Alexandersmap

    Category: Culture

    • A Matter of Who

      Times and places
      Are all in who you share ’em with
      And it’s life, and the point is
      Enjoyin’ who you share it with
      Joy is who you share it with
      — Layup, Who You Share It With

      A friend texted a few loosely-aligned friends to ask if any of us would be interested in going to a Donald Trump appearance at a country club nearby. It’s known within this circle of friends that I’m the least likely to participate in something like this of the lot of us, but as a history buff there was still a small part of me that would consider it, just to see this character who has done so much to turn the world upside down. In the end I opted out for many more reasons than why I’d ever opt in. My vote cancelling out my friend’s a given, the friendship will survive the difference of opinion on who should be thought of as a leader, simply because we choose for it to survive.

      Whether we find happiness and purpose in any given place and time is often a matter of who we spend our time with. The people on the bus as we ride through life—our circle of friends, the people we work or go to school with, teammates—all determine just how much we enjoy the ride. We ought to get off the bus if it’s not particularly joyful to be on it, and find another one that brings us to the place we’d like to be.

      Thinking back on my friend, I remembered that some of the most joyful times I’ve had in the last twenty years were with him and some of the other characters on that text message. Doesn’t that count for something more than who we might vote for in an election? There are always matters of scarcity and abundance, ebb and flow, in our lives. The tragedy is when scarcity is a mindset, and we forget the abundance of reasons why we were drawn together in the first place.

      There’s a gap that develops with some friendships as we grow and experience different things in life. Without proximity and purpose, we drift away from most people at some level. Sometimes we drift back again, and sometimes we don’t. Things like politics and pandemics challenge friendships and we find that sometimes the relationship doesn’t pass the test. But sometimes we decide that the common ground offers far more joy than the gaps subtract.

    • Tipping the Scale Towards Progress

      “Each of you is in the process of building the structure of your lives, and the question is whether you have a proper, a solid and a sound blueprint… I want to suggest some of the things that should be in your life’s blueprint. Number one in your life’s blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your own worth and your own somebodiness. Don’t allow anybody to make you fell that you are nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance. Now that means that you should not be ashamed of your color… Don’t be ashamed of your color. Don’t be ashamed of your biological features. Somehow you must be able to say in your own life and really believe it, ‘I am black but beautiful’ and believe it in your heart.

      Secondly, in your life’s blueprint you must have as the basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor. You’re going to be deciding as the days, as the years unfold what you will do in life, what your life’s work will be. And once you discover what it will be, set out to do it, and to do it well.

      And I say to you, my young friends that doors are opening to each of you. Doors of opportunities are opening to each of you that were not open to your mothers and to your fathers — and the great challenge facing you is to be ready to enter these doors as they open...

      And when you discover what you are going to be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. And just don’t just set out to do a good ‘negro’ job… Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better.”
      — Martin Luther King, Jr. “What Is Your Life’s Blueprint?” speech at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967

      When you watch any speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. you feel the urgency of the moment he was living in. There was simply no time to waste. He said it as a preface of this speech in Philadelphia, speaking to young students who were at the beginning of their own journey to becoming. I wonder how things turned out for those students? How many heard the call and rose up to personal excellence? How many of us, hearing it today, will aim higher in our own pursuit?

      The thing is, we know how MLK’s story ended, just six months after this speech. Yet he lives on, transcending life itself to reverberate and resonate with generations long after the generation of middle school kids who listened to him speak that day. Precisely because he’d reached higher, arrived at the pulpit and turned to guide those who would follow.

      The world has turned more cynical once again, pushing against the momentum of change. There is an ebb and flow to progress, like a pendulum swinging. One side gains momentum, the other side resists and pushes back. Populism is predictable in this way, and generally requires the right voices to stand out in the noise and be the tipping point. For every autocratic bully rallying the crowd one way, there’s a voice calling to push back towards progressivism and human dignity. One step forward, two steps back for some period of time, then two steps forward, one back soon thereafter. Humanity’s history writes itself one swing at a time.

      Knowing this, we must continue to rise—not just in personal excellence, but generational excellence. There’s too much at stake in the world to settle for the narrative of the miserable. The swing towards autocracy isn’t a given, it’s merely a push. We can surely push back for progress. The scales can be tipped when we rise to the moment.

    • The Reach

      “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

      The thing about reaching is that it’s inherently less comfortable than staying in place. We stretch ourselves in the reach. We experience unusual things, sometimes unimaginable things, when stepping out of the familiar. Sometimes we find this unsettling, but sometimes we encounter delight and wonder. The reach is almost always worth it for who we become.

      Yes, we must seek new experiences, that we may fully live. Life will fly right on by whether we embrace the challenge of living boldly or shrink into whatever timid role we began the day in. Life may be thrilling when we make it so, just as surely as it may be trivial and boring when we stay in our shell. By all means, we must break out of it and try a new one on for size.

      The reach shouldn’t feel impossible. It should simply be a reach. And when we reach that point, reach again. In this way we expand our lives and become something more… and more. Mistakes will be made, lessons will be learned, and we will grow.

      Abundance in a lifetime isn’t a stack of gold or shiny things, it’s the experiences we have and the people we surround ourselves with. To reach is to actively engage with the world and to grow into whomever we may become—closer to our potential, closer to excellence.

    • This Gift

      “Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness! Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I!”― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

      It seems appropriate to quote Dickens on Christmas day. The theme isn’t new for this blog, but another reminder to use our time well is always appropriate in a world that tries so very hard to distract us from the hourglass. We ought to remember that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused, and more, act upon that knowledge with urgency. It matters not whether it’s Christmas or the 25th of July, mortal life is barreling right along. We must make the most of life’s opportunities in our time.

      Each day is a gift. May this one bring each of us an abundance of joy, peace and love in close proximity to the most important people in our life. Thank you for following along.

    • 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.

    • Adding Treasure

      “Why be saddled with this thing called life expectancy? Of what relevance to an individual is such a statistic? Am I to concern myself with an allotment of days I never had and was never promised? Must I check off each day of my life as if I am subtracting from this imaginary hoard? No, on the contrary, I will add each day of my life to my treasure of days lived. And with each day, my treasure will grow, not diminish.” ― Robert Brault

      I took a walk with the pup late last night, hoping to see the Geminid meteor shower. Most magic in the sky is inevitably obscured by cloud cover, so when we’re lucky enough to have a crisp, clear sky and a meteor shower we ought to get out the witness it. It proved to be a walk filled with exclamation points punctuating the celestial dance. Like days, every walk is different. A few are special.

      We ought to seek out that specialness in every day. It’s likely hiding in plain sight. As with everything life-amplifying, a bit of awareness surely helps. Knowing the Geminids were happening got me out of a warm house on a cold evening at a time when I’m usually fast asleep. Likewise, a bit of research before traveling to a new place nets all kinds of treasures worthy of a side trip, treasures that will whisper to us in the quiet moments until we experience them, and then whisper delightfully forever after: “We really got to experience that!”

      Awareness is essential, but so is engagement; we ought to talk to the people sitting next to us, we ought to find the local scenic vistas, we ought to dance when the music kicks up a notch. and yes, we ought to miss out on a bit of comfort now and then to try bold things. The time will flow right by either way—shouldn’t we do something more with it?

      “Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.” – Henry David Thoreau

      The mindset of steadily adding memories instead of subtracting days is a wonderful way to filter exactly what we’re going to do with this day at hand. We can’t possibly stop the flow of sand through the hourglass, so maybe taking a walk on the beach and forgetting about that hourglass altogether is our best move. When we steadily accumulate magic in our moments life becomes something memorable. Go be deliberate and adventurous—for that’s where the treasure is.

    • Designing the Sweet Life (La Dolce Vita)

      “A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      In a full confession that will surprise no one in my circle of friends and family, I struggle with the act of idleness. I rarely sit still, even on vacation, choosing to explore whatever place I find myself in, and too often stack too many activities into those “idle” days. There’s no lying on the beach for hours for me. The default is activity over idleness. I marvel at the pets for their ability to simply nap away hours of a day. If I nap at all I set the alarm for 15 minutes and get right back to moving about as soon as possible. And the idea of sleeping in? There is no snooze alarm in my world.

      But that doesn’t translate to being productive all of the time. We can putter about without really getting anything done. The world is full of people quietly quitting the work they have in front of them. There are plenty of people opting out of frenetic lifestyles. There are whole cultures built around the sweetness of doing nothing (dolce far niante: I’m looking at you Italy). So how do we restless souls learn to chill out a bit and live the sweet life (la dolce vita) ourselves?

      “Doing less meaningless work, so that you can focus on things of greater personal importance, is NOT laziness. This is hard for most to accept, because our culture tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity.” ― Timothy Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek

      The thing is, Thoreau and Ferriss, both known for promoting more strategic idleness in our days, have also produced some significant work that resonates beyond the moment they created it. For all their perceived idleness, there’s an underlying productivity hidden in plain sight. That’s what people miss in the idea of la dolce vita—it’s living the sweet life while still keeping the lights on with productive work. It seems we can have it all, if we create a lifestyle that is both pleasurable and productive.

      The trick is being far more strategic in our productivity, thus giving breathing room for idleness. We ought to know what we’re really setting out to do in this lifetime, and break that down into milestones. Milestones in turn are achieved through work strategically designed into our days. If that sounds like the antithesis of dolce far niante, well, I understand. But it really is the essence of living Thoreau’s “natural day”: filled with enough idle time to feel we’re not cogs in a machine while still producing something memorable.

      Productivity (and idleness) requires focus. Doing the work that matters most in the moment and then get on with living that sweet life. We’re all students of maximizing the potential of our lifetime. We ought to know what makes life sweet, and also meaningful. Designing a pace of life that balances the two is the essence of a sweet life.

      Ultimately, designing a lifestyle that maximizes our potential should be our focus. But potential for what? Wealth? Fame? Isn’t it really time spent doing the things that makes a life sweet? Time with people who matter a great deal to us. Time doing the things that make life a pleasure. Time structured in a way that it doesn’t feel like we’re biding our time but living it.

      So the question when designing a lifestyle is, “what will maximize the number of beautiful moments we may stack together in this finite lifespan?” Nothing brings focus to our days like remembering we only have so many of them. Memento mori. Stop wasting time thinking about it and go live it, today and every day we’re blessed with. The Italians are on to something, don’t you think?

    • So Apart We’ve Grown

      One of these days
      I’m gonna sit down and write a long letter
      To all the good friends I’ve known
      And I’m gonna try
      And thank them all for the good times together
      Though so apart we’ve grown
      — Neil Young, One of These Days

      Talking to an old friend, we asked each other about other old friends. Who have we seen? Who has drifted away? How are the kids? It was a reminder of the person I used to be who danced with the world in the best way he could at the time. We’ve grown so far apart since then. Yet we’re still the same in so many ways.

      The thing is we’re all becoming something more as the layers pile on. Those layers either smother who we once were or keep that person warm for the day when we fling off the years and dance like it’s 1999 again. Like a tree, those growth rings differ year-to-year. Some years are better than others, some are distinctly harder. We reach for the sun in good times and bad and put the seasons behind us, until one day we look around and wonder where the time went.

      One of these days, we’ll all get together again. We won’t miss a beat, I expect, just as we didn’t miss a beat last time. Somewhere deep inside us is the person we were then, thrilled to come out and play the part once again. Sure we’re all so very different as life rolls along and sometimes over us all. But there’s a spark of energy between old friends that remains to rekindle the flames of our youth. A time before mortgages and divorces and funerals for people we thought would be here with us now, in this very conversation, talking about who we were then.

      Those conversations change as we grow, from who we want to be when we grow up to who we want to be now that the kids have grown up. That’s a lot of growth to catch up on some day when we get back together with those old friends. Now is just another growth ring we’ll laugh about (perhaps someday). We all know that the future is coming for us soon enough. But those growth rings make their own music. And we have so very much to catch up on.

    • Choices

      A friend asked me which five songs I would choose if I could listen to no other song but those five for the rest of my life. An impossible task, really. Beyond your wedding song, if you truly loved it, what do you choose? Hard rock? Dance music? Introspective music? Singalong songs? Jazz? Classical? Death metal? Do you go with the first five you think of? The five most played on your phone? Or do you mine a little deeper, knowing that this is for keeps and there’s no time for casual affairs?

      When I put the initial list together in my mind and reviewed it, I noticed that my two favorite bands weren’t represented. Yet I could do the same five song exercise with either band and have a hard time deciding what to leave off. Another friend of mine once asked me to rank the best albums of a band we both love from best to worst. The worst is easy, but what do you choose as the best? It depends on your mood at the time. It’s the same with ranking songs, isn’t it?

      Imagine putting a list together like this, not as an ice-breaker, but as truly the only five songs you’ll ever hear again. Imagine the pressure, the last minute switches. The forgotten gem that you’ll regret excluding forever. Having to choose when the stakes are real sucks. The hard part is always what you must leave behind when you choose that other thing.

      The exercise should lead us to gratitude. We ought to be grateful that we don’t have to choose. We ought to be grateful that our days are filled with an abundance of choice on what we eat, what we read or watch, where we live, and yes, what we listen to. It’s truly an embarrassment of riches for most of us.

      It should also lead us to evaluate what our choices have been thus far in the game. We aren’t here for all that long, yet we remain frivolous with what we do with our time. I’m well aware that I’m choosing to write this blog at this moment instead of taking a long walk in the woods. Which is better for me in the moment? We must choose wisely, but then accept the choice that we’ve made if it’s working for us. Happiness is not found in constantly changing our mind about what we want.

      Life can never be about having everything. Just enough of some things. Things like beauty and love, engagement with the universe and the active pursuit of better. That’s the soundtrack to a great life. Something we can dance to.

    • A Serious and Omnivorous Reader

      “I think most serious and omnivorous readers are alike- intense in their dedication to the word, quiet-minded, but relieved and eagerly talkative when they meet other readers and kindred spirits.” ― Paul Theroux, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar

      I’m determined to read 5-6 more books before the calendar year ends. This necessitates lifestyle choices, of course, but that’s par for the course with a reader. We who read often absorb the judgement of both those who choose to watch, and those who choose to do. As if reading as an alternative to watching a movie or a game or going out on the town is such a poor choice. The only poor choice is lethargy and sloth. There’s nothing lethargic or slothful about an active brain engaged in reading.

      The thing is, there are only so many books we can read in a lifetime. There are only so many movies one can watch, only so many walks we can take or bars we can close out, only so many dogs you can bring into your life, only so many stamps we’ll ever have in our passport, and so on. Whatever the lifestyle choice we make for ourselves, we must recognize that it’s inherently limited, because we are.

      When the year ends, I’ll have read about 25 books. That includes some pretty heavy lifts, but a few page-turners as well. This is down from a year ago, when I cleared 30 books leaning more heavily into fast fiction reads. Reading is also heavily dependent on how we travel, how we engage with the rest of the world, and whether we choose to write a blog every day during prime reading hours. With a full house this summer, I read much less than I might have with an empty nest. The trade-off was naturally worth it, but the unread books mock me nonetheless. And then there’s Goodreads, which only tracks the new books we’ve read, not the total including old favorites that we return to again and again. Shouldn’t it count when you re-read Walden or Awareness or Meditations for the umpteenth time? Of course it matters a great deal, but why are we counting anyway?

      Somewhere over the last year I’ve stopped worrying so much about the count and began focusing on what I absorb in my reading. I linger with a quirky set of authors who bring all manner of perspective to the universe. Why do we rush off to read the next big thing instead of revisiting that thing that’s whispering in the back of our mind? That person who read Slaughterhouse Five in high school is nowhere near the person who re-read it this summer. What have you re-read with an entirely different perspective?

      There’s a popular conversation starter that begins with the question, which albums would you bring to a deserted island with you—which ten albums would you listen to over everything else that’s out there, should you be destined to spend the rest of your life listening to no other music? It’s an impossible ask, really, but reveals a lot about the people around the table, should they be truthful. Music is always a deeply personal choice, influenced by our environment. So it is with books. So taking that question from music to literature, what books would you bring with you? If you were told to leave the planet on a trip to Mars, never to return and not having the Internet to constantly refresh your feed what would you want to read again and again to the end of days? A serious and omnivorous reader could tackle that list readily, with the natural regret of the large stack of books left behind.

      My own list would include the Thoreau, de Mello and Marcus Aurelius books listed above, along with some history, some poetry, and some fiction. None of the books I’ve read thus far this year—even the books I’ve rated as five stars—would make the list. Does that make this year a failure in not elevating my library, or a validation of that which I’ve already danced with? The answer lies within us, doesn’t it?

      Returning to the inherent limitation of how many books we can read in a lifetime, shouldn’t we be very deliberate in what we choose? I believe we should read as much and as widely as we can, that we may gain perspectives otherwise untapped. Particularly in a world that wants more than ever to control the conversation, we owe it to ourselves to go well beyond the populist fare to find voices that otherwise get drowned out in all that shouting and posturing. In the end, it’s the well-read who bring perspective and stability to an otherwise reactionary world.