Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • 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.

    • If We Are To

      “Which was the braver, the one who left, or the one who stayed?”
      ― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

      Craven’s book was made into a movie that I think about sometimes. As an upperclassman I watched it in a class taught by a great professor who I wished I’d stayed in touch with. Now that I’m the age that some of those great professors were at then, I sometimes wish aging wasn’t a thing at all—that we might play by a different rule as humans where accumulation of experience might bring us together in the same place and time.

      Aging is a thing. And we do have an opportunity to come together with people of our own time, as those giants from our past grow more distant by the day. Or rather, we do. The person we remember is trapped in the amber of those moments. We simply catch up to where they were once. Who’s to say how far they have gone since? And who’s to say how far we may go ourselves? We know that answer is hiding in plain sight.

      We must move on from who we once were if we are to become something else. If we are to strive to meet our potential. If we are to dare to reach closer to personal excellence. There are a lot of “If we are to’s” in a lifetime. We learn that excellence isn’t static, it’s a carrot on a stick just out of reach but making us hungrier by the day. Sometimes we’re so busy reaching for the carrot we forget we’re satiated already. Sometimes we tell ourselves we’re satiated just to stifle the ache of hunger.

      We play by the rules made by someone else or we step off the trail and blaze our own. What makes the person who steps away any braver than the one who stays to keep it all together? The answer lies in the question itself: What is it that we keep together anyway? What is it that we step away from? Are we trapped in the amber of who we once aspired to be or still striving to reach another version of ourselves? Bravery is facing these questions squarely and having the agency to do something with the answers. Whether we stay or we go, we must dare to grow.

    • Quiet and Clear

      “Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.”
      — Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

      If we’re lucky, we’re born being the center of attention after our big birthday debut. That attention is inevitably diluted, but the hunger for it remains. Some crave attention so much that they’ll do anything to keep it. The world stage is full of such characters. The rest of us find our voice in ways big and small. Real power comes when we recognize that attention doesn’t matter as much as influence does.

      I try to move through this world a listener. Two ears and one mouth, as the saying goes. Yet I’m often the one who speaks up in a group, not to be first, not to be loudest, but because I’m engaged. It follows that when we truly listen, we become interested. The world could use far more interested and engaged listeners, so why not be one?

      Awareness develops when we give ourselves the space to find it. Constantly trying to fill empty space with chatter in a conversation is a lot like rapidly skimming the page trying to get the gist of what a poet is trying to say. We aren’t immersed in the moment and so we miss far more than we believe we have. The opportunity for understanding drifts away in a staccato of words.

      To try to understand everything is to understand nothing. And so we must learn to filter out the noise and favor comprehension. What has this person got to say? How do we respond? Attention is fleeting, but insight offers lift. We rise together when we learn to discover the quiet truth in what each has to say.

    • Honor

      “The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.” — Socrates

      The world is full of honor, but it is also full of people who fall short of honorable behavior. We may be rightfully outraged by the dishonorable, but we ought to remember that we live in a glass house before we throw stones. The question of honor always begins with the one person we can control. When we realize this and begin to hold ourselves to a higher standard, we tend to rise to meet it.

      To simply do what we tell ourselves we’re going to do is so very easy, and so very hard all at once. I’m still writing every day, not because I aspire to clicks and comments, but because I promised myself I’d do it. On the flip side, I have a rowing ergometer gathering dust because I can’t seem to find the time to row for a few minutes in my busy days. There’s honor in showing up. There’s no honor in finding excuses. And still there’s hope for us if we’d only try another day.

      The act of being is a journey of discovery. We learn something new about ourselves every day. Sometimes we like what we see, sometimes we recoil in disgust, but we ought to learn to be patiently persistent with the student. No matter what the world does, we may become more honorable every day, so long as we keep showing up aspiring towards improvement. Personal excellence demands our best. Our best begins with honor.

    • What is Woven

      “What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
      — Pericles

      There was an “until next time” moment yesterday amongst a gathering of friends. We have such moments every day without realizing it, in every moment of parting from people who are a part of our lives. It’s in those moments when we know the stakes are higher that we really feel the connection and pending separation. We are departing from one another’s lives for some time, but we leave inferring we’ll see each other again. Until next time implies there will be a next time. The alternative is fare thee well or simply, farewell or goodbye. Why close doors with people we hope to see again one day?

      A gap between a farewell and a hello may be clearly defined or completely up to fate, but there is a gap nonetheless. And so it is that we live our lives with countless gaps between who once filled our days. We learn to close those gaps by filling them with more experience, more relationships, and more knowledge. The alternative is to live with the bitterness of feeling unfulfilled, and blaming the world for our gaps. There’s too many people living that kind of existence already, aren’t there? So very angry at gaps they might have filled instead.

      The trick is to live a life so profound that a gap is felt when we aren’t present. To be the kind of person others want to be around or return to. It’s more than being “interesting”, it’s being “interested”: actively engaged in the lives of those around us. To be a weaver, instead of living an adjacent life like some fellow commuter in the lane next to ours, never known, never missed, simply occupying space as we zip through life. We must earn the feeling of absence when we aren’t around.

      So fare thee well or until next time or simply goodbye, but let’s remember to stay in touch, friend. We don’t have to make a big deal of such moments, merely to acknowledge that the world is changing and so are we. The journey brings us into proximity some days and pulls us away other days. The resulting gap is an opportunity to gauge the depth of what we’ve meant to each other and the collection of memories we might reflect on one day.

    • Before Dust

      If we begin to count our blessings we could cull up the very stones
      and bones in the pavement, but we’d never count the dust.
      We distrust what we become.
      — Ada Limón, High Water

      “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust” — Book of Common Prayer

      We know the score. We’re all going to leave this world at some point, and return to the earth. But before we become dust we are alive. And so we must learn to live in our time.

      We ought to be grateful for who we are and what we have, for it is our core, our identity, our foundation for all that we may become. The fact that we are stardust turned into someone who may build a ship capable of taking us to the edge of the universe (or alternatively, to binge watch Netflix) is a miracle. Who are we to forsake miracles?

      To seek answers to the questions of these recurring, if only to find a spark of truth to light the way. We are the next in line to find folly in the human condition. We might simply use our time to seek connection and purpose with our fellow passengers on this voyage through to the unknown. We are blessed with this, after all. Before dust, make something beautiful.

    • The Attentive Student

      “To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self. And to venture in the highest is precisely to be conscious of one’s self.” ― Søren Kierkegaard

      For better or worse, the life I built around venturing changed during the pandemic and again when I changed jobs last year. The hotel, air carrier and rental car status and points have faded to nothing. The blog used to feature more travel, and now I venture inward more often than I cross borders. So it goes—and so it must go.

      An inclination to venture is a lovely thing indeed, but it’s the self that we are seeking to find. To constantly be in motion without slowing down to examine the self is evasive. Sooner or later we’ve got to become aware of who we are and what we’re doing with the time we have. My time has grown more productive simply by slowing down enough to be present.

      The travel is booked and will happen soon enough, if fate allows. We can steer the ship but cannot control the wind. Life will determine itself moment-to-moment. Our job is to take it all in and assess where we are and what to do with what we have. From there we venture where we may.

      To know the self ought to be our highest aspiration. So do travel, but also read and meander observantly through the garden and most of all, listen to what the universe is telling us. Each day is a lesson awaiting the attentive student. Bon voyage.