Alexandersmap

    Category: Culture

    • To Meet, to Love, to Share

      “We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.” – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

      We dance together in this moment of temporary, synchronized existence. This precious moment, brought to you by serendipity and chance. Who are we to squander it?

      While walking about looking for that famous fellow at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (NY) I chanced upon the grave of a man who died at the age of 57 in 1909. His gravestone was most unusual in that he’d had a clock, his father’s clock, placed on the face of the stone. And made a point of informing the world of this fact with the words “My father’s clock placed here at my request” just below it. And I thought, what a strange combination of time and eternity, all marching together in one plot.

      I wonder at the story of our friend Cochrane, and why that particular clock was so profoundly important to him that it be placed on his gravestone in such a way. But mostly, for me, it serves to remind me of the contrast between time, all important in this world of humanity today, and eternity, the true standard bearer of the universe. What is a clock but a story we’ve all agreed to follow?

      The older I get, and I’m not all that far from where Cochrane was when he ran out of steam, the more I think about swirling and dancing in that pool of eternity. But why wait? Why not use this precious time to dance right here? In this infinitesimal parenthesis in eternity we owe it to the universe to meet, to love and to share, while there’s still… time.

    • You Only Need to Know

      “Great minds have purpose, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.” – Washington Irving

      Washington Irving was right on the mark with this observation. Imagine if he’d lived to see people staring at their phones all day? There are so many distractions today, and never enough rising above them. So it seems anyway.

      But there are plenty of people living with purpose. People who are driven to succeed in the path they’ve chosen for themselves. The trick is to find that purpose and focus on it like your very life depended on it. For in so many ways, it does.

      You know it’s up to you, anything you can do
      And if you find a new way
      Well, you can do it today
      Well, you can make it all true
      And you can make it undo
      You see, ah-ah-ah, it’s easy, ah-ah-ah
      You only need to know
      – Cat Stevens, If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out

      You only need to know what you want to do, your purpose, and then, well, you can do it today. At least begin to do it today. And isn’t that the tricky part? To stop telling yourself stories about what you are and go write a new story. Rise above the wishes and distractions and misfortunes that life stirs in our little pot and see just how far you can take this purpose of yours.

      Injecting clever quotes and catchy tunes into your day is one thing, but finding purpose and following it are another. The point here is that there’s so much noise in our lives that we never really listen to hear what our calling is. If you aren’t listening, you aren’t focused. And you miss the purpose as life noisily passes you by.

      Listen. Focus. Find a new way (yes, you can do it today).

    • A Visit with Andrew Carnegie

      “The man who dies rich dies in disgrace.” – Andrew Carnegie

      Andrew Carnegie was born into poverty, turned steel into gold and then gave away 90% of his fortune in the last 18 years of his life. Of all the places in the world he could spend eternity, he chose the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. I wonder at such things – why here? Why not his beloved Scotland? Why not Lenox, Massachusetts, where he spent his last couple of years? The only way to know is to visit the place.

      Walking around you realize that Sleepy Hollow is a beautiful spot, and likely was peaceful once, before cars and sirens and encroaching development squeezed the solitude right out of the place. But deep in the heart of the cemetery, way up on the hill, you find it grows relatively still, even now. And this is where you’ll find Carnegie.

      Looking around at the grand celebrations of wealth displayed in death at Sleepy Hollow (You see? I mattered!) I was struck by the simple and beautiful Celtic Cross gravestone rising amongst the trees at Andrew Carnegie’s burial plot. Granite ledge behind him and a gentle sloping hill in front. Peace.

      Wealth bought him elbow room in death, and wisdom guided him to use it in the most simple, dignified way. I should think he made a point of being placed at arms length from the wealthy posers of the day. He was especially good at calling them out for what they were:

      “There is no class as pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.”

      I’m not particularly interested in being buried in one spot. I think I’d rather have my ashes scattered to the winds and sea – to be an eternal traveller in this world. But I see the value of having a place where people can visit you, as I visited Carnegie this week.

      Carnegie became larger than life when he gave away his fortune before death. That Celtic Cross serves as a compass in his absence, pointing the way for the generations who followed him. Quietly reminding us to do enough in our life that others might want to invest a bit of their own brief lives to visit you long after your gone.

      Simplicity and elbow room at Andrew Carnegie’s final resting place.

    • Visiting a Legend in Sleepy Hollow

      “To look upon its grass grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace.” – Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

      There are two Sleepy Hollow Cemeteries of note. There’s the one up in Concord, Massachusetts with it’s Author’s Ridge populated with the bones of Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott and others. And then there’s the one here on the shores of the Hudson River, where the wealthy vacated the city for one last time and tried to one-up each other in death with grand mausoleums as their final statement about how rich and powerful they were.

      Those rich folks can wait in their eternity. For there’s really only one name that matters when you talk about Sleepy Hollow, the guy who put it on the map: Washington Irving. Irving wrote two of the most familiar short stories in our cultural memory: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle.

      It’s that tale of the headless horseman that inspires people to visit his grave at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Irving is buried in the oldest section of the graveyard, with unpaved roads crisscrossing un-mowed plots with headstones protruding up in neat columns. That walk up the hill to visit his grave seemed perfect. Like walking back in time to visit those who came before us.

      I didn’t visit out of some ghoulish fascination with his short story, but for the whispers you hear at their resting place. Cemeteries generally hold the lay of the land as it was on the day they buried someone, and Irving’s resting place nestled amongst his family on a hill overlooking the Hudson River Valley seems a lovely place to spend eternity.

      Of course, Irving doesn’t need to whisper, for he wrote plenty for us to draw on. His stories will likely outlast every gravestone in Sleepy Hollow. Does that make him a legend?

    • Diner Talk

      Everyone thinks of travel as exotic, and business travel as bordering on gluttonous. Well, let me shatter those illusions. This evening I’m staying in a dumpy Hampton Inn with a privacy lock that appears to have borne the brunt of a few too many kicks to the door. If there’s anything good about seeing that, it was quickly forgetting about the mildew smell that greeted me as I opened the door. But hey, the hotel sneaks just under the maximum rate for this particular corner of the world.

      On the plus side, I got to experience the natives in the wild. By wild, I mean I went to a New York diner (open 24 hours!) and listened to the father and mother conversation at the table closest to me. Ever wonder if people talk like George and Jerry on Seinfeld when they’re at the diner? I’m here to tell you they hit the mark.

      The son (more George than Jerry) did almost all the talking, with Mom playing the dutiful part of good listener. Talk ran from the state of the New York Yankees and reminiscing about the good old days of George Steinbrenner to a new car this poor guy purchased two weeks prior that clearly didn’t measure up to expectations. But mostly it was an overall appreciation for the amazing onion rings he crunched on between Yankee and car talk. After all, this was a New York diner, and food is a big deal here. The menu runs heavy and varied, while the bar menu runs comparatively light (5 choices of mainstream beer, and a choice of 5 mixed drinks, featuring a classic hit, the White Russian). But people don’t go to diners to pound drinks, they go fill their bellies and talk about the state of the world.

      Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t go to this diner to eavesdrop, but the sheer enthusiasm expressed for the range of topics made it impossible to focus on reading the latest book on the Kindle app. Sometimes you’ve got to savor the moment as it’s presented to you. I might be a few chapters behind pace in finishing that book, but my gosh I soaked up some unadulterated New York diner talk. And realized in the process that I’ve missed these moments of travelling bliss more than I dared believe.

      By comparison, they probably thought my table pretty boring.

    • Nature’s Pilot

      “THE DEVIL. What is the use of knowing?
      DON JUAN. Why, to be able to choose the line of greatest advantage instead of yielding in the direction of the least resistance. Does a ship sail to its destination no better than a log drifts nowhither? The philosopher is Nature’s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.”
      – George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

      On the long road to knowing, admittedly some of us are late bloomers. But the path is long, even as life is frustratingly short. We humans, pre-built with an expiration date, aren’t designed to ever know it all. But in learning we might find the right path instead of wasting this precious time wandering about in trial and error.

      What is philosophy but refined knowledge about how to best live? It is knowledge acquired and contemplated on, which offers channel markers as we navigate uncertain waters in our time. This is what we draw on from humanity’s philosophers, and increasingly from ourselves as we grow.

      Growth is a choice. And choosing this line of greatest advantage offers the opportunity to steer instead of drift. In Shaw’s work, Hell is populated with the posers and drifters. To transcend this fate, we must strive for improvement:

      “I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it. That is the law of my life. That is the working within me of Life’s incessant aspiration to higher organization, wider, deeper, intenser self-consciousness, and clearer self-understanding. It was the supremacy of this purpose that reduced love for me to the mere pleasure of a moment, art for me to the mere schooling of my faculties, religion for me to a mere excuse for laziness, since it had set up a God who looked at the world and saw that it was good, against the instinct in me that looked through my eyes at the world and saw that it could be improved.”

      The truth about philosophy is that it isn’t a thought experiment, it demands active participation. To go through the motions in life is the greatest of sins, for it’s a betrayal of the self. We owe it to eternity to use our time as best we can. Our moment to steer is now.

    • The Widest Helpful Influence

      “There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.” – John Ruskin, Unto This Last

      It’s no surprise to learn that Gandhi was strongly influenced by John Ruskin when you read something like this. The ripples of Ruskin continue to reverberate in Liberal thought. By Liberal I’m not speaking of foolish political labels, but in the concept that life and liberty for everyone matter. Matter, in fact, more than the political ambitions of some autocrat or profiteer.

      Think about this: who has the loudest voice in the room? Does that person hold the most influence? It seems so, doesn’t it? But it’s generally the person that influences them who has the most power. It’s the person behind the spotlight who has the power, not the person who the light is being cast upon.

      So how do we develop the widest helpful influence over the lives of others? The obvious answers are to build wealth, a powerful network, and a base of followers. And there’s no doubt that these will reverberate the loudest. But nothing is more powerful than developing the right story and the commitment to having it heard. And that starts with us.

      Gandhi, Ruskin, Thoreau, Nietzsche, King, Emerson, Seneca, Aurelius, Carson, Oliver, Goethe, Montaigne… all are just people who developed a story and a voice. All found an audience over time. So why not us? What story will we tell?

    • Becoming Equal to the Whole

      “The problem with most people, he felt, is that they build artificial walls around subjects and ideas. The real thinker sees the connections, grasps the essence of the life force operating in every individual instance. Why should any individual stop at poetry, or find art unrelated to science, or narrow his or her intellectual interests? The mind was designed to connect things, like a loom that knits together all of the threads of a fabric. If life exists as an organic whole and cannot be separated into parts without losing a sense of the whole, then thinking should make itself equal to the whole.” – Robert Greene, describing Goethe, Mastery

      This idea of making yourself equal to the whole through exploring all available interests, normally gets you tagged as unfocused or a Jack-of-all-trades (master of none). Such expansive thinking is regarded as inefficient by many. But let’s face it, the people with a wide range of interests are able to transcend the ordinary and create things that others might not see. They become visionaries.

      We’re all just connecting the dots, trying to make sense of the world and our place in it. We are a part of that sum, and it’s okay to question what that part might be. What’s certain is that it’s our part, nobody else’s, and we ought to find a path that makes the most sense for ourselves. Everything we do, every pursuit, every relationship, every stumble along the way is a part of becoming whatever it is we’ll title the sum of our lifetime. That process of becoming is what life is all about.

      Surely, we can never really equal the whole, but we can get pretty far down the path. And that’s about all you can hope for in one lifetime, isn’t it? To pursue our diverse interests as far as we can take them, and to contribute something back to those following their own paths towards that elusive whole. That’s what Goethe did, and Robert Greene is doing. Shouldn’t we too?

    • More Than Just Names

      Sleeping beauty awakes from her dream
      With her lover’s kiss on her lips
      Your kiss was taken from me
      Now all I have is this
      – Bruce Springsteen, Countin’ On A Miracle

      Twenty years. I’m still here, just as I was that day, but everything has changed. What seemed important on the morning of September 11, 2001 disappeared from my mind when I heard Howard Stern, of all people, explaining what was happening at that moment in New York as I drove to a job that would be impossible to focus on for a long time afterwards.

      The world has changed since 9/11. We’ve all grown hardened by violence and war and angry rhetoric. It was our generation’s Pearl Harbor, and we were ready to lash out at all who would assault us so boldly. In so many ways we’re still lashing out, but much of it has turned inward. That unified country in the days after 9/11 is far from it now.

      We all felt the impact of that day, but nobody felt it more than the families and friends of those who died that day. Bruce Springsteen wrote the album The Rising shortly after 9/11. The lyrics quoted above resonate more for me than any other, representing all that was taken from so many that day. And it plays in my head now, twenty years after that day. As the bells ring in remembrance. And the names, so many names, are spoken one after another.

      During the Super Bowl in 2002, just months after 9/11, U2 performed as the halftime show. They sang MLK and Where The Streets Have No Name with a white banner scrolling the names of those lost on 9/11. I still can’t watch it without getting choked up, and I dismiss anyone who might venture to declare any other performance at a Super Bowl as more powerful or significant.

      These songs will always be my 9/11 soundtrack. They remind us that these were more than just names. They are lives interrupted.

    • Aspired Greatness

      “I believe that the first test of a great man is his humility. I don’t mean by humility, doubt of his power. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not of them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.” – John Ruskin

      If we agree, and I hope we do, that there’s a divine spark in each person, then each of us has something to offer. I know there some particularly hideous exceptions to that rule, but in general most people in this world are trying to do the right thing. The outrage we feel when some dark soul erupts in the world demonstrates our shared faith in humanity. Outrage originates out of a feeling of betrayal of shared beliefs.

      To reach greatness in the world doesn’t require the most followers or likes on YouTube or a particular net worth. Really great people have an aura of positive energy exuding from them. Really great people lift those around them up. Really great people strap themselves to the helm to steer the ship through the worst of storms. There are plenty of really great people in the world, and you’re probably thinking of a few examples right now.

      “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” – Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire

      Divinity isn’t within us, it runs through us in our chosen pursuits, our relationships, our empathy and our sacrifice. It’s a calling, a purpose, that demands us to give of ourselves so that others may feel the Divine Spirit as well. That spirit may mean something religious to you (capital D, capital S), or simply something far greater than ourselves.

      I humbly write in pursuit of the divine – not to capture it, but to channel it through my writing. I’m a long way from greatness, but I see the path grow incrementally shorter with every hour devoted to the craft. Writing hasn’t been my life’s work to this point, but it’s woven in everything I’ve ever done. A modest, often futile attempt to share the divine that I’ve encountered in this world with you. Does that make it a purpose or a pursuit? I think the latter, but I hear the call of the former.

      And shouldn’t we aspire for greatness and a way to share it?