Alexandersmap

    Category: Culture

    • Dancing in the Gap

      “Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career, you have a life.” – Cheryl Strayed

      “Cease to be a drudge, seek to be an artist.” – Mary McLeod Bethune

      “I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.” – Patti Smith

      Today is a Friday. which in the world of work means something to the majority of people making a living. Back in the day, Thursday and Friday night meant having a few drinks after work to wait out the traffic, commiserate about the grind suffered in earnest that week, and to talk of plans for the weekend.

      I’m done climbing that particular ladder. But I haven’t quite weened myself off being a drudge. But I fight and cajole myself towards some measure of artistry. Admittedly, it’s an odd place to reside. I know people who delight in their drudgery and shun artistry. I find that they live the rest of their lives in a similar fashion.

      We’ve built this social structure where taking one for the team and being a cog is celebrated. Cheryl Strayed is right to point out that your career is merely a part of your life, but it’s a big part. Aren’t we obligated to rise above the grind? We all know salespeople and engineers and accountants who spin delightful work out of what others might view as drudgery. Life is what you make of it, and so is your career. You can and should create beautiful art in your daily work.

      I’m particularly excited about a couple of projects I’m working on in my career. I’d like to weave a bit more art into each, and really, that ambition to raise the project to a level above the norm is where artists begin their work day. So what if it’s a sculpture or a PowerPoint presentation; make it beautiful.

      Our short, fragile lives are built on whimsy and chance and a bit of gumption. So why succumb to drudgery? Why not begin a notch or two above the norm and see how much you can stretch yourself? To dance in the gap between drudgery and art is to lift yourself beyond a job or a task to a place where the beautiful and noteworthy begins.

    • Magic is the Moment

      I have a bucket of magic carefully collected from places near and far. I scoop it out by the ladle and mix it together in jumbles of words with a twinkle of the eye and share it in conversations and social media and blog posts. Sometimes my efforts spark imagination and sometimes they fall into the void of indifference. It seems that sometimes I do a really good job of hiding the magic I’m trying to share. And I try to learn from these stumbles and find new ways for it to be seen.

      I’ve looked to refill the magic in Buzzards Bay and next to waterfalls, in quiet conversations, in books and in bits of poetry and lyrics, in experience and growth and learning. And yet I’ve noticed lately that my bucket of magic is running empty. But I’m unable to capture more of it for some reason. Blame it on a month of rain, or the smoky haze from wildfires thousands of miles away covering the northeast yet again, or the bad news on the COVID front about the Delta variant and the impact it’s having on the unvaccinated I care too much about.

      How can you capture magic when you’re so focused on the outrageous acts of the counterfeiters and conmen? How can you quench your own thirst when we encounter so many who drink a different kind of Kool-Aid? How can we possibly fill our buckets with magic when there’s so much misery in the world? When we share magic with people who try to refill our own bucket with judgement and hate and deception?

      Does sharing magic lead to a depletion of your own? We know this to be untrue. Just as loving leads to more love returned to you, so it is that magic magnifies magic.

      And here lies the secret: Magic lives in the place between where we once were and where we are going. You might know it by another name: now. Magic sparks in connection and our realization of the possibility of now. Magic lives in the moment. Magic is the moment.

      Instead of capturing magic and parsing it out by the ladle we would do better forming a bucket brigade to pass it from one person to another to fill the world with hope and wonder. A bucket brigade that might douse the flames of hate and division and selfishness. A steady flow of magic that could fill an ocean. Imagine that.

    • I’ve Loved Them All

      And in the end
      The love you take
      Is equal to the love you make
      – The Beatles, The End

      Which Beatles album is the greatest? The answer is different for most everyone, but it usually comes down to Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s each wrestling for number one, with a couple of votes each for The Beatles (White Album) and Abbey Road. It’s a bit like asking which is your favorite child; you simply love them all as they are.

      The Beatles are always in the background of my life. Always. Born at the height of their popularity, you simply grew up listening to them. For those of us born “too late”, we missed out on the anticipation of a new album being released, for it was all out there when we began listening in earnest. When you’ve heard the later work, your jaw doesn’t drop quite as far to the floor when you listen to Rubber Soul. But you still appreciate the creative leap forward from Help! (a great album itself).

      All these places have their moments
      With lovers and friends I still can recall
      Some are dead and some are living
      In my life I’ve loved them all
      – The Beatles, In My Life

      Which is your favorite Beatle? This tells more about you than you might think. For me it was always George Harrison. The quiet Beatle. And for all the brilliantly prolific work of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, it was George who dropped some of the best songs into the mix of “best Beatles song”, which is close to impossible to determine.

      With every mistake, we must surely be learning
      Still my guitar gently weeps
      – The Beatles, While My Guitar Gently Weeps

      If George has 3-4 songs that ought to be in the mix for the best Beatles song, Lennon and McCartney had even more individually, and collaboratively co-wrote some of the greatest songs ever written on some of the best albums ever released. So how do you choose the best? Look at their solo careers? Here too, the ratio seems about the same.

      We could spend our lifetime debating such things or just agree that it was a brilliant run for the Fab Four. For this business of picking a favorite is nonsense. In the end we love them all.

    • COVID Truth and Consequences

      “It’s often easier to discover the truth if we believe it’s there in the first place.” – Seth Godin

      Speaking with a gentleman I once worked for a dozen years ago, we quickly caught up on life since the last time we saw each other. You do that with old acquaintances, find the common anchoring points, fill the voids, and reset to the present. In filling voids I’d heard about his brother, who recently passed from complications related to COVID. He spoke of the abruptness of it all, and the hole it left in his heart. He then told me he didn’t believe in the vaccination, felt it was too dangerous to take and he was going to Las Vegas for a trade show this coming week. And my head spun.

      We all choose the information we consume. We all get to decide what’s right for us. The problem we have today is there’s more conflicting information available to choose from than at any point in our history. And we’re choking on it. And it’s killing us.

      There’s no time for all of this. If the truth is that the virus is far deadlier than the vaccine, and far deadlier for those who are unvaccinated, then we have no time to debate ad infinitum whether the vetting process was long enough for the vaccinations. The barbarians are at the gate, throw up the damned defenses. Will there be long term health issues for those who opted to vaccinate? Highly unlikely, but possible. Is the Delta variant accelerating through the unvaccinated at alarming rates? Definitely, and highly probable.

      The truth is out there, but seemingly harder to reach consensus on than ever before. And maybe this is our fate, to stall and debate and wait for the world to fall in line with our beliefs. Knowing all along that it doesn’t really work that way.

    • Along the Way and Back Again

      “Whatever takes you to a place is less important than what you find when you get there.” – Rolf Potts

      Do you feel the pull of certain places? I do, and quite frequently. Local and faraway places call to me, even as I stay busy in the garden and with small projects in the home. It’s the venturing forth to the unknown that I miss in these moments. What have you not been experiencing in your bubble that could be experienced by going there? That’s the draw of travel. Discovering the previously unknown bits of the world and in the process finding something in yourself that you didn’t know was missing.

      Instagram, YouTube and other media bring the unknown to us every day, without leaving your chair. But this is the highlight reel stuff that just scratches the surface on what’s really happening in the world. There’s nothing immersive about a selfie in front of the Eiffel Tower, but it offers a check on a box we all feel compelled to get to one day. The interesting part of that moment is what you do next; rush off to check the next bucket list item or immerse yourself in the nooks and crannies of a place?

      Over the winter I spent many days on snowshoes walking through the conservation land in the town I live in. I felt and saw things that I’d never encountered before in the 25 years I’ve lived in this town. And when walking the narrow streets in town, I’ve experienced something similar walking the opposite route from what I’d normally walk. And I recognize in those moments that you don’t have to go very far to discover what you’ve been missing out on, you just have to change your perspective.

      Perspective can only be changed by altering your viewpoint. Seeing your place in the world in a different way than you’ve always seen it. And that requires something more than checking a box, it requires seeing what you’ve been missing along the way. And understanding what’s changed in you when you’re back again.

    • Thinking How I’ll Feel When I Find…

      I deal in dreamers
      And telephone screamers
      Lately I wonder what I do it for
      If l had my way
      I’d just walk out those doors
      And wander
      Down the Champs Elysees
      Going cafe to cabaret
      Thinking how I’ll feel when I find
      That very good friend of mine
      I was a free man in Paris
      I felt unfettered and alive
      Nobody was calling me up for favors
      No one’s future to decide
      You know I’d go back there tomorrow
      But for the work I’ve taken on
      Stoking the star maker machinery
      Behind the popular song.
      – Joni Mitchell, Free Man In Paris

      I hear a big song like this one a bit differently today than I did as a kid. Then I just heard the bigness of the song, the sonic beauty akin to a wall of sound production. Joni at her highest point in her career with one of the great side ones (back when side one mattered a lot). Now my attention locks onto the freedom of going cafe to cabaret and running into friends along the way, which seems like a grand way to spin about in Paris. And so different from the day-to-day grind of making a living and seeing things through. And maybe that’s why it was so popular, more than the inside look at David Geffen from the perspective of one of his biggest stars and closest friends.

      At its root the song is a longing to break free from that daily grind, whatever ours happens to be, and to live that carefree life in lovely places. And that, friends, is the promised land. And doesn’t require a flight to Paris, as lovely as that might be for each of us. Being unfettered and alive is a state of mind achieved just as easily hiking the spine between bald mountain peaks or walking a quiet beach offseason as it is being part of the cafe and cabaret scene in the City of Lights.

      And the question is, how much is enough? When you’ve earned enough to not be homeless or hungry, what more do you need? The restlessness in this song is the thing that’s so identifiable for anyone who climbs those corporate rungs, thinking about how they’ll feel when they find… whatever it is they think is at that next level of accomplishment. That next status symbol that shows everyone that they’ve really arrived this time.

      Last year Geffen posted a controversial Instagram photo of his stunning yacht Rising Sun in the Grenadines with the sun setting behind as COVID raged and he “self-isolated”. You can see the beauty and smugness in that photo, all at once. As I understand it, that yacht takes 70,000 gallons of fuel and who knows how much in provisions. I wonder if he feels like he’s finally found whatever it was he was looking for?

      How much is enough? Most of us will never have a comparable yacht or a private island or a ticket on a luxurious flight into space with a billionaire. I’m not condemning those who chase for more, but I don’t particularly want that for myself. Because being unfettered and alive isn’t about accumulation or status, it’s about being happy with where you are and what you’re doing in this moment.

      Think how that might feel.

    • More to See for You and Me

      “From here to Venezuela
      There’s nothing more to see
      Than a hundred thousand islands
      Flung like jewels upon the sea
      For you and me”
      – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, The Lee Shore

      I heard about a former coworker, a guy with Israeli good looks and intense blue eyes that no doubt closed many negotiations of the heart, who succumbed to COVID after months of treatment. Younger than me, far more energy with a passion for family, travel and technology, in that order. A whirlwind of energy and intellect and movement. Quietly receding from life in a hospital bed in Miami.

      Which once again reminds me that life is so very brief, and the years of fitness and energy are even shorter. So what do we do with our days? Fritter it all away in spreadsheets and conference calls? Watch other people live their lives on social media? Or do something with our own?

      We miss too many opportunities to dance with the forests and the waves and the sky for this business of living. This busyness of living. But is it really living or just staying busy? The game of deferred living is a tragic and fatal one indeed.

      My friend is a reminder of what the stakes are, what the stakes have been, and why we changed everything. And now? Now we are living in the time of the haves and the have nots. Are you vaccinated or not? If you are, let’s celebrate our faith in science and each other and dance with the world.

      There’s so very much more to do in this short life. A hundred thousand islands are just waiting for you and me. Out there, just beyond the horizon. Waiting for us to weigh anchor and go to them. Let’s go out and meet the world.

    • Remember, and Live Well

      we will be remembered
      in the way others still live,
      and still live on, in our love.
      – David Whyte, Everlasting

      There’s a certain look in the eye of the next generation, both uncertain and certain at the same time. A look that says “I’ve got this” that convinces you that yes indeed, they really can fly on their own. And I wonder at the look I give back, and hope that it reflects their certainty and more than a little love and hope for their future out there in the world.

      It’s buried, but I feel it still at moments like the moment I read the lines of Whyte’s poem above. Moments when I know the laugh and the look and hear the clever retort and hope that I measure up to what you wanted for me in that moment when I flew myself. I’m a work in progress, as we all are, and smile at the stumbles even as I wish you’d seen more from me in your time.

      The act of remembering often takes a back seat to the act of living. Because it’s living that matters today. But it’s in remembering that we bring the best of ourselves forward in the moment. Remembering is our instruction manual for living.

      What memories are we building in those we’ll one day leave behind? How will we ripple through them to those they touch in our absence? It’s a fair ask, and a challenge of sorts; to get it right. To leave a warm mark but never a sting. To make memories that glow and resonate, inform and build.

      We are touchstones in the lives of people past and present. So love in this moment. Remember, and live well.

    • Killing Phantoms

      “I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self-defense. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. For as I found, directly I put pen to paper, you cannot review even a novel without having a mind of your own, without expressing what you think to be the truth about human relations, morality, sex. And all these questions, according to the Angel of the House, cannot be dealt with freely and openly by women; they must charm, they must conciliate, they must—to put it bluntly—tell lies if they are to succeed. Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up the ink pot and flung it at her. She died hard. Her fictitious nature was of great assistance to her. It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. She was always creeping back when I thought I had despatched her.” – Virginia Woolf

      Storytelling is the most human of arts, the one skill that makes the salesperson or the public speaker excel, that makes our living history come alive. And there’s no doubt that Woolf was a great storyteller when you read this excerpt from a speech she gave in 1931. It came to my attention because of one line, the one I’ve bolded, that became a famous quote.

      And what a quote! We all fight our phantoms. Voices in our heads that gently tell us that maybe we should do something less risky, less audacious. Personally, I’m fighting a lazy sloth that keeps whispering in my ear that it’s okay to skip a workout today and eat some cheese. I hate that bastard, but he’s just so persuasive.

      If we agree that storytelling is an art, then what of the stories we tell ourselves? Myths about how the world is and works. We tell ourselves we don’t have time to work out or reasons why we aren’t going after a position we desire or whatever, really, that the voice says is out of reach for someone like us. And we form ideas about how the world works, and the rules that are in place that we all must follow. Which is why we either chafe or become fascinated with those who live outside the boundaries we put ourselves within.

      “I cannot overemphasize enough how much everything is made up and there are no rules.”
      – Tiago Forte

      A statement like Forte’s jumps out at you for the boldness of his words. But don’t we see the truth in it even as we feel the resistance within? For if the way we see the world and our place in it is all made up, what comes next? Chaos?

      “Myths… are stronger than anyone could have imagined. When the Agricultural Revolution opened opportunities for the creation of crowded cities and mighty empires, people invented stories about great gods, motherlands and joint stock companies to provide the needed social links. While human evolution was crawling at its usual snail’s pace, the human imagination was building astounding networks of mass cooperation, unlike any other ever seen on earth.” – Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

      The perception of order in a chaotic world comes from the stories we all agree on. We agree to live together in peace, to pay our bills, to not cut in line, to do our part, to vote and get married and raise children to be good citizens so that the next generation is just a little bit better off than we might be. This is the mass cooperation that Harari speaks of, all myths commonly subscribed to.

      Which is why we become outraged when someone breaks the rules. December 7th, September 11th or January 6th become dates forever ingrained in our minds because the rules of social order were so clearly broken. I can feel the outrage I felt on September 11th or January 6th even as I write this. But outrage doesn’t solve anything, clear thinking does. Stimulus and response, as Viktor Frankl so often reminds us.

      “Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you’re living in an illusion. There’s something seriously wrong with you. You’re not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? “He is to blame, she is to blame. She’s got to change.” No! The world’s all right. The one who has to change is you.”
      – Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      We can’t change the world, but we can change how we feel about the world. We can take meaningful action in our own lives to pivot away from outrage and towards clear thinking. I can ignore the cheese-pushing troll that lives in my head and just go work out. We can see clearly which perceived rules are holding us back from making progress in our own lives and kill those phantoms once and for all.

      It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality. But reality is what you make of it. Once you get past those phantoms.

    • Marching Boldly Down the Path of Better

      There’s a battle happening in the background within each of us. A battle of habits if you will, each with a stake in your game, each working to override the other and dominate the conversation. And the stakes are high.

      We all have bad habits. Habits of consumption that lead us astray. Snacking too much. Relying on relationships for positive feedback instead of diving deep into our own soul. Bing watching and media scrolling and gossiping about so-and-so. Habits of consumption that leave us overweight and bloated on garbage.

      Good god, the garbage! Garbage of empty calories that soften and marinate us, transforming lithe into listlessness. Garbage of bitter political or conspiracy theories or social commentary that calcifies brain cells and transforms good people into trolls. Garbage of money chasing and comparing your stuff to the stuff others have. If you are what you eat what the hell are we doing to ourselves?

      Thankfully, we also have good habits. Habits of productivity that move us a step forward in our lives, marching boldly down the path of better. Eating in moderation and pulling the right dietary levers. Exercise and sweat equity and earning that next thing you put in your mouth.

      Habits that lead us towards something bigger than ourselves. Community building and nest egg accumulating and corporate ladder climbing. Habits of exploration and understanding. Habits of creation; of projects and writing and events and enterprise. Putting it and yourself out there in and for the world. For exploration is seeking more, and creation is contribution.

      So what do you lean into? What dominates the conversation in your own life? Those habits of consumption are loud talkers and want to take over your life. Habits of productivity work on you in subtle ways, pointing towards a better tomorrow with work today. That deferral sometimes makes all the difference, swaying us to the dark side of just this once.

      The trick is knowing which path you’re on. Where are you going anyway? Immediate gratification is just a little nibble or scroll away. But away from what? We’re all moving towards something, which naturally means we’re also moving away from something. What will it be for you and me? Let’s make it meaningful. March boldly down the path of better and see where it takes you.