Alexandersmap

    Category: Culture

    • Living a Bit More Like Thich Nhat Hanh

      “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle”. — Thich Nhat Hanh

      When Thich Nhat Hanh passed away in January, I didn’t treat it like a celebrity passing, I didn’t mention it at all, really. I let the moment pass with a virtual bow. He may have passed from this world, but he’ll live on as Thoreau or Mary Oliver or Marcus Aurelius lives on. Such is the power of the written word.

      “I promise myself that I will enjoy every minute of the day that is given me to live.”

      We live in a contentious, angry world. And yet, you and I aren’t angry or contentious. You and I are living a contemplative life, a celebratory life. We embrace every moment for all that it implies. We walk through this world like our feet are kissing the earth, gently embracing our time here. We fight the urge to amplify hatefulness, and offer love instead.

      “Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.”

      If we pick up anything from Thich Nhat Hanh, it ought to be this hyper-awareness of each moment for all that it offers to us. We will surely slip back into the hectic and annoyed frenzy of our purposeful action bouncing up against an indifferent world, for life isn’t just meditation and sipping tea, but his wisdom offers an opportunity to recenter ourselves. A chance in the madness to pause, breath in and celebrate the miracle of that particular heartbeat.

      “My actions are my only true belongings.”

      Sure, celebrating each moment of aliveness is lovely, but what are we offering back to the world for our being here? What is our contribution? This is where East meets West, for we all want to bring something to the dance, don’t we? The very question means we don’t see the forest for the trees. Our lives should be a positive vibration that tickles the fancy of those we touch, that inspires a smile for the encounter. Maybe that’s our ripple.

    • Tom Brady in Five Quotes

      What do you do with consistent excellence? How do you process it? How do the average masses view the brilliant contribution of the few? Many dismiss it as trickery, cheating, luck, or chance. This minimizes the painful gap of comparison. For others, recognizing that brilliance leads to hate for what it brings: defeat and frustration. Excellence is a mirror, and when we look at it we see our own shortcomings.

      Tom Brady retired. Why is that a surprise? He’s 45 as I write this, won 7 Super Bowl rings for two teams and long ago became the G.O.A.T. for those who celebrate the level of excellence he’s reached. Those who would knock him down a notch or two for perceived slights or for the extreme discipline he lives by grudgingly note the results. This isn’t a guy who does things half-assed.

      When you live in New England, and you’ve lived through the really, really dark days of professional sports in New England when every team was losing in heartbreaking fashion every year from 1987 until 2001, well, you recognize the difference that one or two people can make in a game, or on a team, or in a region. Tom Brady was a sparkplug for New England, and winning became contagious. It became expected. Because the standard was raised, and it remains higher than it was before he rose up to lead that first Super Bowl win in the aftermath of 9/11 for a team called Patriots.

      There are a million Tom Brady quotes out there. I mean, the guy played Pro Football for 22 years; you accumulate a lot of quotes in all that time! But here are five that I found most enlightening about the man. Thanks Tom, it’s been fun seeing excellence on display for so many years:

      “It’s never come easy for me. I don’t think my mind allows me to rest ever. I have, I think, a chip on my shoulder, and some deep scars that I don’t think were healed.”

      “A lot of times I find that people who are blessed with the most talent don’t ever develop that attitude, and the ones who aren’t blessed in that way are the most competitive and have the biggest heart.”

      “I think I have a certain respect for people, you know. And I guess a lot of times I expect that respect to go both ways.”

      “If you waste your time and energy on things that don’t matter in the outcome of the game, then when you get to the game you’re not going to give your teammates the best that you have to offer.”

      “I knew I became a professional when I stop paying attention to what time it was.”

    • Catching Up & Bridging Gaps

      The idea of catching up is tantalizing. I use this phrase often in two contexts; catching up with someone I haven’t spoken with in some time, and catching up on work that’s piled up in my work or personal ambition buckets. This week I did a fair amount of catching up in both contexts. But we never really catch up, do we? We mostly just shrink the gap between people, workload or expectations before we inevitably see the gap widen again. We’re all just so… busy.

      The act of getting reacquainted, of meeting to see how someone’s been, what’s up with the family, how so-and-so’s doing, is a lovely form of catching up. There’s so much loneliness and division in the world today, fueled by the pandemic and political inclination, and the general categorization of people into one camp or another. It should be so easy to just put it all aside and listen to each other. Many people just don’t want to deal with conflict or focus on differences of opinion, and so we just don’t communicate at all.

      But there’s joy in bridging the gap. Finding common ground and dancing in the light of understanding and acceptance. When we close that gap we draw closer together, and feel the humanity of another. When we ghost each other, block people on social media, and gossip about what the other is doing the gap widens. I’ve shrunk from a few people over the last several years, finding their opinions repulsive. Yet I know there’s still common ground should we ever sit down to catch up. We go on with our lives without those people in it, but feel the void where the relationship calved. Stack up enough of these and it’s death by a thousand cuts. No wonder people are lonely and stressed out.

      At least there’s work to take our minds off the world, right? But even here the gap between what needs to be done and what we can possibly accomplish feels impossibly large. We catch up on one thing and see the gap widen in another. Supply chain issues, labor shortages, trust issues… it’s enough to make you throw your hands up in the air and buy a boat or camper to get out of Dodge. We work until the wheels come off and then teeter trying to balance on what’s left.

      The reality is we’ll never quite catch up, and that’s okay. We decide where to close gaps and where to let things stay adrift. When the time is right–if the time is ever right–we’ll come back to that which we’ve neglected and, well, catch up once again.

    • Trivia Night

      You might say it was doubling down on trivia. A local pub hosts a trivia night contest in Rhode Island. I met family there to participate. I’ve done this before, but the crowd seemed bigger this time, as if people are eager to get out in the world again, variants be damned. I understood all too well. Vaccinated, boosted, and with a mild case of COVID during the holidays (when it became particularly trendy), I felt super immune and ready to get around people again. The couple hacking away at the table next to mine made me wonder if I was pushing my luck. We’ve all become hyper-aware of other people’s sniffles, haven’t we?

      As the questions rolled out, one-by-one, it was clear we could have used another ringer or two in the group. Trivia contests are part knowing the right answer, and part getting the right questions in a series that you know the answers to. The last ingredient to success is having the courage to go big when you have an opportunity to. The last time we played trivia we were leading (!) with one final question to answer. We bet conservatively and other groups overtook us in the end, even though we all got the question right. Such is the nature of trivia contests.

      In the corner of the pub, quietly playing while we all participated in our game of trivia, Jeopardy! was playing on a big screen television. If you haven’t been keeping track, or are from another country that doesn’t broadcast it, Amy Schneider was on a 40-game winning streak, becoming a millionaire in the process. But lately she’s been missing the final Jeopardy! question. It hasn’t been a problem because she’s been building such a lead, but in this game, in front of all these trivia folks, the game was a toss-up going into the final question with Schneider and another contestant. So it would literally come down to who answered correctly and who bet what.

      As you might imagine, in a room full of trivia people, this quickly captured the attention of the entire room. Our own trivia game paused as the final Jeopardy! question was answered, and one-by-one the contestants answers were revealed. The challenger, just behind in money, had the right answer and bet big enough to take the lead. A hush came over the room as Schneider’s answer was revealed–wrong answer! The room erupted in astonishment, the queen dethroned! This is the world of trivia geeks, treating this moment like the Super Bowl or World Cup final. And why not celebrate general knowledge? The world could use a few more educated people agreeing on facts.

      As the buzz in the room calmed, we refocused on our own trivia game. Questions weren’t lining up in our favor, and we finished in the middle of the pack. Such is the way. You get the questions you get, and you go big or you go home.

    • Stop Gulping Life Like a Power Lunch and Savor It

      “What else is going on right this minute while ground water creeps under my feet? The galaxy is careening in a slow, muffled widening. If a million solar systems are born every hour, then surely hundreds burst into being as I shift my weight to the other elbow. The sun’s surface is now exploding; other stars implode and vanish, heavy and black, out of sight. Meteorites are arcing to earth invisibly all day long. On the planet the winds are blowing: the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades. Somewhere, someone under full sail is becalmed, in the horse latitudes, in the doldrums; in the northland, a trapper is maddened, crazed, by the eerie scent of the chinook, the sweater, a wind that can melt two feet of snow in a day. The pampero blows, and the tramontane, and the Boro, sirocco, levanter, mistral. Lick a finger: feel the now.” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      The universe swirls about madly all around us, and we, living in our small circle of sensory awareness, trust in it blindly. When you feel the breeze on your skin, do you wonder where it’s calling to you from? Do you ever look up at the stars and wonder at the infinity in between each? So many feel trapped in their human construct, as if any of our petty human thoughts matters to the universe. What is a construct but a story we tell ourselves? A fabrication of the moment?

      Our awareness of this moment is a celebration of being alive. If that sounds rather New Age crazy, well, I get that. That’s the frenzied mind talking, the part of us that thinks we don’t have time for such mad thoughts. We have things to do, places to be, ideas to bring to the table, transactions to make… Sure. But what else do we have but this instant with infinity lurking all around us?

      So why then do we grind away in jobs, sheltered from the elements, sipping coffee to power through another day? Why do anything disciplined and proactive at all when the universe stares back with blank ambivalence? Because our small circle reverberates. We touch others through our deliberate engagement with the world. Steve Jobs might have thought he was putting a dent in the universe, but really it was a ripple through humanity. Our ripple might not change an industry, but it can reverberate in the now. We’re here to be in the mix: a part of each other’s lives as we each sort out the implications of all that swirls around us.

      Be who you are. Become who you might be. But maybe just savor a bit more. Why do we gulp life down like a power lunch? Pause between the big gulps of living and taste the moment. Feel the now.

    • Lending an Ear

      Every tree, every growing thing as it grows,
      says this truth, You harvest what you sow.
      With life as short as a half-taken breath,
      do not plant anything but love.
      — Rumi, Every Tree

      I had lunch with a man of Ukrainian descent. He spoke with love for his old home, before he came to America, before he raised his family and built his life removed from his origins. We spoke about his country, about what might come to be. He spoke about bringing his daughter there for summer vacation. “I suppose we’ll have to put that off a year.” He said.

      We dance along in life, oblivious to the stoic pain of those around us. It’s easy to get wrapped around the pole with our own problems, for they nag at us incessantly if we let them run free. No doubt, we all ought to get our own houses in order. But the easiest way to forget about ourselves is to focus on others. To lend an ear. To help those in need. We all need a bit more love and understanding, don’t you think?

      The world keeps tapping me on the shoulder, asking me to listen. For a long time I wouldn’t give it the time of day, so absorbed in my own life as I was. But now I hear it’s cry for help.

    • For All That Is Life

      “You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti

      Having a nightcap with friends at a clever book and bar establishment in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, my attention drifted to stacks of books all around me, chess boards and kitschy furniture from another era. This was my kind of place, and one I made note to wander around in again in daylight, when I wasn’t compelled to be polite and focused on our conversation, instead of just drifting off into this newly discovered world of wonder so tantalizingly close. Such is the nature of books—they pull you in when you least expect it.

      It’s not just books. How could it be, really? All that is life is around us, nudging us to pay attention, to immerse ourselves in the moment, to listen and understand, to act and to be a part of, to share and empty ourselves to others that we might fill ourselves up again with new and wonderful bits. Like a tide flowing in and out of a bay, our accumulation and sharing of knowledge keeps our mind fresh and alive.

      We spend a lifetime trying to understand what’s all around us, and yearning for all that ever could be. We are the audience in our own life, but also an active participant in the play. None of this is all that it could ever be, but isn’t it wonderful just the same?

    • Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow

      We treat our plans as though they are a lasso, thrown from the present around the future, in order to bring it under our command. But all a plan is—all it could ever possibly be—is a present-moment statement of intent. It’s an expression of your current thoughts about how you’d ideally like to deploy your modest influence over the future. The future, of course, is under no obligation to comply. — Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

      Yesterday I played chess for two hours with my brother, him shaking and physically beaten up from radiation treatments, but sharp-witted and sarcastic as ever, with his gallows humor in heavy use. I chipped away with bold chess moves that almost sunk me a few times before I ended up winning in the end. I don’t take it easy on him when it comes to chess, nor would he expect that from me. He’s won his fair share. Ultimately we were both grateful to play against a fellow human instead of the cold comfort of mouse clicks and a glaring computer screen. Chess is amongst the most beautiful games life has to offer—why do we play it so infrequently?

      Today I’d contemplated a long hike on a 4000 footer, but in the end I’m opting for dinner with friends to celebrate a birthday. I suppose I could have done both, but we prioritize what we will in our brief dance under the stars. The friends will be gone soon, sailing away in the fall to faraway places. Lasso time with them while you can, I think, and stop worrying about what you can’t do. We miss so much in our lifetimes—how many shooting stars did I miss by not gazing upward a beat longer? How many frozen ice sculptures melt away without my ever seeing them? We can’t worry about such things, we can only do what we might in the present moment. And try again in the next should we arrive there.

      Tomorrow may just arrive, and we ought to make our plans and live in hope that it all comes together. We have to place a little faith in a future we might not see, don’t we? Life is a collection of memories of moments gone by, but can only be lived now, with an eye towards then. All that matters is living with intent, and embracing the good while managing the rest. I intend to find a little magic in the world, to keep sending sparks of light wherever and whenever the opportunity presents itself, and celebrate it in my own modest way. Maybe that’s enough.

    • Dancing with the Gloriously Possible

      “The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short. But that isn’t a reason for unremitting despair, or for living in an anxiety-fueled panic about making the most of your limited time. It’s a cause for relief. You get to give up on something that was always impossible—the quest to become the optimized, infinitely capable, emotionally invincible, fully independent person you’re officially supposed to be. Then you get to roll up your sleeves and start work on what’s gloriously possible instead.” — Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

      Every now and then you read a book that becomes an instant frame of reference for how you see the world and your place in it for the rest of your days. Walden, Awareness, Meditations, and Atomic Habits are some of the books that changed me profoundly. I can comfortably place Four Thousand Weeks on that short list. This is a mesmerizingly insightful look at the fragile dance we’re all in the middle of, and how we think and react to our realization that life is impossibly short. It reinforces many of the things I’ve written about in this blog, and turned a few working theories upside down and dumped them on the scrapheap. It’s a book I’ll be processing for awhile.

      “Your experience of being alive consists of nothing other than the sum of everything to which you pay attention. At the end of your life, looking back, whatever compelled your attention from moment to moment is simply what your life will have been. So when you pay attention to something you don’t especially value, it’s not an exaggeration to say that you’re paying with your life... what we think of as “distractions” aren’t the ultimate cause of our being distracted. They’re just the places we go to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitation.“

      Confronting our limitation, and how we process that by either living in the moment or distracting ourselves with ritual, busyness, by deferring to the future (all the way to “afterlife”) or skimming along in the shallow pond of the unimportant are all very human reactions to figuring out what the hell to do with this short time before we rejoin infinity. Heady stuff, stuff that demands contemplation. But it can be overwhelming to think about such things. Who wants to be the Debbie Downer in their own life party?

      Burkeman points to the possibility of accepting life for the brief dance it is so you can focus on what you can and cannot achieve. Decide what you’ll focus on, and importantly, what you’ll let fall away. We can’t excel in everything, so why burden ourselves with those things on our to-do list? We know what’s most important already. Be honest with yourself about what is going to fall off and celebrate the unburdening of releasing it for our essential contribution.

      All those books listed above, in one way or another all come down to the idea of making the most of our short time. Since we all know the ship is sinking from the moment we reach awareness, shouldn’t we be conscious about how we react to it? Isn’t it liberating, in a way, to release the burden of the shortness of time and seize this moment? Think about the Titanic in her last moments —would you rather be in the band playing tunes to the end or the fool who jumps into the icy water screaming in denial to the last? Even the people who made it to the life boats gained but a short time more. I’d like to think they used it well.

      And so should we! Since we all meet our fate in the end, shouldn’t we make the most of our brief lives? What will you do with this focused time?

    • Living Like Sidney Poitier

      I had no way of knowing that there was madness in what I was trying to do.” — Sidney Poitier

      That quote was from an interview that Sidney Poitier did with Lesley Stahl in 2013 that was broadcast a day or so after his passing last week. He reveals the bold, you might say reckless, leap into acting for a man with a strong Bahamian accent who couldn’t read at the time. It would telegraph the boldness and courage with which he would live his life and manage his career.

      I didn’t want to let too much time pass between the passing of Sidney Poitier and my writing about him. He was a favorite actor, not because I’ve seen every movie that he’s done (I’ve only seen three) or because I was star struck by his screen presence, but because of the elegant, dignified way that he lived his life. There’s a lesson there for all of us.

      “I did not go into the film business to be symbolized as someone else’s vision of me. If the screen does not make room for me in the structure of their screenplay, I’d step back. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it… I live by a certain code. I have to have a certain amount of decency in my behavior or pattern. I have to have that.”

      At the end of the interview, Lesley Stahl was asking Poitier about a book he’d just written. His words were equally revealing about how he identified himself. As someone who chips away at this writing thing, I found his words compelling and relatable:

      Poitier: “I was not intending to make an impression. I was finding release for myself within myself. I was looking for who I am at this point in my life.”
      Stahl: “Did you find out?”
      Poitier: “Somewhat, yeah.”
      Stahl: “Who are you?“
      Poitier: “I’m a good person”

      During this interview he reminded me, in his quietly elegant way, of my favorite Navy pilot, my step-father who passed away last year. Maybe that’s why I found him such a compelling guy. I think it was more a passing similarity based on the interview. More to the point, it came down to his decision to live his life by a code of honor, similar to what a Navy pilot might have, and the way that he exemplified it to the end.

      Shouldn’t we all aspire to live our lives in this way?