“Our dreams betray us” — Anton Myrer, Once An Eagle
What do our dreams actually say of us, but who we desire to be? For all my talk of productivity and purpose, I dream of boats and faraway places. Polar opposites, I can here the maternal characters in my life say. So which is me, and what is simply talk?
We dream of being writers or pro athletes or travel lifestyle YouTube influencers. We dream of washboard abs and marathon finishes. None of that is who we are, it’s nothing but what we wish for until we pay the price of greatness; the daily, consistent, habitual work that lifts us up from our dreams and carries us to our destiny. Do or do not, there is no try, as Yoda put it.
Dreams betray our aspirations and desires. They hint at a possible future, but simply hoping to hit the lottery leads to a life of dashed dreams and lingering regrets. Making the intangible tangible begins with doing the hard things that a dreamlike life demands. So wake up and get on with it.
“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe” — Muhammad Ali
Inevitably, after doing some workout and feeling the rush of adrenaline that washes over you when you finish, I tell myself I ought to do that more consistently. I mean, a year ago I was working out twice a day for 75 days, so why am I not working out at least once a day now? Maybe working out twice a day was a bit much, but not working out at all was a bit too far in the other direction.
Habits come and go. I wrote this blog every day for seven years and just stopped one day just to reset myself and stop that creeping feeling that writing was an obligation and not a privilege. I’m writing again with new perspective, and without feeling like I must publish today no matter what. Hopefully the content feels less like an obligation to read too.
Habits stick when we love doing something. When it becomes so ingrained as part of our identity that we can’t imagine not doing it today and for every tomorrow we have left ahead of us. When it nags at us like a pebble in the shoe, we’re far less likely to follow through with it today. And our actions today are all that matters in all things.
Today I took my bike out for a 15-mile ride. That’s nothing for a hard-core cyclist, but it’s not a bad use of an hour for a casual cyclist trying to get back in the habit again. It turned out what was nagging at me was how much I missed being out on the bike while stuck in a routine chock full of excuses. Tomorrow will take care of itself, but I’ll celebrate today for all the right reasons.
“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” — Henri Bergson
We are not who we once were. We come to know this, and either work to reject the premise or accept that change for all it represents. The former is rather sad in the end (when the truth catches up to us), the latter may be sad initially, until we move on to the next. Replaying our greatest hits (and misses) simply chains us to a standard that no longer exists. And none of us want to be the person making a fool of themselves (even if we’re pretty good at it).
The trick is to be young at heart and vibrant to the end, but also wise beyond our years. How do we balance this? I believe it’s by being active: To be fit and moving kicks that old body we’ll grow into down the curb for as long as possible. To forever be a student of life keeps the mind engaged and growing. The dream is a body, mind and soul that is sharp and in peak form for whatever age we find ourselves at. When we are at our best we open up the best possibilities available to us here and now. Surely that is something to aspire to.
How does this look in practice? Instead of dwelling on what once was or what will never be, look at the progress made. Growth is easy to see when we are aware of the distance we’ve come. It’s an ever-expanding catalog of books read and re-read, experiences savored or sometimes simply survived. It’s the expanding menu of foods, languages, hobbies and pursuits accumulated over a lifetime.
I may not be a golfer, but I’ve played enough golf to delight in a great shot and laugh at myself for a horrible shank. I may never master French or German, but I’ve gone down the path of learning each language. I may never eat fermented shark fin again in my lifetime, but I’ve lived to tell the tale. Those hikes gone terribly wrong? Survived those too, and laugh as I cringe thinking about some of them. It’s all accumulated into who I’ve become, even as it isn’t who I am.
It’s all our endless creation—until the end. We may be as creative as we wish to be in the pursuit. Not to dwell on the highlights and low points, but to build a better vessel. It’s all ours and nobody else’s. We are one of a kind, forever reinvented for the delight of our one passenger. Knowing how far we’ve come, we may have our courage bolstered for the journey ahead.
“If you repeated what you did today 365 more times, will you be where you want to be next year?” — Kevin Kelly
We are all creatures of habit. The question is, are our collection of daily habits taking us where we want to go? Put another way, if consistent action leads to transformation, have we chosen the right actions to take? If we’re delighted with the answers, then by all means keep doing the same things. But if there’s a gap between who we want to become and who we are now, the answer lies in changing our days. Today is as good a day as any.
Last summer I embarked on a journey called 75 Hard. It was exactly what it said it was going to be, and it ended with radical transformation. Sure, I lost a lot of weight, read some books I’d been leaving off to the side a little too long and found myself overall far more healthy, but the key lesson was in time management. We all have the same 24 hours in a day—how do we fill those hours? If I learned anything while doing a structured lifestyle program, what we subtract is as important as what we add.
Fast forward eight months and fragments of that lifestyle change remain. One step back picked up in that time is a nagging injury that I’m working to correct with physical therapy. So it goes. Others have it far worse and still do what must be done. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that excuses fill the void where action once thrived. We are always a day away from healthy lifestyle change. We just have to make that change today and not tomorrow. To act today as if our lives depended on it. Doesn’t it?
“Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” — Mark Twain
Lately, I’ve spent a lot of quality time with some good books. I’ve had less of that quality time with good friends, but we make it count when we reconnect. Life is what we make of it, and maintaining connection is a large part of a great life.
Friends amplify experience. Going out and experiencing life solo has it’s perks, but try multiplying what we experience by one and see what it equals. Those friends also help us live longer, more vibrant lives. If increasing one’s health span is the ultimate goal, relationships with others is clearly the path to be on.
Have I sold you on maintaining friendships yet? How about that sleepy conscience Twain refers to? Who else are we going to be foolish with than our friends? Who will know our stories, and keep them locked up in a vault only we can reminisce about? An ideal life is full of stories, whether we tell anyone else about them or not.
“If you repeated what you did today 365 more times, will you be where you want to be next year?” — Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living
This week I experienced something called Instrument-Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (IASTM), which is a fancy way of saying a highly-trained physical therapist used a chunk of metal to scrape my leg to what felt like a bloody pulp. It turned out there was no blood, just the breaking up of scar tissue accumulated over many stubborn years of telling myself that my ankle would just get better on its own. This procedure helps undo what’s been done through micro-trauma to the scarred areas. It turns out those micro-traumas create a bit of state change in the recipient. Ouch. But also, revelation.
It’s no secret that small habits, done consistently, change us over time. If the scar tissue in my leg reminded me of anything, its that those bad habits accumulate and develop into things we aren’t even aware of until something jolts us into awareness. For me it was a gimpy ankle. For others it’s far more serious. Like the alien spores in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, bad habits sneak into our lives and change our identity. Don’t let the bastards drag you down! Break down that scar tissue.
“Looking ahead, focus on direction rather than destinations. Maintain the right direction and you’ll arrive at where you want to go.” — Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living
Dropping two quotes from Kevin Kelly today, but this little book is a gem. It reads like a series of bite-sized tweets, which makes it a natural read for people who stare at a screen more than they should. That’s another habit akin to an alien invasion, creating outrage and depression in people who we used to know. We’re collectively undergoing scarification, and we must find a way to scrape it away from our lives if we hope to hold on to the best of who we are and will become.
Scar tissue hides within. Awareness of where we are is important, and so too is knowing where we’re going. What small habit, done daily, changes our course from a lesser version of us to a greater? The days will fly by either way, we might as well tune up the body, mind and soul in positive and productive ways. Decide what to be and go be it. Just accept the discomfort of change for what it is—the breaking down of the bad to make room for the good.
“In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed, and the first of that which comes. So with time present.”
“Observe the light. Blink your eye and look at it again. That which you see was not there at first, and that which was there is no more.” — Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Arundel
Let’s talk of matters for a moment. What we did with our time that has passed matters, for it brought us here. And what happens here matters just as much for what happens next. So the heart of the matter is an instant of action moving us from what was to what is to what will be (or will be no more). Everything changes—whether we’re aware of it or not is beside the point.
So it follows that awareness and action are two of the most essential assets in our toolbox. We move through moments either way, but what do we really see? What do we really influence? Putting aside all that is out of our control, it’s largely ours to see and be.
Memory is our companion on our path to what’s next. We each remember moments from our journey to now as if they had just happened. If we’re blessed with a series of good decisions, many of those memories are pleasing to recall. But we also carry our mistakes with us, nagging us in quiet moments. Memory loves to play our greatest hits, but also our biggest mistakes. It’s all a part of us that brought us here.
Dreams are lovely things indeed. We each imagine a future full of wonderful. There are no aches and pains and lingering sadness, only blissful discovery surrounded by loved ones. Watch a commercial for a luxury cruise line or Disney World and you’ll see some version of the dream. Marketing people know how to pull dollars out of imagination.
We ought to remember that we have agency too. To realize an imagined future requires the use of those tools in our toolbox. To be aware of where we are and what we’re trending towards, and to take action to influence a more compelling future. To be aware of time passing by and the opportunity at hand before it slips away forever, joining those regrets in our memory bank. To have awareness without action is to concede our lives to fate. Decide what to be and go be it.
Tempus fugit, friend. Can you believe another month is over? Don’t blink! Time moves at the blink of an eye, and the future is coming for us faster than we ever could believe. Our task is to become a brighter, healthier and more engaged-with-life time traveler. So grab that tiger by the tail and make it a heck of a ride. The first of that which comes is right here.
“Death is not an evil, because it frees us from all evils, and while it takes away good things, it takes away also the desire for them. Old age is the supreme evil, because it deprives us of all pleasures, leaving us only the appetite for them, and it brings with it all sufferings. Nevertheless, we fear death, and we desire old age.” — Giacomo Leopardi, Pensieri (Thoughts)
Leopardi wrote this in his latter years, with understanding of the sufferings of old age. As his work goes, Pensieri was published unfinished. We all leave something unfinished when we leave this life. If our legacy is what we leave behind us, our unfulfilled potential is all that we never got around to. Thoreau’s “quiet desperation” is knowing the gap exists between the two.
I’m one of those people who say to the world that I will live to be 100. I know the statement is foolhardy, brash and unrealistic. It’s said tongue-in-cheek, like many things I say. We simply don’t know when our expiration date is. Given the rate of decline in our latter years that I’ve observed in the generations ahead of mine, I aspire only for good health and sound mind for as long as possible, that I may kick the sufferings of old age down the curb right to the end of this joyride.
Each day we wrestle with fear and desire. The trick to aging gracefully is to focus on filling those gaps in our potential with applied experience. We produce and share and move on to the next stage of our lives to the end of our days. If our health span allows, we may expand our legacy. So above all else, it seems, focus on increasing that health span. Fitness and mental acuity are far better desires than simply growing old.
“Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do. Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you. Sanity means tying it to your own actions.” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
With respect to the folks who are spun up about the latest offensive thing happening in the world, the thing that matters most to our well-being is what we can control ourselves. And what we can control is our actions. So it follows that we must be bold in facing the day!
Our choices may not seem like the thing that moves the world, but our choices move our world. We have the agency to choose how we react, and we have the agency to act. Reaction and action are change agents. We change and grow based on how well we leverage these agents in our lives.
Our well-being is largely a lagging indicator of the choices we’ve made to this point. Make better choices and life improves. Make no decisions and we may expect that things will remain as they always have been, but this is folly. Everything changes and we must be decisive in steering our lives where we want it to go. Ignore the call to action and opportunity slips away. Fortune, after all, favors the bold.
Our climb to personal excellence is full of choices. Each day we may choose to worry about what others think or feel about us. Every day we may think of nothing but ourselves, and one day wonder where everybody went. Or we can look around, see the changes that need to happen to build a life of excellence. We may choose each day to do what must be done to be, well. In the end, isn’t that the only logical choice?
Beauty is twice beautiful and goodness is doubly good when it concerns two wools socks in winter. — Pablo Neruda, Ode To A Pair Of Socks
There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who complain about the weather and those who dress for the weather we’ve been blessed to experience this day. The former tend to shelter in place. The latter tend to step out into it. I don’t judge either camp, but I’m clearly in the latter.
While snowshoeing Saturday morning, I came to a split in the trail. I went to the left that morning, breaking trail and returning with the thrill of having been out in it, doing the work of being fully-alive on a bright clear morning. But all that evening I thought about the path not taken. It remained unbroken and unexplored, and with that, I felt incomplete. Those paths not taken have a way of haunting us, don’t they?
The only thing to do was to go out again Sunday morning to see what was left for me. I silently hoped it would be unbroken still, that I might finish what I started. I saw footprints in the snowshoe tracks I’d laid and thought to myself that the opportunity was lost. But the footprints crossed the bridge and then turned back, indicating someone inclined towards common sense. Why continue on trails without the proper gear?
The thing is, I had the proper gear. And so I kept on walking to that fork in the path and turned right onto a gloriously unbroken trail, blazing a path for any who might follow. There is sheer delight to be found in the cold stillness of a pristine snowy forest, so long as you’re prepared to be out in it and have the tools to make your way back out again no matter what.
Having completed that walk, I doubled down with another, bringing the pup to the beach for a second winter walk. That proved far colder with wind chill cutting through our gear. Cold is one thing, cold wind is something else entirely. Even proper winter gear will let you know when it just isn’t enough. We simply have to listen to what nature is telling us.
The pup loves the beach and could have stayed all day but for the wind. Even clad in a winter coat of her own, she knew when we were having too much of a good thing. Sometimes the best thing to do is to step out into it. And sometimes it’s best to simply turn back with stories to tell. Two stories in fact. Twice beautiful, simply for having ventured out to meet them.
Two paths diverged. Hampstead Conservation Land.Snow on dunes. Hampton Beach State Park.
