Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • To Live

      “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” — Oscar Wilde

      Do interesting things. Cross borders—real and imagined. Test the validity of advice from timid people. Discover the bridges that fill the gaps between who we are and who we aspire to become. For the clock is ticking and time grows short, even as we foolishly believe it may run on forever.

      There’s work to be done (surely there’s always work to be done), but make it work that explores limitations and offers a steep ascent in learning. Always remember that we may never pass this way again, so do what calls for attention while we are here—younger and more vibrant than we would be if we ever were to return.

      To live, and not to merely exist. This is our quest. Get to it already!

    • Faces on the Wall

      Whenever I visit an art museum, I work to appreciate what the artist was saying with their work. As with everything meaningful, we feel art as much as we see it. But there will always be some art that just doesn’t reach us.

      When I come across art that I don’t feel, I concede that either the muse wasn’t trying to reach me through that artist or perhaps that artist missed the opportunity to connect. Either way I move on to find art that I may feel immensely. Tempus fugit: time flies, and life is too short to linger with art that doesn’t connect.

      I may linger with impressionistic landscapes or cubism or neoclassicism, but I know that the art that will usually stop me in my tracks is simply a portrait. I’m drawn to faces on the wall just as I am with faces in a crowd. Human connection across space and time is my empathic jam. Does that make me less sophisticated than the lover of modern art? Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. We must ignore those who would shame us for what we love.

      Rembrandt Laughing, self-portrait
      Portrait of Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, Jacques-Louis David
      Child Braiding a Crown, William-Adolphe Bouguereau
      Isaac Fuller, self-portrait
      Raphael breaking the fourth wall, Raphael Rooms
      The Dean’s Roll Call, Thomas Eakins

    • Making Magic

      “But all the magic I have known
      I’ve had to make myself.”
      — Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

      We all find our way in this world. The question is, our way to what? Some live a life of servitude framed in family expectations or social status. Some are brought up believing that nothing matters anyway, so why try? Some are so focused on transcending where they started that they are forever climbing, ignoring anything that doesn’t bring them ever-closer to the top. And some walk through life looking to capture the magic of the moment as they present themselves. We are what we focus on. Give me magic.

      Living a life where we are forever collecting moments of magic may seem a frivolous waste of time to the climbers. The non-believers will wonder what the point of it all is when life is nothing but despair and worry to them. We can only work to help them see what was dancing in front of them all along.

      Magic is spun out of art and words arranged just so. Hope and love and beauty are spun of magic. Generosity and purpose are woven of magical fibers. Magic is in the interaction between fellow travelers on life’s journey. Magic is manufactured out of parts and pieces and collaboration. Magic is getting out of the way to watch our children grow into exceptional humans. Magic is daring to notice. Magic is daring to do, despite all the naysayers who believe that magic is childish nonsense.

      As with anything in this brief moment of consciousness, magic offers a spark of insight and wonder to illuminate the darkness and show others what is hiding in plain sight. To make magic is to help others to see beyond the anger and fear and misery that a singular focus on non-magical things brings to the world. This blog post may be nothing but a jumble of words, heavily sprinkled with the one, or a catalyst for awareness. It’s not for me to say which it might be.

    • Purpose in the Flow

      Teachers told us the Romans built this place
      They built a wall and a temple
      And an edge of the empire garrison town
      They lived and they died
      They prayed to their gods
      But the stone gods did not make a sound
      And their empire crumbled till all that was left
      Were the stones the workmen found
      All this time
      The river flowed
      In the falling light
      Of a northern sun
      — Sting, All This Time

      Our empires will crumble one day: We learn to accept this even as we continue to gain momentum in the current of life, for this is our time and these are our days to do and be. To exist at all is a blessing worthy of a deliberate life. To move through our time deliberately is to honor the gift, even as we struggle to understand the meaning of it all.

      The river flows endlessly to the sea: At the point of their finally meeting is an estuary, with swirling whirlpools of confusion and the brackish mix of fresh and salt water exerting their will upon the other. The sea always wins in the end, but it never forgets that it is the river that gives it life. In return, it will give up it’s waters to begin the cycle again and again. So it is that life is a series of tolls paid for the privilege of being here, now. We ought to pay that toll with gratitude to our final breath.

      Progress hides in plain sight: We chip away at our goals—fitness, work, writing, books read, or maybe faraway ports of call, and with each small win we feel that sense of accomplishment for having made another step forward. Even the occasional stumble is okay, so long as we feel we’re moving in the right direction. We don’t really know where it all will take us, but collecting incremental wins feel like the right thing to stack up in a short dance with a vibrant health span. What else are we going to do with our time but grow and learn and find connection with other like-minded beings making their own way through the madness of life? Our purpose is found in the flow, not in the arrival.

    • How Clever

      “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” — Rumi

      They say that change happens slowly, but it feels more instant than that. Transformation happens slowly—deciding to change happens instantly. The rest is execution. Decide what to be and go be it.

      We get too clever for our own good. We come up with great excuses for why we won’t change and say we’ll get to work tomorrow. There is no tomorrow, friend. We must get to work now.

      How clever is that?

    • Capturing Perspective

      We should never aspire to be busy, we just become busy as our responsibilities accumulate. At some point something has to give. So what must we hold onto in that moment?

      To write daily amidst the big changes occurring in one’s life offers a unique opportunity to capture perspective. That perspective will surely change with the changes, but in that moment we are who we are. A blog is not a novel and it’s not a journal, it’s a daily exercise in capturing perspective before it changes yet again.

      Where are we now? What has happened to bring us here? And the question of questions, what comes next? What stands out in this post that marks who we were as we wrote it? Everything is different, everything is the same. We flow through our time grasping for a good anchorage that will hold us long enough to gain some perspective. We must be sure to log it before we’re on the move yet again.

      Writing for someone with a lot to say is a release. Writing for someone who isn’t in the mood to share is a chore. We each have moments with each. To write daily is akin to doing our chores. We know we must do our chores, even when we don’t feel like it, and we feel better for having done what we promised ourselves we’d do. The promise is to click publish having said something worthy of the time it takes to read it.

    • The Passage

      “Our doubts are traitors,
      and make us lose the good we oft might win,
      by fearing to attempt.”
      ― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

      Something changes in us when we resolve to do something. A switch flips somewhere within our body and soul, and our very identity has changed well before the actual work is done that we’ve decided to do to bridge the gap. The attempt becomes obvious as the logical steps between here and there. Doubt defers to a rigid focus on outcomes. Determination enters the fray.

      All of this leads us to make a passage. Like a sailboat crossing an ocean, we are on a journey ourselves, from where we were to where we’re going. This passage is fraught with a potential dangers in the form of well-meaning friends and family, work obligations, and the most insipid of dangers, comfortable habits and beliefs about who we are that must be overcome to complete the transformation. We’ll need all of that rigid focus and determination to make it through.

      The thing to remember about a passage is that it’s not one step. It’s a labyrinth, and we aren’t meant to see the other side. We’re only to take this next step. Days will fly by as they always have, but we are moving through them differently than we used to. The passage changes us in ways we don’t see until one day we realize the gap has shrunken before us. We may then honor the changes by simply taking the next step ahead.

    • Creating Outcomes

      “There is some risk involved in action, there always is. But there is far more risk in failure to act.” — Harry S. Truman

      The funny thing about taking action is that it often leads to more opportunities to act. We become action-oriented, and notice opportunities to act more often than someone who is sedentary and usually looking for opportunities to rest. Ultimately we go in the direction we set our compass to, seeing what we see while creating outcomes that lead to even more outcomes.

      That term, creating outcomes, is high agency stuff. It’s an action-oriented approach to living that suits us. We all know that we’re here for a short time (memento mori). If you read this blog with any regularity you’ve certainly heard me mention that with some frequency. This is not a death-focused mindset, it’s life-focused. Awareness leads to action. We only have so much time—don’t dare waste a moment of it!

      What is an outcome but a destination separated from us by a gap we close? We see the target, determine the action necessary to reach it, and do the work to bridge our here with our potential there. Having reached an outcome, we naturally look towards the next interesting destination, and so on. This is a growth mindset, and it’s a world apart from believing we have no control over our lives. Decide what to be and go be it.

      All that said, I see even as I’m actively bridging gaps that there are other gaps yet to bridge. The only thing to do is figure out how to create those outcomes too, then get after it with urgency. For the clock is ticking and time flies (tempus fugit) and we’re deep into our one precious life, so what are we waiting for?

    • Advancing

      “Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing towards what will be.” — Khalil Gibran

      Earlier this month I began a challenge to myself. I do this every summer in some form or another, but this one felt different. More urgency to get fit again, but also a more compelling reason to stay at it. And I’ve seen progress, even as I’ve been impatient for even more. The scale indicates I’m on the right track. The three books I’m rotating through will all be completed if I stay with them. The weight circuits indicate improved strength and aerobic fitness. All signs point to improvement, and yet I want more. We humans are never satisfied, are we?

      There’s a subtle difference between enhancing and advancing. In the former we are merely tweaking our comfort level to make a slight change. It’s like turning up the volume on the television—we’re making a change, but we’re still just sitting on the couch watching television. Advancing is a different story. It’s turning off that television and walking out of an old identity towards a new one.

      Slow progress is still progress. When we get wrapped up in how big the increments are, we lose sight of the destination we’re heading towards and begin to doubt the process for getting there. The journey is always the point anyway. The arrival at a goal is certainly something to celebrate, but it also closes a chapter of becoming. We became who we set out to be. We may savor it, but them move on to the next, for life is motion.

      How do we measure motion? By progress. Where did we begin and where are we now? Where are we now and where are we going to? Who we are now is simply an image in a reel of images on the motion picture of our life. We forget sometimes that we are not a still life, but a life in motion. One moment leads to the next and the next thereafter. We may choose to make those images dance and build a life of consequence. Focus on the advance, the increments will sort themselves out.

    • The Incremental and the Impatient

      “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” — Vincent Van Gogh

      Incremental progress is still progress. It may lack the excitement of an audacious leap forward, but there’s no denying that we’re going in the right direction, albeit slowly. Sometimes so slowly that it feels like we’ve reached a plateau. It can be a frustratingly slow transformation, when we dove into the change specifically for the change it promised to bring, and that’s why people drop resolutions almost immediately after they’ve embarked on them. We want instant gratification in this world. Like the spoiled rich kid in the Willie Wonka movie. But we know what happened to her.

      Incremental growth is the stuff of long term investment strategies and lifetime fitness. Bold leaps are inherently full of risk and reward calculations that don’t fit into important considerations like our health and financial well-being. Mothers and spouses and financial advisors tend to favor incremental, so they aren’t worries about their reckless loved ones. Being inclined towards reckless leaps now and then, I appreciate the steady focus my better half brings to the table.

      It comes down to impatience. When we are incrementally-minded, we develop the patience to let things play out until the transformation happens. When we are impatient, we change course the moment things aren’t going the way we expected them to go. Momentum dies when we’re constantly changing direction. By staying the course we learn the value of that steadiness over time. Patience is thus the virtue we were always told it was but didn’t believe until we saw it for ourselves.

      There’s value in both patience and impatience in our lives, and we ought to learn when to apply each to optimize our results. Bringing together a series of small steps completed can result in something beautiful in the end. One workout, one more day of paying ourselves first, one more page read, one more blog post, and one small brush stroke at a time accumulates into something, and that something then builds upon itself. Even when it feels like nothing is moving in the moment, momentum is established.