Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • Nobody but Yourself

      A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.

      This may sound easy. It isn’t.

      A lot of people think or believe or know they feel — but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking.

      Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.

      To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
      — e.e. cummings, “A Poet’s Advice to Students”

      To be ourself in a world that wants us to fall in line isn’t easy. After all, we are part of the tribe, the community, and the history of humanity. All that we see and encounter draws something out of us that we may not have felt otherwise. Just where is that line where the average of everyone else get crossed to simply, “ourself”? Remember in such moments this line in the quote above, “whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.”

      To feel is the thing. Nobody else feels what we feel. Nobody else brings the whole of their experience together, stirs it about in their soul and exudes the identity that is us. Nobody but us. So it follows that we ought to be aware of what we’re feeling, not just what we’re hearing and seeing and reading. What we feel hints at who we are. Give that room to breathe and grow.

      Most of us don’t fancy ourselves poets. Yet we may live a poetic life full of heightened awareness of the self and all that surrounds and influences us. Poetry is feeling. To “squeeze the marrow out of life” as Henry David Thoreau put it, we must be fully aware and alive. Give life a squeeze. See how it feels. Learn and grow and become nobody else but yourself.

    • Do It

      “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” — Pablo Picasso

      We grow into ourselves by stretches and the occasional leap. Now some people leap all the time, and become known as either bold or reckless, depending on how they land. Most of us test the waters a bit, see if it makes sense to move in this new direction, and work our way there gradually. A few never leave the nest at all, choosing familiarity and comfort over reaching for their own potential.

      So what do we do with habits that work for us, when we know that to grow we must break patterns and try new things? Delay? Dabble? Dive right in? We’re each unique in our willingness to try new things by letting familiar old things go.

      I think the moment we ask ourselves if we ought to try something new, we ought to take the first step towards that new. And then the next. Venturing more and more into the unknown to discover something about it and ourselves that we felt was possible all along. As that character Yoda put it, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Learn as we go. Do it.

    • The Steady Ascent

      “The main reason to produce something every day is that you must throw away a lot of good work to reach the good stuff. To let it all go easily, you need to be convinced that there is ‘more where that came from’. You get that in steady production.”
      — Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

      Amusement parks may have Lightning Pass lanes, and tourist attractions may have a “Skip the Line” scheme (there’s always a line, it’s just a little shorter), but the work that we produce in a lifetime has no such option. Getting to the good stuff isn’t accomplished without putting in the time.

      Sure, I hear the call of Artificial Intelligence (AI) filling the gap between apprenticeship and mastery. Maybe research and first drafts don’t have to be so tedious. But there are lessons in the grind, and the willing student reaches wisdom not found in AI efficiency.

      The Mona Lisa wasn’t painted in a couple of days. Leonardo da Vinci carried that portrait with him for the rest of his life, adding touches, refining the work, ignoring it and coming back to it. It was never really completed before he passed, it simply reached its final state of being. That state happens to be masterful; A pet project that became the most famous painting in the world.

      Writing every day is sometimes a grind, but it teaches and informs the writer. We may publish regularly or be forever polishing our master work. Unlike our friend da Vinci, we ought to ship our work regularly, that we may move on to something else. The good stuff is earned daily. The great stuff is just over the next rise, awaiting our ascent. If we keep climbing.

    • Rules to Live By

      In the morning, always hydrate before caffeinating, always do both before eating anything.

      Later in the day, always hydrate and eat something before drinking alcohol.

      Eat protein before carbs. Make those carbs as complex as palatable.

      Write before the day becomes insane. Even when you feel you’ll have time later, life doesn’t play by the same rules.

      Same goes for exercise.

      Breath through your nose far more than your mouth.

      Learn CPR.

      Focus on one task at a time. Multi-tasking is nothing but partial focus on too many things.

      Listen. When two people are talking at the same time, nothing is heard. If two people are attempting to talk to you at the same time, make eye contact with the one who initiated the conversation until they’ve stated what they wanted to say, then make eye contact with the other. They’ll both feel heard, and maybe learn to respect boundaries.

      Chaos knows no boundaries. Back away from chaos.

      Know where the exits are. Not just the door you walked in through, but the other exits. If you don’t see another viable exit, you are in the wrong place.

      There is energy in a crowd, but never be caught in the middle should things go terribly wrong. Don’t live in fear, simply be aware.

      Always read a book before turning on the television or doom-scrolling. Ten pages a day will change your life. More as time allows.

      Read classic books. They’re classics for a reason.

      Stretch more frequently than you believe you need to.

      Schedule physicals, dental appointments and physical therapy first thing in the morning, before life beats you and them down.

      Pack light. Layers. Socks stuffed in the shoes. Leave half of what you want to take behind so you have room in your bag to bring something home with you.

      Don’t buy souvenirs that won’t make you miss the place you bought it at. This automatically eliminates airport gift shops and Soft as a Grape stores.

      Call your mother. She’ll appreciate it more than she’ll let on.

      Call your father too. Don’t just ask Mom to pass the phone. He’d call you more often himself, but he wants you to stop clinging to the nest and fly (He loves to watch you soar).

      Visit a cemetery and remember those who are no longer with us. Memento mori.

      Live as if you were dying. You don’t have to listen to the song to embrace the philosophy.

      Instead of sleeping in, go to bed earlier.

      Take all advice given freely for what it’s worth.

    • Collecting Evidence

      “I don’t know what that means. To truly live.’
      Kongo paused again, his eyes wandering to the walls of the cave, to the blackness at the far end.
      ‘To find work that you love, and work harder than other men. To learn the languages of the earth, and love the sounds of the words and the things they describe. To love food and music and drink. Fully love them. To love weather, and storms, and the smell of rain. To love heat. To love cold. To love sleep and dreams. To love the newness of each day.”
      ― Pete Hamill, Forever

      If you’ve never read Forever by Pete Hamill, consider it worthy of your time. I wander back to it now and then, when I think of Cormac and Thunder leaping towards their destiny in the New World. I have no business re-reading it now, with so many books awaiting my attention, and yet it found me again anyway.

      How do we live? The proof will unfold daily, in our choices. It’s in who we reach out to and how we react to our awareness of the world’s general indifference to us. We are here to master the self, not the universe. Personal excellence, that old friend Arete, will always be just over that next rise in the hill. Never fully realized. And yet we may live and grow and become something more profound than who we’ve started our day with.

      Indeed, this day is entirely new. And ours to perhaps fully embrace or maybe waste in our usual offhand way. “The proof will be in your living”, Kongo later says in that enchanting chapter of that magical novel that I keep returning to now and again. And indeed, life unfolds thusly. What will we look back on one day, thinking of today’s climb? May the newness of this day provoke us to collect evidence of a worthy ascent.

    • Call It Inspiration

      “The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself…Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. In composing we combine what we know of music with what we feel.” — George Gershwin

      I once wrestled with time. Once I called it time management, and then productivity, and maybe a few other names along the way. The way itself is time, and within it, we produce something or we do not. It was never really time at all, it was how we use our lives. And how we use our lives is who we are, and who we will become, and how we will be remembered one day.

      That’s a lot of wrestling.

      Perhaps that effort is better applied towards discovery. I write every day to discover what will stroll into the room next. We go back and forth a bit, I takes notes as quickly as I can, and the muse exits once again. Who saw that coming? And thanks for the, uh, time.

      Yesterday I finished a delightful book I’d never have read but for the fact that I said yes to it at the exclusion of a lot of great options I said no to. And then I immediately started reading another. The more books we read, the less we’re staring at a screen. That seems like a great trade-off to me. What does that have to do with productivity? Everything. And nothing at all.

      All that we do in our lives is derived from the experiences we make for ourselves. Writing, reading, travel, work, coexisting with these characters in our lives… it all accumulates into something larger than where we began this journey. And growth is where it’s at, friend. We are alive, and life is forever growing into something more than we started as. Just keep heading towards the light, wherever it takes us. Call it inspiration if it helps.

    • Difference Awaits

      “Normality is a paved road: it’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.” — Vincent Van Gogh

      What do you dream about? Who knows? Some people seem to remember all of their dreams. For some of us, the world of dreams is slammed shut upon waking. Is there a metaphor in there somewhere about waking up to finally begin living one’s dreams? Wouldn’t that be the obvious path to take right about now?

      My own dreams, such that they are, usually end with me waking up trying to figure a way out of some maze I’d wandered into, or to find a solution to some problem that doesn’t exist in reality. Ah, you dream interpreters, there’s nothing to see here! We’re all figuring things out as we go. Every day is a winding road.

      We may choose to wander off the beaten path any time we want to, for it’s our story to write. That beaten path laying up ahead is beaten for a reason. It’s tried and true, and won’t make our mothers lie awake at night in worry. Taking the road less traveled makes all the difference, right? Ask a poet:

      Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
      I took the one less traveled by,
      And that has made all the difference.
      — Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

      The thing is, most of us aren’t choosing poetry or painting as a career path. We’re figuring things out as we go, not wandering off into the wilderness. Maybe that means fewer flowers, but it also helps pay the mortgage. And so paths less traveled by remain in our dreams.

      Then again, we may opt to stray further and further from the beaten path each day, returning to pay the bills and such, but building those wandering muscles and stretching our inclinations in new directions. Our path is simply where we are heading at the moment. Perhaps it’s paved, perhaps it’s full of wildflowers or thistle or perilous beasts that make us break into a cold sweat for the terror of it all.

      Fear not! Our path is meant to be figured out. Like an Andy Weir novel, there’s always a way out of the maze. We just need to wake up to see it. And having seen it, to take that path to where difference awaits.

    • All We Have

      What if you suddenly saw that the silver of water was brighter than the silver of money?
      —Mary Oliver, How Would You Live Then?

      The time does fly by, doesn’t it? Tempus fugit. Does our time grow shorter, or does our experience grows greater with the years? Isn’t it in how we look at things? It always was and always will be about what we focus on. Are we living in a time of scarcity or abundance? We have as much of each as we wish to see.

      The answer may be to stop listening to those who would tell us otherwise. Knowing that sometimes we are our own worst false prophet—sowing discontent with the status quo for the love of more. Never grow blind to all that is and will be if we just stay the course with all we have.

      We are blessed in life when we are finally aware of all that surrounds us. We find that we don’t want to miss this opportunity at hand chasing dreams of better all the time. What’s better than the dreams we are realizing now? If we wish to savor time, we ought to stop throwing it away chasing better. Better isn’t discovered by chasing it—better is something we grow into with time.

    • A Gracious Overplus

      “As one who had lived, and were now to die by right, whatsoever is yet remaining, bestow that wholly as a gracious overplus upon a virtuous life. Love and affect that only, whatsoever it be that happeneth, and is by the fates appointed unto thee. For what can be more reasonable?” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      We have informed the world of who we are by what we have done to this point in the game. Naturally, this informs us as well. We ought to think of what happens ahead of us as the life of someone else entirely. It’s an invention of imagination applied to time.

      Whatsoever is yet remaining awaits. It’s all bonus time after we reach awareness. A gracious overplus. Decide what to be and go be it, as the song goes. The trick is to believe in the dream enough to go be it. So what will it be?

    • Full of Answers

      “Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” — Joseph Campbell

      I spent yesterday in a busy office, bouncing ideas off of others, being interrupted from my work flow to discuss projects or weigh in on what some other characters should have for lunch, catching up on who has left and who is carrying the burden of their absence (clever executives believing doing more with less is a model of efficiency), and generally being in the mix of team dynamics.

      What brings us to life, if not our engagement with others, and the world beyond? We find productivity in solitude, but richness with company. There is a healthy balance to be found as an integral part of the tribe sometimes, and in quietly going our own way other times. It’s not so much that we need others, it’s that we choose to be with others, for all that others bring to us and we in turn bring to them.

      What has meaning in an empty house? Nothing, I suppose. But is a house empty if we are in it, assessing its relative emptiness? Fullness comes from within. Here too, we find the seed of meaning from which to grow a life. The answers in our lives always begin from within, and yet we must reach beyond the self to realize them. We will never truly escape the labyrinth in this lifetime, but who ever said being full of answers was the purpose of the game anyway?