Alexandersmap

    Category: Culture

    • Tossing Aside the Blindfold

      “In the eighteenth century, when educated European tourists visited the Alps, they deliberately blindfolded their eyes to shield themselves from the evidence of the earth’s horrid irregularity. It is hard to say if this was not merely affectation, for today, newborn infants, who have not yet been taught our ideas of beauty, repeatedly show in tests that they prefer complex to simple designs. At any rate, after the Romantic Revolution, and after Darwin, I might add, our conscious notions of beauty changed. Were the earth as smooth as a ball bearing, it might be beautiful seen from another planet, as the rings of Saturn are. But here we live and move; we wander up and down the banks of the creek, we ride a railway through the Alps, and the landscape shifts and changes. Were the earth smooth, our brains would be smooth as well; we would wake, blink, walk two steps to get the whole picture, and lapse into a dreamless sleep. Because we are living people, and because we are on the receiving end of beauty, another element necessarily enters the question. The texture of space is a condition of time. Time is the warp and matter the weft of the woven texture of beauty in space, and death is the hurtling shuttle. Did those eighteenth-century people think they were immortal? Or were their carriages stalled to rigidity, so that they knew they would never move again, and, panicked, they reached for their blindfolds?” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      I think the point of Dillard’s quote, and the reason I chose it, was to highlight the imperfect nature of our time here, and the extraordinary capacity to receive and embrace beauty despite, or perhaps because of our awareness of the duration of the ride. We are active receivers of the ugly truth and the beautiful realization that life is a brief dance with wonder. Our version of modern blindfolds is of course a mobile phone with its infinite distractions flashing pretty images in our face. Do we truly see the rugged imperfections surrounding us when we’re a click away from something with ten million views just waiting for ours?

      A man died of exposure on a trail I’m very familiar with over the Christmas weekend. The details haven’t fully been released but it appears he was unprepared for the elements, trusted his phone to guide him and light his way when it got dark, and perished when he lost the trail and his battery faded away with his life force. Friends or relatives on the other side of the planet alerted emergency personnel, who found him too late to save him. That mobile phone might connect us to the world, but it isn’t active connection to other people, just the illusion of it. Life is a fragile dance with beauty, and (it seems) his ended when he got too comfortable with that illusion in a cold and unforgiving place.

      The thing is, that trail is one of the most beautiful and popular trails in the White Mountains. It’s easy to understand why he chose it. The tragic irony is that he received the beauty he sought in his climb, but his blindfold killed him in the end. It’s unfair to judge the hiker who perished, for at least he was out there trying to make the most of his moment (if tragically unprepared).

      There’s a lesson for every hiker in his story. But isn’t there another lesson hidden in plain sight? For shouldn’t we wonder, how many others are slowly wasting their lives staring into their own blindfolds? We must be actively engaged in our lives to see the imperfect beauty surrounding us.

    • Change Agent

      “It is necessary to uproot oneself. To cut down the tree and make of it a cross, and then to carry it every day.” — Simone Weil

      It begins in earnest now, doesn’t it? We each become change agents in our own lives, advocating for the elimination of bad habits, the acquisition of new routines, and the wholesale disruption of the things central to our identity that we would rather see cancelled outright. Naturally this is a heavy lift in practice, but it sure is easy to write down as our ideal self.

      And so it is that resolutions fall by the wayside so quickly. Big, bold plans aren’t meant to be achieved easily. They’re meant to be broken down into bite-sized bits of habitualized change. So dream the dream, but simplify the steps that get you there. It’s not a mystery, it’s a process.

      Change is itself a habit we ought to embrace. When you look at the pace of change in the world, it’s essential to get comfortable with rapid changes in the way we consume media, filter information, pay for things, communicate with one another and earn a living. We don’t have to be early adopters, but we need to be prepared for whatever is coming next. This is called situational awareness, or simply knowing the environment you’re in or about to step into.

      We might get knocked over by the wave of change or surf it until it peters out. Either way they’ll be another wave arriving soon that we ought to be aware of. The trick in life is to avoid drowning long enough that we find our footing again. But in the confusion of the moment, isn’t it funny that we sometimes forget that we know how to swim? We must condition ourselves to being change agents, aware of our strengths and weaknesses, and forever adapting to find buoyancy in an unpredictable world.

      Life informs, we adapt and grow, then do it all over again. For the art of living is navigating and even embracing that continuous uprooting. We must carry whatever life throws at us, but that load makes us stronger and more resilient. It doesn’t get easier, we simply grow into the people who can manage such things.

      So as we look towards the New Year, we ought to view ourselves as change agents with an eye towards resiliency and growth. Life will keep throwing challenges at us—how do we thrive in such moments? Getting stronger, smarter and more comfortable with rapid change are thus goals worthy of our resolute focus.

    • Sharing Moments, After

      “I’ve never taken a photograph of someone and created a persona, I’ve just discovered what was already there.” ― Anthony Farrimond

      I’ve been known to take a few pictures in my time. As with writing, it helps me focus on the things around me in a way I might not otherwise. I have friends that send me pictures of sunsets that they’re not putting on social media as a reminder that I tend to put a lot of such pictures on social media. I celebrate the ribbing, for it means I’m doing my part to share a bit of beauty and positivity in a world full of people inclined to share ugly and negative. That’s not us, friends. We’re here to light the world during our shift.

      During occasions when family and friends come together, my attention shifts from pictures of nature’s beauty to the beautiful souls around me. There’s a fine line between being a part of the party and being apart from the party, and I try to stay in the moment while capturing some of it. Stopping a conversation for a picture can be disruptive, but if done well it might enhance and draw people together. When done well it captures the illusive and fragile moments we have together. Looking back on pictures from the last few years, it’s striking how many people are no longer with us. We can’t control fate, but we can capture moments before it intervenes.

      At a Christmas Eve party just last night I was talking to someone about some of the settings in an iPhone. They shared a few tips that I immediately started trying. In portrait mode you can tap on someone’s face and everything in the background blurs, highlighting the face or faces you’ve chosen to focus on. It’s a nice trick that brings a measure of professional photography to the amateur. Perhaps my favorite thing about it is that focus. As in an intimate conversation, you’re drawn completely into the world of the person you’re focused on. In such moments we capture something more than the moment, we capture a glimpse into their soul.

      I’m not a great photographer (I know too many great photographers to claim such mastery for myself), but I take enough pictures that I get a few good ones worth sharing. The way I look at it, that picture is a time machine, shared after the moment, carrying life force from one moment to another. That after moment might be turning the image around to show those you’ve just taken a picture of what it looks like, or it might be our great-grandchildren feeling the love through the eyes of a long-lost ancestor. This is the nature of photography, it tends to outlast us.

      As the photographer in such moments, as with writing, one hopes for mastery, but accepts the best we can deliver in the present. Don’t we owe it to each other to capture our best moments together? Having captured an image, it becomes a gift for others in moments after.

    • Delicate Things

      “Why shouldn’t we, so generally addicted to the gigantic, at last have some small works of art, some short poems, short pieces of music […], some intimate, low-voiced, and delicate things in our mostly huge and roaring, glaring world?” — Elizabeth Bishop

      For all the big plans we make, most of our life is lived in routine. This blog is most often fueled by an early rise and a freshly ground cup of coffee. But when routine fails me and I really need to focus on writing or some other work, I put on my noise-cancelling headphones and play the same song on repeat until I’ve completed whatever it was that was getting overwhelmed by the gigantic. No surprise for readers that for me, that song is Wild Theme by Mark Knopfler. You can go right ahead and put it on my playlist when I pass.

      I’ve paired that song with a Scotch whiskey nosing glass filled with sand from Camusdarach Beach, sitting just out of reach of a certain curious cat who loves nothing more than knocking delicate things off of solid places. That beach is one of the stars of another work of art, Local Hero, that elicits eye rolls whenever I mention it to family and friends.

      I still have a water bottle filled with a bit of Walden Pond from a few weeks ago. I’m somewhere between boiling it for a cup of tea and pouring it in the pool, that I might have a bit of Walden around me every time I go for a swim. This might seem odd to the masses, and I respect that, but isn’t it just as odd to fixate on the lives of the Royal Family or to get a Mickey Mouse tattoo? Everyone has something that holds on to them through it all.

      A sprinkling of adventure does a soul good, but so too does the collection of delicate things that quietly surround us and makes us whole. These prove to be more important to us in our daily lives than the bucket list moments. That quiet inventory of art, music, prose and poetry lifts us up when we need them most, keeping us from drowning in the angry sea of everyday.

    • Avoiding Popular

      Google most popular restaurant in the United States and you’ll find McDonalds holding the top spot, followed by Starbucks. One might ask, what is the criteria for being called a restaurant? Apparently it’s merely serving food. If one were to ponder this a bit longer, one might then ask, what’s it mean to be popular anyway?

      Beware what you seek. Being popular is a trap set for adolescents, celebrities and politicians. Most of us grow out of it, while some remain forever trapped in the amber of opinion. It’s an empty promise that they’ll love you forever, and it’s a fickle love. The viable alternative is to go your own way. That’s where the most interesting people dance with the universe. And interesting makes for a better life than popular ever could.

    • Listen Carefully, Spend Wisely

      Colm Doherty: I just have this tremendous sense of time slipping away from me, Pádraic. And I think I need to spend the time I have left thinking and composing. Just trying not to listen to any more of the dull things that you have to say for yourself.
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Are you dying?
      Colm Doherty: No, I’m not dying.
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: But then you’ve loads of time.
      Colm Doherty: For chatting?
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Aye.
      Colm Doherty: For aimless chatting?
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Not for aimless chatting. For good, normal chatting.
      Colm Doherty: So, we’ll keep aimlessly chatting, and me life’ll keep dwindling. And in twelve years, I’ll die with nothing to show for it, bar the chats I’ve had with a limited man, is that it?
      — Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin

      There’s a darkness in this film that is borne of desperation. The characters react to the bleak reality of their lives in different ways. Colm and Pádraic’s sister, Siobhan Súilleabháin, desperately seek something beyond their relentlessly trivial existence. Pádraic sees nothing at all wrong with living out his days one exactly the same as the one before. And this raises the central question of the film, one we all faced at the height of the pandemic: what are we actually doing with our time? Is this all there is for us, or might we create something meaningful that lives beyond us before we pass? These are questions many of us wrestle with, while others contentedly choose more of the same. We each reconcile our brief dance with the world in our own way.

      These questions are timeless, even if we aren’t. Indeed, this temporary shelf life drives us to find answers. Our old friend Thoreau famously observed in the beginning pages of Walden that “the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation”. We bear the weight of these questions still, amplified by that realization that time is slipping away. Memento mori, friends. Carpe diem.

      The thing is, we shouldn’t despair at the thought. There ought to be freedom in that realization. We have an opportunity to amplify our living, and make it resonate in our time. We have the opportunity to create something that lives beyond ourselves, something that ripples. Alternatively, we might simply live. Neither choice is wrong, unless we’re quietly telling ourselves it is. The answer for each of us is to listen carefully, and spend wisely.

    • We Are Growing Volcanoes

      “Countless things that humanity acquired in earlier stages, but so feebly and embryonically that nobody could perceive this acquisition, suddenly emerge into the light much later... All of us harbor concealed gardens and plantings; and, to use another metaphor, we are, all of us, growing volcanoes that approach the hour of their eruption; but how near or distant that is, nobody knows—not even God.” — Fredrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

      “I prefer to understand the rare human beings of an age as suddenly emerging late ghosts of past cultures and their powers—as atavisms of a people and its mores: that way one really can understand a little about them. Now they seem strange, rare, extraordinary; and whoever feels these powers in himself must nurse, defend, honor, and cultivate them against another world that resists them, until he becomes either a great human being or a mad and eccentric one—or perishes early.” — Fredrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

      Most of us feel the changes within ourselves, pushing us beyond our previous boundaries. Change is uncomfortable yet necessary, for aren’t we meant to grow? Nurtured or resisted by the host, we learn over time. We are, each of us, growing volcanoes.

      The thing is, the rest of the world doesn’t like volcanoes very much. Who wants volatility and fire? Volcanoes are disruptive. Volcanoes are change agents that turn the landscape upside down. The world wants tranquility and sameness. The world wants us to remain dormant.

      Forget the world. Volcanoes are builders. They create islands where there were once only waves. They create mountains where there was once only thin air. For all the fuss at the time, it isn’t until things cool down a bit that we see just what was created. For the world to grow we volcanoes need to tap into what’s deep inside.

      The very process of becoming is inherently dynamic and disruptive. Nobody feels this more than the volcano. But we must let our creative forces flow or we’re doomed to explode. History is filled with explosive characters who made a real mess of things in their time. We aren’t here to make a mess, we’re here to build something bigger than ourselves. When we let ourselves become what we want to be, that pressure is relieved. Flow is creative expression released. The trick is to flow, not blow.

    • To Live a Life That’s Full

      “It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.” ― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

      And now the end is here
      And so I face that final curtain
      My friend I’ll make it clear
      I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain
      I’ve lived a life that’s full
      I traveled each and every highway
      And more, much more
      I did it, I did it my way
      — Frank Sinatra, My Way

      At a holiday party not very far from Times Square, New York, a few of us found ourselves in conversation with a large man with a large ego. He was rattling off his successes in life, his conquests in love, his options for the future. He would be the one singing My Way and believing it all applied to him. And maybe it does.

      I happen to love Sinatra’s song, My Way. We used to put it on the juke box at the Worthen in Lowell, Massachusetts late in the night (back when they had a juke box) and serenade each other in youthful optimism. We believed we were already living life our way and were poised to launch ourselves into life to do big My Way things. Life teaches you compromise and concession and sometimes knocks you down a peg or two. When things inevitably go awry, does this mean we aren’t living a full life?

      To live a life that’s full means to steer purposefully towards the dreams that stir our soul while adjusting our course and the set of our sails as life reminds us that we don’t live in a controlled environment. Highs and lows and the occasional nasty storm are going to have their way with us, stall our progress, pull us well off course now and then, and generally take that My Way bravado and throw it out the window. But still we may persist.

      The question to ask ourselves every day on our journey to live a life that’s full is, full of what? To be meaningful, our lives must be filled with purpose and progression, contribution and growth. We grow into a full life, not by traveling a straight line from here to there, but by navigating the hazards of living. Sometimes we choose wisely, and sometimes we find ourselves on the rocks. It is nothing to die, but surely it’s frightful not to live. The only viable choice is to patch ourselves up as best we can and keep going.

      But going where? That which seemed so very important in one stage of life seems less so later. Conversely, things we once never considered seem more important now. Life is change and adaptation. If status and a list of conquests are especially important to one person, for another it might be achieving mastery of playing an instrument or in writing. It may simply mean being there for others from now until the end.

      Sometimes, we have some say in the matter. Mostly, our lives are ours alone to live, yet we aren’t living solely for ourselves. Nobody said it would be easy, friend. But with reflection and purpose we might just find we live our days well enough that we can say with relative confidence and more than a little irony that we did indeed, despite it all, do it our way. That shouldn’t be frightening but, just maybe, a little thrilling.

    • Reacting to Outside Influences

      If we’re lucky, we place ourselves in environments that cater to our best life. We surround ourselves with trees and wildlife and safe places to walk with our thoughts. If we’re lucky, we gently place ourselves far from ambient noise and light. Traffic and leaf blowers and well-meaning spotlights shining bright beams into nothingness all grab our attention when we aren’t conditioned to ignore these things.

      Now and then I find myself in a hotel next to a highway, and listen to the steady escalation as the world awakens and drives from place-to-place. This should be unremarkable, and yet I just remarked on it simply because it’s different for me. Had I simply gotten a room on the other side of the hotel perhaps I wouldn’t have noticed at all. But since that isn’t the case, I make peace with the noise and celebrate the temporary nature of it. It’s not my noise forever, only for a couple of days.

      The thing is, we are as much a product of our environments as we are of our internal dialogue. What we experience builds us, teaches us love or hatred, tolerance or bias, acceptance or impatience. Living in a frictionless state sounds blissful to some, and like slow death to others. We choose how we react, and that reaction informs us about our future state. Funny, the way it is. Each reaction sets up the next interaction, when we react yet again in whatever way we do.

      Life is a series of reactions to outside influences. We chafe at some, embrace others, and build a life out of a chain of reactions and decisions along the way. Does this place us in a joyful state or a state of misery? And how will we handle the answer? We are what we repeatedly do, this is true, but we’re also what we decide not to do or accept as our fate in the moment. We each have the opportunity to choose wisely and to learn from previous mistakes. Like staying on the back side of the hotel, facing the highway, we learn lessons that might be applied in the future.

    • Learning of Lagom

      A work friend recently shared a word previously unfamiliar to me, lagom, which I found delightful. Simply put, lagom is a philosophy of living in balance. This article describes it perfectly:

      “Lagom translates as “just the right amount.” It means knowing when enough is enough, and trying to find balance and moderation rather than constantly grasping for more. Lagom is that feeling of contentment we all get when we have all that we need to make us comfortable. — Jonny Thomson”

      The author points out that there are two distinct meanings derived from lagom. In the first, it’s more about playing fairly with others. Don’t hoard everything for yourself. Share and be generous. In the second, lagom is our internal viewpoint or philosophy. Live in balance and moderation for a happier life. Being present and savoring what we have instead of always crying out for more.

      Most of us strive to live in balance, play fairly, consume in moderation and generally be a good person. These truths are universal. The thing is, we can live a life grounded in lagom without ever knowing the word. But now that we do, how does it feel rolling off the tongue? Awkward? New words often are. But the meaning behind the word ought to feel quite natural.