Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • Beyond the Bro’s

      “I don’t want you to wake up at sixty-five and realize, ‘I spend forty of my best years doing something that just funded my life.” ― Jon Acuff

      I sat through a company meeting where the leadership team discussed the benefits of this new-fangled Artificial Intelligence thing to serve as an editor for the basic writing skills of people writing proposals. It confirmed what I’d come to believe: I’m working for yet another bunch of bro’s trying to figure shit out as they go. Damn. So once again the next move is mine.

      We move through life with things on our mind. Each stage of our development tends to be focused on one thing or another. If we’re brought up a certain way, we tend to think of others first. If we’re brought up a different way, we take care of our own needs first. At some point, we look around and realize that the time we thought we had has flown by and we’d better get focused on whatever our own version of personal excellence is before that opportunity is gone forever.

      I started writing a blog to fill a gap in my life that wasn’t being filled working for bro’s trying to figure shit out as they went. Writing a blog to fill a gap isn’t unusual, but there are other reasons. Some folks blog for self-marketing or to create content for their business or maybe worst of all, to serve some awful scheme to have <gulp> influence. Goodness, that’s an illusion best shed quickly so that one may get down the real work in blogging—discovery.

      We write for the same reasons we travel and read and talk to strangers: to discover some truth that was previously hidden from us. And maybe to share it with others inclined to wait for us to catch up. We write to learn how to write better, and not simply to have some AI editor toss out a bland but acceptable proposal. To move through life with the aim of being bro-approved is a version of hell I don’t wish on anyone. We must get past that stage of life if we ever hope to transcend the same old shit. Try a little discovery on for size and see what’s possible beyond the bro’s.

    • Following the Rhode Island to Bermuda Thread

      We stayed on St. David’s Island this week while we were in Bermuda. It wasn’t a conscious choice to stay there, but I’m pleased we did, for otherwise I don’t believe we would have gotten there on this particular trip. When I speak of conscious choices, I want to acknowledge that unconsciously I knew the connection between New England and Bermuda. In particular, between Rhode Island and St. David’s Island. Not simply the famous sailing race, but the historic slave trade. Bermuda was the destination for many of those “problematic” Native Americans who were being crowded out by waves of settlers changing the landscape of North America.

      One generation after the Pilgrims were saved in their first brutal winter in Plymouth, their saviors’ offspring were fighting for survival in what became known as King Philip’s War (1675-1676). King Philip was the English name for Metacomet, Chief of the Pokanoket, who’s seat was in Mount Hope, Rhode Island. The direct descendants of the Pokanoket are the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe. When Metacomet was eventually tracked down and killed, ending the war, his wife Wootonekanuske and their son were sold into slavery in Bermuda, meeting the fate of many other Native Americans. Mother and son were separated on the island and lived out their lives as slaves. The son was said to have been on St. David’s Island.

      What seems completely separate is often connected in ways we don’t always understand. Our histories all blend together at some point, sometimes generations later. The story of humanity is tumultuous, tragic and beautiful all intertwined as a tapestry. One thread leads to the next, and we are one. We are forever learning, forgetting and relearning those connections. In a place called St. David’s Island, or in Bristol, Rhode Island, we find those threads and are reminded that our stories will forever be one and the same, even as our outcomes diverge.

      Smith Island, as seen from St. David’s Island, looks a lot like Bermuda in its earliest days might have looked. An active archeological dig is uncovering English settlement in this part of the island.
      The rugged point of St. David’s Island near Fort Hill Bay, with Nonsuch Island seen to the left

    • Unwritten

      I’m just back from another trip and found myself deep in the follow-up of a busy life put on pause while I was away. There’s follow-up that simply needs to happen, for we are forever pushing the flywheel in our lives to sustain whatever momentum we’ve created thus far. In this way, a trip simply ends with a few pictures on social media, a few stories and whatever memories we hold on to. Then on to the next.

      But I think about what remains unwritten from these trips. So many stories I’ve told myself I’d write but for a little more time and focus. They fall away like our days, drifting into what might have beens. For every yes in our lives there are so many no’s shouting in our ear. To live up to our potential we simply have to develop the skill of filtering out the no’s in favor of our compelling yes. Call me a work in progress on this front.

      Creative work isn’t the same as a career climb. It’s project-based work, not simply a series of 9 to 5 days strung out over a career. Projects don’t work normal business hours, and they don’t stop whispering in our ear when those things that don’t want to take no for an answer shout louder and louder for attention. But whispers have a way of being drowned out in the din if we’re not focused enough on them.

      To have any kind of success with our essential few, we must grow into the kind of person who sticks with a yes. We must come to terms with what we will do in our lives, and what will remain unwritten. Like a marriage, we must learn to listen more than we talk with our projects, that we may know where the muse is leading us. Surely, we ignore either at our peril. Still, do we wonder enough, is this project the right yes, or was it the one we just said no to?

    • Nietzsche, Vonnegut and Doris Day Met in a Blog

      “My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

      Where I live, this month is trending as unseasonably cool and wet. Great for ducks, I suppose. The rest of us could use some warm, sunny days. But so it goes.

      That phrase, “So it goes”, is rather sticky. It’s a Kurt Vonnegut nugget that stays with you if you’ve ever read Slaughterhouse-Five because it’s repeated so often throughout the book that it hammers home in the memory bank. I’ve read it at three distinct phases of my life just to see what changes as I’ve changed. From the abundant horror of Dresden comes a fatalism born of experiencing it. One may ask, why? Just don’t expect an answer.

      “Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?” “Yes.” Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three lady-bugs embedded in it. “Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

      To write a book that someone would be inclined to read a few times over, instead of simply reaching for the next book on the pile? That’s notable. To write a book well enough that people are drawing quotes from it generations after it was written? That’s timeless. Surely something to aspire to in our own writing.

      But I digress. So it goes, in the context of the book, is a fatalistic acceptance of death. That’s not exactly how I used it in the opening paragraph of this scattered blog post, but it applies in one key way: Amor fati (love of fate). Or if you prefer a playful tune with a somber message, Que Sera, Sera (whatever will be, will be, with a nod to Doris Day). Whatever method we choose to understand the message, we ought to learn to embrace it in our own lives. Sure, we have agency, but within the context of everything out of our control that life throws at us.

      We will all have our rainy days. If we are blessed, we will also have our share of sunny days full of warmth and comfort. We must build a life that mitigates the impact of our worst days while maximizing the potential derived from our best. Whatever will be, will be, but we may apply leverage as appropriate. There’s just no telling which plot line in our story leads to greatness.

      So Nietzsche, Vonnegut and Doris Day all met in a blog post… proving once again that anything is possible if we just let our creative selves run free now and then. We ought to have more agency in our lives, even as we accept that some things are out of our control. So long as we don’t sell ourselves short on what we can in fact control. Some paths are dead ends, some lead to the highest summit. And so it goes.

    • To Love the Expanse Between Us

      “The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”
      ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

      My bride likes things I shake my head at. Things like programs about serial killers and home remodeling. Those things may not sound similar but in my mind they’re essentially the same thing—innocent people lured into tragic consequences, played out for all to see. She also gushes about shark week all year. It’s can’t-miss programming for her. All programming aspires to be shark week when they grow up. Nothing but bites and blood and thin plot lines with cliffhangers just before the next commercial break. Stop me if you think you’ve seen this one before.

      Me? I’m in the other room reading a book. Or watching a sailing video, or researching the next trip where I’ll force(!) my bride out of her comfort zone doing daring things that involve heights she wants nothing to do with, or daring cross-country escapades that require sleeping in a different bed every night and a willingness to try new foods. No lying on a quiet beach for this vagabond. Not when the maps are full of blank-to-me spaces.

      In short, we’re very different in many ways, yet similar in other ways. Do we focus on the gaps between us, or the things that draw us together? The answer to that determines a happy marriage or a miserable eternal slog praying for the end of time, as Meatloaf used to sing, rest his soul, back when paradise was nothing but a fling illuminated by the dashboard lights. Good luck keeping a marriage going on that illusion. That car better be tuned up, topped off and fitted with new tires, for the journey is long. But isn’t anything worthwhile?

      We reach a point where living side-by-side grows comfortable. We can go an entire drive without saying a word but simply appreciate the time together. We learn to listen for clues hidden in small spaces, and ask questions that get right to the point. Marriage is a journey through time, but also across distance. We’ll never fully close the gap, but why would we ever want to? Be as you are, and give me the space to do the same. That’s where a lifetime together is nurtured. Life isn’t infinite, but it can be marvelous.

    • Bold Curiosity

      “With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.” ― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

      Restraint is a very adult thing to celebrate. We admire the restraint in others, for it indicates a level of maturity and sophistication with which a person might rise to roles of responsibility and importance. We must have control over our emotions if we are to do anything of significance in this world. Parents have restraint, and so do pilots and bankers and chess champions. Without restraint we might be reckless, and reckless people have a limited shelf life in any endeavor. One must learn to master ones own self before mastery in any other discipline is possible.

      But what of boldness? Without boldness we would never leap. Our visions would remain unfulfilled. Can you imagine the great explorers in history full of restraint but lacking boldness? Their ships would never leave the safe harbor! And so it is that we too much learn to leap beyond what we perceive as comfortable if we ever hope to gain ground beyond the level we’ve always been lingering on. With a measure of boldness properly applied we may surprise ourselves at how far we might go from where we started. Boldness isn’t recklessness—it’s applied audacity. It’s going for it and pushing through whatever resistance we encounter to break through somewhere only previously imagined.

      Between restraint and boldness there is a gap bridged by curiosity. When we are curious enough, we will ask questions that we might not have asked otherwise. We might cross the road just to see what’s on the other side. We might climb a mountain just because it’s there. And we might fill a passport with stamps simply to see what all the fuss is about on the other side of borders built to restrain less audacious people than the the boldly curious people we aspire to be.

      We must never concede our agency to timidity and restraint. A full life is built on a blend of discipline, audacity and wonder. We all have a ratio that feels right for us in the moment, and learn that it changes over time as we test our limitations. Each stage of life presents unique opportunities to explore our gaps. The trick is to be curious in each stage, that we may be bold when the opportunity becomes apparent. A life given only to restraint is not much of a life at all. We must explore that which we’re on the brink of discovering, for want of a bit of bold curiosity.

    • This is Our Dance

      At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
      Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
      But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
      Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
      There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
      I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
      — T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

      “Of what is the body made? It is made of emptiness and rhythm. At the ultimate heart of the body, at the heart of the world, there is no solidity… there is only the dance.”
      — George Leonard, The Silent Pulse: A Search for the Perfect Rhythm that Exists in Each of Us

      Read enough and you begin to hear echoes in the work of one writer to the next. As with music, there are only so many notes to play with, and sometimes you hear the hint of one song whispering to you from another. So it is that Leonard’s quote reminded me of T.S. Eliot’s poem. Eliot and Leonard aren’t really writing about the same thing, and yet they each come back to the dance with phrasing that catches one’s attention. Whispers across time and place, where past and future are gathered, dancing in the wind.

      Our lives are stillness and motion, emptiness and rhythm, past and present with a dream of tomorrows. We write and observe and play with words and thoughts and ideas. Just as we live our lives as best we can given the circumstances, so we pull together everything we have in the moment and write what we can with what we have at our disposal. Sometimes we find magic, sometimes we simply live to fight another day. We’re changed either way.

      I write this, not from stillness, but in the midst of the dance. Like that hike through the wild mustard I wrote about yesterday, the path is uncertain and each step presents a new challenge. The only answer is to push on through, finding the path with each step. This is our dance.

      Do you see the path? It’s hiding right in front of us.

    • An Authentic Poet

      “And I tell you that you should open yourselves to hearing an authentic poet, of the kind whose bodily senses were shaped in a world that is not our own and that few people are able to perceive. A poet closer to death than to philosophy, closer to pain than to intelligence, closer to blood than to ink.”
      — Federico Garcia Lorca (translation by Steven F. White)

      Federico Garcia Lorca was a Spanish poet who was either assassinated or murdered at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. The historian in me thinks about such things as wars and the silencing of voices forever through violence. The student in me seeks out the poetry that was so incendiary that someone was prompted to silence the poet. The philosopher in me sees that we are all on the road to find out, and it we would be prudent to use our own voice before it too is silenced by the infinite beyond.

      In my favorite Navy pilot’s last year on earth, he took me aside and told me that he liked my blog. He said he didn’t think I had it in me to quote philosophy and poetry, because these were things that I’d buried deep within while sorting out how to be a working adult in a world very much focused on churning forward. My only question to myself in that moment wasn’t about how to answer him, but rather, what took me so long?

      A couple of thousand blog posts later, I’m still sorting through things. I’ve realized that I’ll be doing that to my last day on earth, physically or mentally, whichever takes me first. I’ve become less a working adult and more a lifetime student, and the identity fits me just fine, thank you. Walking the pup last night, feeling the pollen burn my eyes, I wondered about the future, plotting moves and countermoves like a chess player, with me the pawn. For every action there’s a reaction, but a good mental map shortens the gap between stimulus and response.

      My favorite Navy pilot was an avid reader and likely wasn’t awed by my writing style. He was simply pleased with the progress he saw in my journey, noting a leap forward he hadn’t anticipated from me. That doesn’t translate into a lack of faith in my leaping ability, more an acknowledgement that I hadn’t shown much of an inclination to transcend the normal path. I still think about him when I write, wondering if he’d note the progress. We can promise more for ourselves, but we must learn to meet that promise through boldness and action. To do otherwise would be inauthentic. And that’s not who we’re striving to be, is it?

    • Body and Soul

      “And here let me interrupt the conversation to remark upon the great mistake of teaching children that they have souls. The consequence is, that they think of their souls as of something which is not themselves. For what a man HAS cannot be himself. Hence, when they are told that their souls go to heaven, they think of their SELVES as lying in the grave. They ought to be taught that they have bodies; and that their bodies die; while they themselves live on. Then they will not think, as old Mrs Tomkins did, that THEY will be laid in the grave. It is making altogether too much of the body, and is indicative of an evil tendency to materialism, that we talk as if we POSSESSED souls, instead of BEING souls. We should teach our children to think no more of their bodies when dead than they do of their hair when it is cut off, or of their old clothes when they have done with them.”
      — George MacDonald, Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood

      Truth be told, I’m not a particularly religious person, I’m more a pragmatic realist with a mix of transcendentalist and stoic tendencies. But I do believe that we are all souls moving through this world in bodies that are merely vehicles for the ride we’re on. Some are blessed with better vehicles than others, but a good maintenance plan makes a big difference in how the ride goes. Likewise, the playlist we have between our ears makes this ride a pleasant journey or hell on earth.

      The quote above was falsely paraphrased as a C.S. Lewis quote: “You don’t have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body.” That’s certainly more concise and a better fit for the sound bite world we live in, but it’s simply irresponsible to blindly quote something without doing a little research to find the true source. Call me old-fashioned if you will, but the truth matters, especially in a world of MAGA nuts. We may tell ourselves anything we want in the moment, but eventually we pay the price that truth demands.

      So what is our mantra as we zip through this lifetime of ours? Just what kind of playlist do we have on anyway? We ought to consider changing it up now and then, if only to hear a different perspective and challenge our assumptions. We can always go back to what we were listening to again later, but will we ever hear it the same way? We must learn and grow and become whatever we were meant to be while we have the time. There is no putting off for another day what must be developed today.

      The older I get, the more I realize that health matters more than age. A healthy body is an extraordinary gift—a superpower, really, that enables us to move through space and time in ways that someone without a healthy body cannot. And the same can be said for a healthy mind. To neglect either is irresponsible. We’re all just building a foundation that will crumble in time. A foundation built on poor nutrition for the mind and body is nothing but a sandcastle waiting for the tide to wash it away. We may nurture by our choices a level of antifragility with which we may stand against the inevitable waves that will wash over all that we’ve built.

      So if the soul isn’t something we have but the sum of who we are, we ought to work on increasing that sum. We are all a work in progress moving through this world in bodies that will one day fail us. What remains in the end isn’t the body, but the soul. Identity, if you will (and a topic for another day, as this post is already growing long). So we are each a soul residing in this body, moving through life and making choices about what to do with this opportunity. Make the most of that realization.

    • What We Do Not Know

      “We shall either find what we are seeking, or free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.” — Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine

      Some of us remain lifetime students, some feel they have it all figured out. It often depends on how insular a life we choose to live. The comfort zone of insularity is nothing but a weighted blanket, and no great leaps occur while we’re curled up underneath it. We must venture into the unknown and challenge our assumptions if we are to grow and become something more.

      Imagine the brittle hollowness of a life with all the answers? Being a lifetime student is a delightful journey of discovery. We may be curious and not act on it, getting so busy with other things as we do. And then one day something sparks our curiosity and we seek answers. Writing a blog surely kicked my curiosity into another gear. One question answered leads to another awaiting attention. Writing is a thrill when we are seeking to fill something within ourselves and share it with our fellow students.

      Renault used the quote above twice in her book. Once as something Socrates said, then as a direct quote from Plato. No surprise, really, for a student to be saying something the teacher has said before. We are all turning the same questions around in our minds. Is it any wonder that the insights of one generation should be embraced as their own by the next? We all think we’re so different from those who came before us, when all we are is a different draft of the same creative work.

      I have a stack of books resentful that yet another book should leap ahead of them, gathering dust as they are awaiting my interest to return to them. All those books on shelves represent the aspirations of who we once were, looking towards a brighter future of enlightenment. That potential still resides there on the shelf like buried treasure, should we return to it one day.

      We will all leave this world with unanswered questions. Like books on a shelf we never got to, even with the best of intentions. It was always meant to be this way—we just have to discover that fact at our own pace.