Alexandersmap

    Category: Culture

    • RIP Brian Wilson

      She makes me come alive
      And makes me wanna drive
      When she says “Don’t worry baby”
      Don’t worry baby
      Don’t worry baby
      Everything will turn out alright
      — The Beach Boys, Don’t Worry Baby

      Another giant passed away this week. Brian Wilson was the genius behind The Beach Boys and by all accounts a beautiful soul. He raised the bar on popular music, making other giants like The Beatles take notice and up the ante. We’ve all benefited from Brian Wilson’s prolific contribution to music and culture, directly as a soundtrack to our own lives and indirectly as an influence on other artists. How different life would have sounded without him.

      I didn’t play a lot of Beach Boys on my playlists, not because I didn’t like many of their songs, but because I felt I was always hearing them played somewhere so why bother? But a few songs were in frequent rotation, beginning with Don’t Worry Baby, then rolling into the bouncy ride of Sloop John B (those lyrics aren’t as peppy as the music!), the thrill of Good Vibrations, the sonic mind trip of God Only Knows and the harmonious confession of In My Room. These were all big hits, of course, but didn’t it feel like everything they did turned into a hit?

      Losing Brian Wilson and Sly Stone in the same week… goodness. We know that these things happen in threes. Let’s hope this week is an exception to that rule.

    • Where We Choose to Linger

      Bermuda is a great place to visit but an expensive place to live. Everyone wants a piece of paradise, and an island only has so much paradise to divide up. Still, not every place can simply be an escape for the uber rich. Who keeps things going if everyone is wealthy and secluded? Teachers and firefighters and nurses need to call the place home too, if you’re going to have anything but gated mansions anyway. Bermuda seems to have that under control, but the locals say it’s getting harder by the day. Time will tell.

      Even nomads want to root themselves in a place now and then. That place ought to be in close proximity to ample supplies of the essential things: food and water, shelter, healthcare and a community one can immerse themselves into now and then. Some might add in a few other essentials like the opportunity to make a viable income and a thriving cultural scene. Maybe throw in a decent book store with a great cafe. Simple, right?

      The thing about Bermuda that jumps out at me isn’t the history or beautiful vistas or fish sandwiches, it’s the warmth and generous spirit of the people who live there. They’re all just so friendly. Coming from a place where that isn’t always the case, it feels pretty welcoming. And who wouldn’t want to linger in a place like that?

      Fixer-upper

    • A Curmudgeon Meets Wonder

      “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” — Walt Disney

      I visited Disneyland yesterday. Admittedly, I’m a reluctant visitor to all places Disney, yet I’ve never been to one of their resorts and had a bad time. Sure, there are plenty of reasons to avoid ever going to Disney again, but life is what we make of it, and dammit if they don’t force a smile on even the most curmudgeonly of visitors. If that curmudgeon was me, he had more fun than he expected to.

      I’m not going to make this a travel blog about Disneyland, but let me tell you there were a few jaw-dropping moments for me. Everyone should experience the Incredicoaster and Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at least once in their lives. For all my own resistance to that Disney magic stuff, there’s no denying the thrill of a great roller coaster or the wonder of a stunningly immersive experience. When we encounter excellence in this world in any form, our natural reaction is wonder.

      “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.” — Walt Disney

      And that brings us back to the bold act of doing something extraordinary in our time. What audacious things stir in our mind, crying for attention? What is our work in progress, continuing to grow and change shape as our vision of what is possible changes? We may take inspiration from the boldness of a Walt Disney and be bold today with our own vision, if only to discover what’s possible if only we were to finally take action.

    • Illusions of Permanence

      Each of us has a reckoning with illusions of permanence. Things come and go from our lives with regularity. This is most obvious when we live in a place that faces a building boom. The field down the street or the woods that line the road are leveled for a development. The old farmhouse and barn are torn down and a building pops up in its place. The quiet country road is now lined with cars commuting through, and soon the road is widened and strung with traffic lights. And we mourn what was lost.

      It’s similar when a friend we’ve bonded with becomes radically different from us politically. What we believed to be forever turned out to be nothing but an illusion of permanence. The person I thought you were is not who you turned out to be, and you think the same of me. Yet, like that field and stand of trees on that quiet country road, we each have memories of what one was. We each miss the person we thought the other was.

      A plot of land might be viewed as an investment in the future of the community, but some folks feel that investment is conservation land and some think it’s a new hospital, grocery store and housing development. Both have value for a community to thrive, and both ought to be fought for. But we ought to consider carefully what will be forever lost when completing the transaction to make the change.

      Some relationships are better as transactional. We can put aside our differences and work side-by-side with a teammate or a coworker, focused on the common goal. And we can nurture a deep bond built on common beliefs and a feeling that each person in the relationship is integral to the other. Consider the circle of trust and who we might want within it, and who should remain outside. Often it comes down to who will grow with us and who will erode the essence of who we are for want of some company. We should beware the company we keep, but when the right company is found invest deeply in keeping it.

      The thing is, nothing is permanent, but some things have staying power. Everything will disappear one day, but we have agency in keeping that stand of trees or that person we care about in our lives. Or we can use that agency to drift away to do other things that feel important to us, expecting that what we remembered will still be there for us when we return. When we see the fragility of everything on our journey, we begin to prioritize the things that have staying power simply because we take the time to make them so. Ultimately, our legacy is built on what we took the time to care for beyond ourselves.

    • Place

      Lately place matters a great deal. To achieve a sense of place we must feel like we are present in it—engaged, aware, interactive. Place is memory carried into the present. Like an old favorite pair of jeans that fit comfortably when we wear them.

      Lately I feel out of place. The cynicism, the ambivalence towards others, it’s all on the surface now. Perhaps it was always there and I didn’t see it in my blind optimism for people getting it right in the end. The ugly truth is there for all to see now. What’s hiding in plain sight is the recoil. The pendulum will swing again in time. Perhaps we’ll be here to see it.

      We may say goodbye to old beliefs about who we are, we may quietly move away from people who embrace what we don’t embrace, and we may find a place uniquely ours. Or we can sit in place wishing things were different. Active participation building the place we want to live our days is our only way forward.

      Place isn’t passive, it’s dynamic and action-oriented. To reach place we must go there and grab hold of it. We must carve something out of it as our own. Especially when things feel out of place, we must pull it together and keep going. Place is dynamic, after all, and so are we.

    • Beyond This

      “What labels me, negates me.” ― Soren Kierkegaard

      There is no them
      There’s only us
      — U2, Invisible

      It felt like we were winning at one time in our collective history. But even then there were angry people. Bitterness must be fueled, and a whole industry rose up to feed outrage to those who needed a taste of it. But it’s all so addictive, isn’t it? Soon the consumers are themselves consumed. Those of us who abstained barely know them anymore.

      And there we are; us and them. It’s easy to label them, even as we’re angry at the labels they put on us. Add separation, where one isn’t looking into the eyes of the person they’re calling one of them, and we all become dehumanized. And so it is that technology, once our great hope, has become our undoing.

      Is the genie out of the bottle? It seems that way. But I’m a believer in forward progress. Sure we take two steps back now and then. God knows we’ve regressed lately. But have hope. This too shall pass. The pendulum will swing back again.

      It’s easy to label, it’s harder to seek to understand. If we are to get beyond this, we ought to get over our anger and our labels and get to know each other instead. Even writing that it sounds naive, but tell me another way forward?

      Things are darkest before the dawn. We aren’t quite as dark yet as we could be, and the trend is shockingly downward, but when enough of us say, I’m not going down there, we may level off this spiral and find a safe landing. From solid ground we may climb once again.

      There is no them, there’s only us. Put enough of us together and soon there is no more them. Or we could just go back to shouting at each other, seeing how well that’s working out. We get to choose, at least until it’s too late for choices anymore.

    • Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down

      “When you’re surrounded by a world of constant lies, manipulation, and deceit, that dark energy is bound to seep into you eventually.” ― Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman

      We all feel a little exhausted right about now. Which means that the worst among us have us in their grip. It’s like the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers where everyone is taken over by aliens when they go to sleep. Keep a close watch on who rules our attention. Shut off that noise and find a safe place far away from their dark energy.

      The thing is, putting up a wall of tranquility is not the same as putting our head in the sand and hoping it all goes away. It’s refusing to be manipulated by the trolls and goblins who would rob us of everything dear to us. Accept that there is darkness in the world and seek out the light anyway.

      Illegitimi non carborundum: Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

      We may focus on building, despite those who would tear it all down. Build resiliency, while they work to erode our very foundation. Build strong communities when they work to divide us. Build trusted relationships amongst the lies, manipulation and deceit. We must not only outlast them, but bury their kind with the scorn and judgement of history.

    • Still Possible

      “When people believe that they have no power to control events, they tend to disengage themselves from efforts to shape their destinies.” — Albert Bandura, Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory, 1986

      I became aware of the undercurrent of outrage years ago, when people I knew listened to talk radio all day at work and while driving. What can you possibly talk about for that many hours that would hold a listener’s attention? Well, things that stir the pot, that’s what. That which stirs emotion holds attention. And so people were suddenly emotional about their right to not wear a seatbelt, or the fact that there were still tolls on the highway even though they felt the highway was paid for. Or they were angry at the decisions made by the front office of the Red Sox for not spending more than the Yankees. Outrageous!

      Then there were the 24-hour news channels. That’s a lot of information to digest, all the time. And then came the internet and the rise of the platforms. And now we’re deep in it. People believe the deep state is the government. The deep state is technology driven by the desperate need for clicks and followers, which builds personal fortunes. When people tell us to follow the money they aren’t barking up the wrong tree. But once people have their beliefs, they’ll trust the people telling them to find another tree but the money tree they’ve grown for themselves.

      It’s all so exhausting, this chorus of barking up so many wrong trees. And anyone who barks up the right tree is quickly dragged down and discredited by the people protecting their money trees. The press used to be perceived as courageous guardians of the truth, before the money tree people figured out that attacking them turned the barkers against them. or taking some of the personal fortune and buying the platform to change the message entirely.

      It’s all around us, and the only way out is to have the outraged hoards turn on their own. The rest of us have to find a way to survive, and to gently help others see where the right tree was all along. When they think it’s their idea they won’t turn on the messenger. That’s been the playbook all along, we just let the bastards get away with it.

      The thing is, we’ve been conditioned to believe we don’t have any power to influence events. How does someone living paycheck-to-paycheck compete against a billionaire tech bro who buys Twitter and blatantly buys votes? It feels hopeless because it essentially is hopeless for one person to stand up against the will of the wealthy and powerful. But one person can convince another, who can in turn convince another. And eventually there’s power in numbers. That’s how this pendulum swung so far towards autocracy, and it’s now it can swing back towards democratic ideals.

      To get there, we must each focus on what we can control, instead of wallowing in the despair of the uncontrollable. We can control what we consume for information today. Take a walk, listen to music, read a poem. Disengage from the outrage and find sustenance in the quiet truth of this miraculous moment. And then quietly get back to work building a better future that is within our control. It’s hard to believe, but it’s still possible.

    • The Optimal Moment for Yes

      “Time and energy are limited. Any successful person has to decide what to do in part by deciding what not to do.” — Angela Duckworth

      I recently stirred the pot in my community of friends by questioning the viability of outrage. One person’s call to action is another’s endless distraction at the latest assault on what’s good in this world. I choose to put all outrageous acts into the same bucket of atrociousness and simply focus on what I can control. Acknowledge they’re bastards doing bastardly things and don’t let them drag us down into the time-suck abyss. To do otherwise concedes effectiveness. Use that emotional energy for useful productivity.

      Deciding and doing necessarily demand deciding what not to do as well. As I write this, I have notifications pouring in on my phone, a long list of priorities written out to check off today and a lingering awareness that time is rapidly ticking away. And that’s exactly why we must learn to say no. We only have so many grains of sand to work with, so why waste it being unfocused on the things that will matter most in the end?

      Case in point: I postponed writing this blog post until some essential work was completed. It quietly gnawed at me knowing that I deferred writing for other work, but the work was important enough for me to say yes to it, while the writing of the blog wasn’t a “no” (!) but a “not yet”. Will the work matter in ten years? Maybe. Will the blog post? Again, maybe. But both are are important enough to me to warrant prioritization. In the end both will be completed and I’ll move on with my life knowing I’ve honored a commitment to myself.

      Everything essential has its time, and all the rest distracts us from focusing on optimally meeting this moment. What feels essential today may mean nothing when we’re on our deathbed. Yes, there are some things we can say yes to now that we’ll never be able to say yes to again. But what are we saying no to to attain it? Which is more optimal for a yes in this moment? Perhaps that’s the ultimate filter for what we say yes and no to. Because those grains of sand are flowing oh so fast and we may never pass this way again.

    • Letter to an Outraged Friend

      My friend, I hope you know I think the world of you. It may seem sometimes that we barely know each other, but those moments are balanced by deep familiarity. We detect patterns and learn each other’s behavior over time. We know what that certain look means, even when we don’t ever mention it by name. Some things are better left unsaid between us.

      But now I feel something needs to be said about outrage. We’ve all been indulging in it lately. I mean, it’s so very easy to be outraged now. The entire planet seems to be addicted to it. And like sugar, we begin to crave it even when we know it’s not good for us. Once we’ve developed a taste for outrage, we look for more things to be outraged by.

      Others, seeing our outrage, go out of their way to do more outrageous things to savor our reaction. There’s nothing like the feeling of owning the room, and the fastest way to that mic drop moment is to double down on the truly outrageous. The real power always lies with the quiet one pulling the strings. All those tech bro billionaires built their fortunes on our outrage. Brilliant scheme for them, not so good for us.

      Yet we don’t have to consume it. We can choose to consume something insightful, rather than to be incited by someone else’s outrageousness. Remember the old expression? Cooler heads prevail. To borrow another expression from a dark chapter in human history: keep calm and carry on. There’s simply no other way for us to move forward than with informed awareness and intent. If we’re all spun up, we can’t do a damned thing but feed the outrage. And that’s exactly what they want of us.

      When someone is outraged to the boiling point, they seek release of that pressure. And so they pour all their accumulated outrage all over the first good listener they come across. Friend, I’m that listener, and I’m tired of being coated in the filth of outrage. It’s not a good look, and really, I just bought this shirt. And since we’re being honest, that outrage doesn’t look all that attractive on you either. Try some cooler colors.

      The world needs so much more than yet another voice in the chorus of the outraged. So throw all that poison aside and focus on what is in our control: How we react to the world around us. We may choose to do something productive with that emotional energy. Donate, volunteer, write a poem, bake a lasagna and feed a hungry neighbor starved for calories and a bit of positive attention. We can do better, you and I. Our future together demands it.