilling and longer life. With any strong group dynamic we rise to meet others, even as they rise to meet us, providing a lift to the entire group. Community gives us momentum and mutual support, solitude gives us the elbow room to mine the best out of ourselves. Don’t we each need both to live a full life?

    • The Pendulum

      “The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” — Thomas Jefferson

      When you stand under the dome at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC you can read these words, “I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Jefferson was directly addressing those who would take the religious freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution to roll out a national religion. Simply put, it wasn’t going to happen on his watch.

      The United States has gone through waves of fervor since Jefferson’s watch ended: religious, philosophical, political. We’re going through it right now with half the country aligned with one particularly autocratic clown and the other half holding out hope that the rule of law and concept of equality and freedom for all should survive the latest chapter of zealotry and anger. Time will tell, friends.

      The thing is, it’s our watch now—certainly for citizens of this country of voting age, but in many ways the global community as well. Look around at the rise of autocracy and extremism in the world. This is a pendulum swing into uncomfortable places. How things go from here is up to each of us. Many more voices of reason to temper the extremists on either side would greatly benefit society. Some of us believe that we’re all in this together, and some choose us versus them. I’m not naive enough to ignore the threat from some dark corners of the world, but in general a bit of creative diplomacy would solve the bulk of our collective problems, both at the dinner table and on a global scale.

      I wish more people would be hostile to tyranny, but most people are simply trying to get through the day. The lessons of history are clear enough though, when we pay attention to them. It’s a lot easier to clean up a small mess than a big one. Momentum works for and against us, and it’s still uncertain just how far that pendulum is going to swing.

    • Incendat Magica

      Don’t lose the wonder in your eyes
      I can see it right now when you smile
      We gotta go back, for a while
      Gotta go back, into that magic time
      — Van Morrison, Magic Time

      I often associate Van Morrison with autumn, thanks in part to the shift in my own soundtrack from summer music to autumn music, which leans more into jazz and soulful introspection. When the jeans replace the shorts it’s time for Van Morrison on my playlist. Some people put up plastic skeletons and black and orange decorations. Some of us stick to music. It’s all part of weaving our own brand of magic.

      I write about magic and wonder quite often in this blog, for it’s the stuff of life. When we create magic we are locking memories into place, like a snapshot we’ll remember forever. At least our forever. We do things that bring joy to our lives, and magic ensues. But let’s face it: Some people in our lives simply aren’t joyful. We may have fun with them, we may even find them interesting or even fascinating to be around, but there’s no joy. No joy, no magic. Simply peaceful coexistence. There’s very little wonder to be found in coexistence. Strike a spark.

      Vivere admirari: To live in wonder.

      Magic is associated with wonder. We often see this on display at big events, and certain places and times in a life. The trick is to dabble in a bit of magic every day, hidden in the joy we bring to moments as they unfold. As with anything joyful, magic works best when shared with others. A spark must have kindling just close enough together to create flame. Too close and you choke out the spark. Too far apart and the spark has nothing to catch hold of. We feel it when it’s just right.

      Incendat magica: To kindle magic

      Perhaps it’s frivolous to write about magic and wonder when the world is so dark and cold. But then again, maybe a spark is just what we need to kindle something warm and bright. We have magic for a reason, don’t we? It changes reality into something more.