Alexandersmap

    Category: Culture

    • Owning Truth

      “I’d rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it.” — Will Rogers

      I once had a dog who would leave the room when my phone notifications chimed. He simply found it unpleasant enough that he would rise up from whatever comfortable position he lay in and walk away. I eventually reached the same conclusion about notifications and turned them all off. The truth is not nagging us to pay attention to it, the truth is quietly present awaiting discovery.

      We are living in a time with a warped sense of right and wrong. The problem is that everyone believes that they’re right. Where are the trusted sources now? We live in our own version of the upside down, built for profit. We would all profit from more time meeting on common ground.

      We must trust, but verify. This often comes down to simply not reacting to everything thrown at us, but carrying it to logical conclusion and contemplation. In magic, sleight of hand (prestidigitation) works through distraction. Sleight of hand also works with lies. In a rapid fire sound bite world seeing the truth in front of us is practically impossible unless we turn off the noise altogether. When we have time to think and see the whole picture, we find our way to our own truth.

    • Around the World

      Fly the great big sky
      See the great big sea
      Kick through continents
      Busting boundaries
      Take it hip to hip, rocket through the wilderness
      Around the world the trip begins with a kiss
      — The B52’s, Roam

      This song was always about sex, but the other side of that double entrendre was the possibility of roaming. Travel lust, if you will. Permission to explore the world, with that bubbly, joyful B52’s beat.

      The world isn’t all that easy to roam around, and yet it’s incredibly easy if we take the right steps beforehand. A passport, a hint of a plan, and some money to meet the type of travel we’re heading off on. The risk-averse among us will be quick to add health and trip insurance, reservations and all that. But really, that’s just swimming in a roped-off sea—only roaming as much as we feel we’re allowed to. Swim away from the resort and out into the wild sea.

      Spring fever brings with it a desire to roam again. To escape our winter hibernation and getting back out into the world. But the thing about roaming is we’re either talking a good game or we’re putting our plans in action. Don’t we all want a little more action? So let’s roam (if you want to).

    • Learning to See

      How you learn to see
      The hope eternally
      When you’re sure to leave
      Oh, leave at last
      — The Avett Brothers, Morning Song

      This blog post is being written exactly one hour later than normal, and yet at the same time as yesterday. Someone’s idea of daylight savings time flips the clock forward or backward in their respective seasons, and we all wonder why. Like most foolish rituals, it sticks because some people don’t like change. So here we are once again, changing the clocks and the morning ritual of writing before the madness of the day. What time is it really? It’s time to let go of what was.

      Lately the house has experienced changes. As the days grow longer, the communal vibe felt around the holidays fades further from memory. We often don’t stop our own scramble through the days long enough to feel the changes. Work and family commitments, a relentless winter and the rapidity of a finite life hold our attention. The day-to-day routine feels the same, but there are subtle changes.

      The dog, normally walking effervescent joy, has a look in her eyes that says something is off. Her appetite is off, her walks are more distracted. Something has changed in her mind. And then there’s the cat, normally a little ball of hate around the dog anyway, she’s gone out of her way to express it lately. Is the dog being bullied by the cat? Are they both feeling scarcity of attention and expressing it through their interaction with each other? When exactly did I become a pet psychiatrist? Pets react to change just as we humans do. They’re usually at least one paw ahead of us.

      There are forces larger than ourselves at work in the universe. Take that to mean whatever you want it to mean in your own march to infinity, but to me, some measure of hope begins with stepping away from the self and connecting with others. We are here on this brief dance through time together. Tell me, what do we really see? The changes are within us, seeking expression in the time we are given. Life goes on, and so to must we. One subtle step towards the infinite after the other.

    • Break It Down

      “If you repeated what you did today 365 more times, will you be where you want to be next year?” — Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

      This week I experienced something called Instrument-Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (IASTM), which is a fancy way of saying a highly-trained physical therapist used a chunk of metal to scrape my leg to what felt like a bloody pulp. It turned out there was no blood, just the breaking up of scar tissue accumulated over many stubborn years of telling myself that my ankle would just get better on its own. This procedure helps undo what’s been done through micro-trauma to the scarred areas. It turns out those micro-traumas create a bit of state change in the recipient. Ouch. But also, revelation.

      It’s no secret that small habits, done consistently, change us over time. If the scar tissue in my leg reminded me of anything, its that those bad habits accumulate and develop into things we aren’t even aware of until something jolts us into awareness. For me it was a gimpy ankle. For others it’s far more serious. Like the alien spores in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, bad habits sneak into our lives and change our identity. Don’t let the bastards drag you down! Break down that scar tissue.

      “Looking ahead, focus on direction rather than destinations. Maintain the right direction and you’ll arrive at where you want to go.” — Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

      Dropping two quotes from Kevin Kelly today, but this little book is a gem. It reads like a series of bite-sized tweets, which makes it a natural read for people who stare at a screen more than they should. That’s another habit akin to an alien invasion, creating outrage and depression in people who we used to know. We’re collectively undergoing scarification, and we must find a way to scrape it away from our lives if we hope to hold on to the best of who we are and will become.

      Scar tissue hides within. Awareness of where we are is important, and so too is knowing where we’re going. What small habit, done daily, changes our course from a lesser version of us to a greater? The days will fly by either way, we might as well tune up the body, mind and soul in positive and productive ways. Decide what to be and go be it. Just accept the discomfort of change for what it is—the breaking down of the bad to make room for the good.

    • What Will That Be?

      “I write to find out what I didn’t know I knew.”— Robert Frost

      Lately I’ve been playing with writing style just to see where it takes me. I’m not sure I want to dive too deeply into writing poetry, but I aspire to write as elegantly concise as a great poet does. As you can see from my first two sentences compared to the quote from Robert Frost, I still have work to do. And perhaps that should be the blog post today: Aspires for great, sentenced to better. No?

      Then again, this isn’t meant to be a diary or journal. It’s a ship’s log without the ship. Here is where the journey has taken me. Have a look around and note the state of things. What one line will mark this day uniquely on this passage? How does the first day of a new month feel compared to the last day of last month? Are we one day closer to knowing? Knowing what? Every day is learning and discovery and marking the changes.

      I stray onto social media less frequently now. We all feel it’s changed. We were collectively violated by bots and billionaires enough to be deeply suspicious of each platform. These blog posts are shared on three platforms that felt less icky when I linked to them. Is less icky enough of a reason to share content with people I don’t know? Is it all AI scanning now? I don’t do the like-for-a-like thing very well at all (sorry). Does that make me anti-social or simply selective with my precious time? Are we slowly shrinking from open to closed while we debate such things?

      We’re on the road to find out. My road happens to involve an hour or sometimes two of quiet contemplation and moving words around to make things flow better. I’m under no illusions that this blog will change the world—only its writer’s world. For that hour or two compounded over thousands of days adds up to something better than we started with. The world may be more icky, more divided, more collectively stupid than it could have been with better choices, but all we control is what we contribute to the conversation. And just what will that be?

    • Shake It Loose

      “It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out; it is the grain of sand in your shoe.” — Anonymous

      It’s easy to be annoyed. There’s just so much material to work with in the current state of things. Being positive feels out of touch with reality. Not having an opinion on something marks you as naive or guarded. In either case people take note. There’s just no winning when we’re all so on edge all the time.

      Simply remove that grain of sand and keep moving towards the mountaintop. It’s not that the grain of sand isn’t important, it’s just that it’s keeping us from getting to where we’re trying to go. So shake it loose and move on. There’s a mountain to climb.

    • It’s Our Time Now

      “The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?” — Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

      The end of the Winter Olympics brought with it the usual mixed feelings. On the one hand, there’s a glow from witnessing the pursuit of excellence that inspires and stimulates one’s own pursuit of arete. When we see elite athletes performing at a high level, it’s natural to ask what in the world we’re doing with our own precious life.

      The answer, friend, is the best that we can given the circumstances. We are on our own path of discovery. We are on our own climb to better. We may celebrate the excellence of others, but don’t dare to compare, for we know that comparison is the death of joy.

      The end of the Olympics also releases us from watching them, that we may go forth and do our own thing once again. We are in the business of optimization of the self, first and foremost, because that’s who we’ve got to spend the rest of this lifetime with. So take stock of what’s working and keep moving in that direction, but surely, also make note of what’s not working and begin to reinvent, remove and restore accordingly. For it’s our time now.

    • Keep a Light On

      “When little men cast long shadows, it is a sign that the sun is setting.” — Walter Savage Landor

      The world is full of little men casting long shadows. Outlast them. Everything will shift back to reason one day. Perhaps we’ll even be alive to see it. Perhaps the environment, libraries, global economic stability and our national psyche will survive to see it (sure, the list could have been a lot longer). The trick is to survive to thrive again one day as the society we aspired to be.

      When the sun feels like it’s setting, be a beacon in the darkness. Sanity begins at home. Nurture an environment that enables resilience through structure and stability and growth. For there will come a day when it doesn’t feel so dark all the time. All it takes is enough beacons to light the way. Cockroaches scurry away in the light. So it follows that when the shadows grow long, bring more light.

      There will always be humans behaving badly for as long as there are humans. Never fall for the us versus them logic, for it’s an easy trap. We’ve all got a bit of each within us. We’ve seen that some have a bit more than others. It never was nor ever will be about good versus evil. It’s simply about keeping the lights on so humanity can find its way home again.

    • Governed by Illusions

      “Reason is the enemy of all greatness: reason is the enemy of nature: nature is great, reason is small. I mean that it will be more or less difficult for a man to be great the more he is governed by reason, that few can be great (and in art and poetry perhaps no one) unless they are governed by illusions.” — Giacomo Leopardi

      “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
      ― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

      How many of us are perfectly reasonable in our lives? We are taught to be so. Reasonable is predictable, manageable, reliable. When we aspire to be good, we are subscribing to a routine of reasonable. And of course there’s nothing wrong with reasonable, there’s just nothing particularly profound to be realized when we stay in that box. We simply cannot put a dent in the universe with reason. Dents require the velocity of audacity.

      Few can be great unless they are governed by illusions. Illusions of grandeur. Illusions of what might be far beyond what is. To dream and then chase that dream as if our very lives depended on it(doesn’t it?). To step outside of what is expected of us and write our own script beyond the imagination of the perfectly reasonable people in our lives. That is where illusions may lead.

      Of course, illusions may also lead us off the cliff to our doom. It’s reasonable to have a safety net, to wear a seatbelt, and to put on sunscreen. We can structure our lives around reason and still chase the dream. We just can’t put all our eggs in one basket—reasonable or illusion, and expect them to survive when we inevitably stumble. But let’s face it, that kind of logic is entirely too reasonable.

      It comes down to risk and reward. Those of us who are risk-averse aren’t likely to adapt the world to ourselves because we’re too busy adapting to it. The trick is to know our tendencies and learn to stretch beyond our comfort level. When we habituate discomfort as a normal state we adapt and grow and become. Change becomes something we are accustomed to, and more, something that we initiate.

      This entire blog post is reason in action. I might simply have said “just do it” and headed out the door to realize some grand illusion. Something less unreasonable would be to simply click publish and stretch my comfort zone after I’ve had a good breakfast. But those are the words of someone governed by reason. Just who is the boss here anyway?

    • Get Out and Happen

      “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.” — Leonardo da Vinci

      I had a conversation with someone this week who observed that Americans believe they can be anything they want to be if they work hard enough towards a goal. The inference was that this isn’t the case in some other countries. Perhaps that’s true, perhaps not. As an American it’s not for me to say what someone from another country believes. I would point towards the Winter Olympics happening right now in Milan as one counter to that argument, and read the worlds of the prominent Italian quoted above as another. I think the real point is that Americans always wear their aspirations on their sleeve. We lead with who we aspire to be.

      This blog surely doesn’t refute that statement. Decide what to be and go be it is one of the most commonly quoted lines you’ll find here (with a nod to The Avett Brothers). At this point in the blog, AI and you, dear reader, have figured out a lot about this writer. The trick in this evolving world is to never show all your cards. That ought to go for aspirations too. Don’t tell us what you’re going to do, show us with the results of your actions. This is the only truth—the rest is just talk.

      The thing is, we know that time is flying by so very quickly. The deck is stacked against any of us really doing anything significant to put a dent in the universe in the time we have available to us. The only answer to this riddle is to be audacious. If fortune favors the bold, stop being timid about what needs to happen today. Get out and happen.