Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • 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?

    • Our One Passenger

      “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.

    • Fluidity

      “When you cut water, the water doesn’t get hurt; when you cut something solid, it breaks. You’ve got solid attitudes inside you; you’ve got solid illusions inside you; that’s what bumps against nature, that’s where you get hurt, that’s where the pain comes from.” —Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      Be fluid and the world becomes easier to navigate. Be rigid and you’ll soon find you keep running into things that contradict all that you believed. ’tis easier to flow through life open to whatever the day brings. If we find we don’t like what we encounter, flow in a different direction. We get to reinvent ourselves with every step if we break the mold of identity that holds us in place.

      We know that there are plenty of people who are rigid and unmoving. The “my way of the highway” types. Many of these people rise to power and influence history. But they’re often weak at the core; predictable, playable, easily distracted by a skilled tactician. They may be powerful, but they’re vulnerable at the same time. When we are creative, fluid and aware, we can navigate our way past them. The river always finds its way to the ocean.

      “Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
      Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
      ― Bruce Lee

      Does fluidity mean that we don’t stand for anything? Is that which we stand for a sign of rigidity? This is an exercise in what is essential for us in our lives. Is our identity locked in family or career or accolades? Is it honor? What is honor but a rigid belief in how we will navigate the world? I’m not suggesting we be dishonorable, merely that we know why we are rigidly holding to a standard. Our why is always what we will flow to, once we get beyond the obstacle that is blocking us from proceeding there.

      “Wherever you go, there you are.” — Thomas à Kempis

      Where are we? What is holding us in this place? Sometimes it’s forces beyond our control, but usually it’s something within us. When we know what the obstacle is, we may then find a way around it. Fluidity is simply openness to change. We are here, facing this. Is this a dam or will we find a way through or around whatever is keeping us here? More change is on the way (it always is), and flow is inevitable. Are we truly open to it?

    • A Day Away

      “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?