Alexandersmap

    Category: Community

    • 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.

    • Squeaky Toys

      You learn quickly that you simply cannot write as effectively when a puppy has a squeaky toy in close proximity to you (anywhere you can hear it counts). So you redirect that puppy towards another toy that doesn’t squeak, at least for that time when you’re writing. This process works equally well with mobile phones and television news. There’s always another notification, just as there’s always more breaking news. The most unproductive people in the world are those addicted to some form of squeaky toy.

      But not us friend. We sequester ourselves in solitude. We get up early for the quiet it brings. We seek calm for the deep thoughts it brings. And we await the combined rewards of inspired creativity and greater insight. If we so choose, squeaky toys may be the reward for having done the work, not the distraction from it.

      I write this knowing the world is far more complicated and enraged today than it was a few days ago (when it was pretty complicated and enraged already). We cannot control the universe, only how we process our place in it. In order to do this, we must find a quiet place within ourselves to think and do what must be contemplated and acted upon.

      The thing is, the world will still be there in all its madness, barely noticing that we missed anything at all. Think of it as the loud talker in the room that doesn’t give you a second to respond. It only wants to hear itself talk. Sometimes the only thing to do is leave the room for awhile. The question we must always ask ourselves is, what is our verse? Can that be found in a room full of squeaks?

    • Stable Centers

      “Continue to progress, do not stagnate. Consider a spinning top. It moves around a stable center. It spins and spins until it finally falls over, exhausted” — Awa Kenzo, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow

      In this blog I refer a lot to Stephen Covey’s concept of pushing the flywheel, and having momentum in our lives through rigid positive habits. The thing about momentum we sometimes forget is that it’s not about the spinning, though surely action is essential, but about the stable center. We may spin like a whirling dervish, but without a stable center we quickly spiral out of control. Like centrifugal force, positive momentum abhors instability.

      We see this in people, companies and political parties that have lost the thing that made them stable. Sports teams may peak at the level of their superstars, but unravel over the course of a season without strong leadership from the role players that are the true foundation of a team. We call them the glue that holds a team together, or lifts it up when things go poorly. It’s those people in an organization who exemplify how things ought to be done and lead by example.

      That stable center in an individual is our morality and sense of purpose. It’s our why, to borrow from Simon Sinek. When we have this in our lives, we do the work that must be done, we don’t skip over the little things that mean a lot, we are proactive in our days, and we have agency over our lives. Why do we get up every day to start anew? It’s often the people in our lives we hold most dear, isn’t it? Family and friends offer community and a sense of place. Teams, congregations and great company cultures do this as well. We need something bigger than ourselves to make our lives larger and more meaningful. When we have it we feel complete, when we don’t we crave it and desperately seek it out.

      Stable centers are usually obvious to us when we have them in our lives. We know what centers us, because our life revolves around these why’s. We are capable of spinning ourselves into greater and greater orbits when our footing is solid. Finding stable centers thus becomes as essential to our growth as establishing good habits and surrounding ourselves with the right people. In fact, when we do these things, we find that we ourselves become a stable center for others. And isn’t that a magical feeling?

    • Morning Coffee

      The line for coffee in a hotel Starbucks is informative. We learn about the lives of others in cross line chatter between coworkers, learn who slept well and who was having a rough morning and we learn who in line has never ordered a Starbucks coffee before. The barista, seeing the confused looks, explains automatically that a Tall is a small and a Venti is a large, and I watch their eyes glaze over in confused despair. I think to myself that I’ve been ordering Starbucks for three centuries and I’ve never seen so many novices in one line before. It’s the arrogance of the familiar. I shift to helpfulness to expedite the ordering process that I may get a coffee before lunch.

      I write this next to a brand new Keurig machine in my hotel room, still with packing tape on it and never once plugged in. The hotel staff had stocked it with decaf coffee pods, which explains why it has never been used. If you’re going to use an in-room coffee-making system at all, make it matter. Some of us take our morning cuppa very seriously.

      It’s not about the coffee, really, but the ritual. It marks the beginning of the day, and importantly for this coffee snob, the start of the writing process. I’ve had to write without it before, but it’s nothing to celebrate. To reveal the extent of my love for coffee, I’m meeting people for breakfast at a local diner, where I’ll surely have more coffee. But it’s not stopping me from having this one first.

      We all have our routines and rituals. Those people in line used to pouring a cup of the hotel courtesy coffee had their morning routine turned upside down. I can understand the feeling of exasperation they were feeling as they ran into the strange world of Starbucks. We are, each of us, dealing with some challenging circumstances. Some are Tall, some Grande, and some are Venti. We’re all in this together friends.

    • Shards of Light

      “We’re only here for a minute. We’re here for a little window. And to use that time to catch and share shards of light and laughter and grace seems to me the great story.” – Brian Doyle, from the Forward of One Long River Of Song

      The news about the Sycamore tree at Hadrian’s Wall reached New Hampshire perhaps around the same time that it reached everywhere else in the world. That one person can bring light or darkness to an inordinate amount of people is secretly understood by most of us, but we all hope that people will choose light. Surely, most do, or our species would never evolve and grow. And yet we must be prepared for the darkness.

      The obvious thing about my writing is that I remain almost singularly focused on the positive. This is a reminder to myself and anyone who might stumble upon this blog that there is grace and beauty in this world, in spades, and it’s often the common ground that illuminates all of us. Sometimes it’s a simple thing, like a dahlia holding on to summer after the rest of the garden fades away. In a way that tree along Hadrian’s Wall was like that dahlia, holding on long after the rest of the forest was swept away. Do we focus on the beauty in that realization or the darkness of how it came to be?

      Like a muscle broken down through physical stress, darkness brings with it the opportunity for growth and improvement. Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls this antifragility, in which we grow stronger collectively in the face of the stressors that life throws our way. But only if we learn and grow together. Alternatively, we might shrink back within ourselves and atrophy. We must choose growth, and go to the light.

      Forget Instagram-worthy singularity. I’d plant a thousand trees where one stood at Hadrian’s Wall. Return the forest to the land. Bring beauty back a thousandfold to honor the last holdout. That would be a great ending to a dark story.

    • 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.

    • The Layer Cake of Happiness and Purpose

      “[There is an] age-old debate over two kinds of happiness that scholars refer to as hedonia and eudaimonia. Hedonia is about feeling good; eudaimonia is about living a purpose-filled life. In truth, we need both. Hedonia without eudaimonia devolves into empty pleasure; eudaimonia without hedonia can become dry…. I think we should seek work that is a balance of enjoyable and meaningful. At the nexus of enjoyable and meaningful is interesting.” — Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength

      There’s a special kind of joy that comes from marrying purpose with happiness. When we find our engagement with the world has both a why and joyfulness we enter blissful work. If this seems evasive, it’s because it is. Some people never find one or the other, let alone both in their lives. I believe it’s usually tapping us on the shoulder asking us to stop staring straight ahead and take a look at what we’ve been missing all along.

      The secret, always, is the people we surround ourselves with. When we’re constantly lifting up those around us, we can’t help but be dragged down ourselves. When others share the lift, the weight of the world seems lighter. When others lift us up in turn, we reach heights we might not have thought possible previously. We are the average of the people we surround ourselves with, so we ought to raise the average both in whom we spend our time with and the character we bring to the table.

      When we stop trying so damned hard to be happy or to find purpose and simply contribute our verse, we find over time that things like happiness simply happen organically. Building a lifetime of contribution and engagement with the world we find our foundation becomes stronger and we’re able to weather the inevitable storms that wash over us that erode weaker foundations. Life becomes a layer cake of happiness and purpose, repeated. When done in the company of exceptional people, what a wonderful life we might build together.

    • The Right Kind of Virtues

      “It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?” — David Brooks, “The Moral Bucket List” The New York Times

      Do you ever wonder, what people say about us when we pass? Isn’t it directly related to how much we lean into the right virtue? We might work hard all of our life, focused and disciplined, and successful by most any measure of that word, and still not live a life that is fulfilling and meaningful to others.

      Is striving to be virtuous about resume building or character building? Are we building a list of career highlights and an office in the C-suite or are we building a moral foundation that others will point to as a model for living? Just what do we want to be remembered for anyway? A life of meaning and purpose is a life of service to others.

      How is someone developed in such a way that they’re a contributor and builder instead of a corrosive sapper of joy and trust? It begins with flipping attention from ego to empathy. Easier said than done in a world where the self is so celebrated, but absolutely essential to growing into a person who is reliable, trustworthy and willing to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work.

      There is a recipe for building a strong character. It begins with the way we’re raised and the social network around us. In the way others perceive the world and how they in turn influence how we perceive it. Stir in a proper informal education: being well-traveled and worldly, and well-read and articulate surely help build empathy and understanding. Developing strong listening skills and the inclination and moral courage to rise to the moment when nobody else will.

      When someday we pass from this world, what do we want people to say about us? Will anyone remember the extra work we put in to finish that project, or will the memory be about being fully present for our children and significant other at the most important events in their lives? Will we be remembered as being a good friend or sibling, a great neighbor who looked out for others, or as that person who was never really there when it really mattered?

      A life of service to others isn’t always easy, but it matters a great deal. These moments add up, and will create a ripple that will be felt by others. The person with the most toys in the end doesn’t win, they’ve simply gathered a bunch of stuff that will end up in an estate plan for someone else. Isn’t the real goal to have our lives resonate for those around us, that we’ll be deeply missed when our time comes to an end?

    • Our Most Important Things

      So easily forgotten are the most important things
      Like the melody and the moonlight in your eyes
      And a song that lasts forever, keeps on gettin’ better
      All the time
      — Keb’ Mo, Life Is Beautiful

      Walking a lot of miles lately, I’ve come to see the town I live in at ground level, turning corners into places I haven’t been in a long time, or ever before. I see the changing nature of things, and I’m reminded of a time not so long ago when it was my own children at beginner’s summer soccer camp or at baseball practice. These stages of life fly by quickly, but the next generation steps right on to that field to build someone else’s memories. Our own will inevitably fade, perhaps, but the foundation laid in time and presence is strong.

      I walk to cover miles, deliberate and at the fastest pace I can sustain for 5-7 miles. I’m not a speed walker but I have a long stride that helps when the aim is fitness and mileage. Countering this pace, a couple of times a day I take the new puppy for a walk. She’s finding her courage in a strange new world, and the pace is much slower than my normal stride. My favorite Navy pilot once told me that when you’re walking a dog you aren’t walking, the dog is walking. You’re just keeping it company while it experiences the world. So rushing that experience does the dog a disservice, but it does for us too. Like those children growing up way too quickly if we aren’t paying attention, puppies grow up too. Embrace the pace you find yourself in, for one day it will change again.

      For all the changes happening all around us, some things remain the same. It’s easy to forget the people and routines that hold us to solid ground when life does cartwheels. They offer something tangible and meaningful for us in good times and bad, through the dizzying pace of rapid change and the dullest days of stagnation and limited progress. We ought to celebrate our quiet anchors, even as we explore the changes life takes us through. They are our most important things as we sort out the changes and find our stride for what comes next.

    • Adding a Piece Back In

      “My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
      so much has been destroyed
      I have to cast my lot with those
      who age after age, perversely,
      with no extraordinary power,
      reconstitute the world.”
      ~ Adrienne Rich
      from “Natural Resources”

      Day two of life with a rescue puppy is a reminder that life will be different. This is a sweet puppy, but a puppy nonetheless, one who loves to put her nose into house plants and see how tippy the gates really are. She’s learning her new home, but also learning what her limits will be. This is to be expected, and in some strange way, welcomed. Strange because I didn’t know what was missing until the gap was filled in again. You reach a point in life where it sometimes feels like the essence of your identity is being removed, one piece at a time. I talk to seniors and feel the void I’m helping to fill just by being present. It feels good to be adding something back in again.

      We rise up to meet what the universe asks of us, or we don’t. Life goes on either way. And in this give and take with the universe, we learn what our own destiny is. Most of us will never be famous or change the course of human history, but we will each make a ripple, or as Whitman put it, we will each have a verse. And this matters a great deal too. Simply rise up to meet the moment, to follow through on what is being asked of us. We find that the piece that was missing was us all along.