Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • Ditch the Drift

      “If information isn’t nurtured with action, it loses its power.”
      — Sahil Bloom

      I believe that I’ve read well north of a thousand books in my lifetime. Honestly, I’ve lost track. And I’ve listened to at least that many podcasts and other interviews with notable people in this world, all to glean a bit of wisdom that might move me closer to that evasive personal excellence (arete) I aspire to reach one day before I reach my expiration date. Each day we’re moving closer to or further away from this evasive arete, and the secret to the direction we’re going is hiding in plain sight: Take action immediately.

      We are what we repeatedly do, Aristotle pointed out as the path to excellence. How many times have we heard it said and not acted upon it? What are we repeatedly doing? Deferring progress for stasis? Breathlessly reading another book that promises the way won’t get us there unless we merge into the fast lane ourselves.

      “Do or do not. There is no try.” — Yoda

      The only way for us to retain the information we absorb is to act on it. Otherwise it drifts away into nothingness. Words without action are also known as drifting. String too many days together of going through the motions and we find that we’ve slipped noticeably. We get a little less sharp, a little softer. We slip a notch on the belt. Lethargy is no way to go through life, friend. We must act now or drift forever. Personal excellence is a life of action and purpose. Do or do not—the choice is ours. Ditch the drift.

    • Building Breadth and Depth

      “The length of your education is less important than its breadth, and the length of your life is less important than its depth.”
      — Marilyn vos Savant

      Many of us go through a stage in life where we’ve collected our diplomas and degrees and feel that we’re finally educated, and then realize when we walk out into the world that we don’t really know as much as we thought we did. A formal education is nothing but a starting point for a lifetime of learning. We can be both very smart and not very full of accumulated wisdom. Of course, we can also be devoid of both intelligence and wisdom and never realize it. Such people usually talk very loudly and confidently, and quickly put the spotlight on the imperfections of others to hide their own. We all know the type all too well now.

      When we reach the end of our lives, we may feel that we’ve left some experiences on the table that we wish we’d pursued more. The better thing to focus on is what we said yes to in our lives, at the expense of those no’s. We can dabble in many things but only master one or two at most. Are we here for mastery or to be a generalist? Just how broad a life do we wish to have? Just how deeply do we wish to go in any given area of our lives? Deathbed regrets are inevitable, for we can’t possibly do it all, but we can surely have a go at a few things.

      I’ve noticed that several of my neighbors have retired recently. I talk to them and every one of them are exuberant and engaged in something. One man has tapped his maple trees to try to make maple syrup. Another has invested heavily in woodworking equipment and turned his engineering skills into fine furniture. And a couple of close friends are currently bobbing at anchor in the Bahamas, dreaming of a bigger boat than the beautiful one they’re currently sailing on, that they may expand on already expansive experience.

      Many of us are not at an age or inclination to retire just yet, but we can chip away at accumulating wisdom and experience just the same. The trick for all of us is to live an ever-expansive life each day, regardless of the stage of life we’re currently in. Experience builds on itself, layer-by-layer, and we grow into a broader and deeper version of ourselves with each. Our minds and our lives are what we make of them. So by all means: get back to building.

    • Answers

      “Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.” — William S. Burroughs

      Yes, and how many years must a mountain exist
      Before it is washed to the sea?
      And how many years can some people exist
      Before they’re allowed to be free?
      Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
      And pretend that he just doesn’t see?
      The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
      — Bob Dylan, Blowin’ in the Wind

      The world is a confusing mess that we may either work to make sense of or practice active avoidance of. Most of us are somewhere in the middle. I used to pride myself on reading the news every day, and doubled down by watching the news every morning to be informed before I stepped out the door. It was my way of having a perspective on things when asked for my opinion, but also because I thought it was my duty as a citizen to know what the hell was happening.

      Lately, I’ve had an ongoing dialogue with a good friend about which media source is most unbiased. We all should know that they’re all biased, because they’re all hoping for enough traction to be profitable, but which is the best for fair and mostly unbiased information? Those who follow one source for all information are a slave to that source. We must seek information from multiple sources and sort it out ourselves.

      Or not. The historian in me knows the truth is never found in the headlines, but in the stories that come out long after the dust settles. We know certain truths, but we certainly don’t know everything. The lens of time offers true perspective. And even though we see the world burning, even though we may feel outraged far more than we ever believed we’d be outraged at this point in human history, we must separate emotion from the moment and see what happens (while fighting for what’s right in this world).

      We know that those who say they have it all figured out are generally full of crap and trying to sell us something (well, unfortunately, slightly less than half of us know that). Knowing everything is not in the cards. Our answers will come to us in time, if we’re lucky enough to have time, and so we must rely on what we believe to be true for us and set ourselves in a direction that feels right.

      All that said, the historian in me also knows that history is written by the victors, and vast swaths of truth have been swept aside and blown away in the winds of time. We’ll never know the full story about anything, only what we are able to capture and discern. The trick for us in this moment is to ensure that we come out on the other side to bring the truth to the future.

      And that brings me back to the Burroughs quote that kicked us off today. We must learn to quiet our minds and find the answers within ourselves in the context of the times we live in. To be aware of the world is essential for navigating within it, but we cannot forget to turn inward and listen to what our own truth is. And if we find those answers, we may set our compass in a direction that carries us through the confusion and madness in the world to a place we know deep down is right for us.

    • The Finest of Impulses

      “Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.” — Henry Miller

      Tempus fugit: time flies. And every night I slip into bed feeling like I’d just done it an instant ago. We become what we repeatedly do, as Aristotle reminded us. I remind myself of that every morning and wonder every night, “have I done enough today?” The answer lies in another question: “what is enough for what I want out of life?”

      We might act on our finest impulses today, or not. We might get swept up in the madness in the world. It’s what those creating the madness would like for us, isn’t it? To get swept up makes it easier for us to be swept away. Time is doing that quickly enough, thank you. To navigate life soundly one must have a level head, grit and resolve. So don’t let the bastards grind you down. And to make something out of our time here we must add awareness, focus and an inclination to act on the things we’re focused on. So get to it already.

      If we are derived similarly, it stands to reason that the thing that differentiate one life from another is what we do with the time. To make something glorious, or to tear down everything savagely is just the same in one way only: they both acted on their impulses. What makes one fine and another less so but the judgement of humanity for ever more? If we value those around us and those who would come after us, we ought to be thinking beyond ourselves with the things we produce. To contribute, not to take away. But hey, that’s me talking.

      Anyway, have a nice day. It may be all we’ve got, or a step on our path to personal excellence a series of days from now, but it remains our miracle of the moment. What is one to do with a miracle but make the most of it? And perhaps that’s our call to action with this one. The only thing certain is that it will go quickly. So act on the finest of impulses today.

    • Calibrating for Greatness

      “If you make the choice of reading classic literature every day for a year, rather than reading the news, by the end of that time period you’ll have a more honed sensitivity for recognizing greatness from the books than from the media.
      This applies to every choice we make. Not just with art, but with the friends we choose, the conversations we have, even the thoughts we reflect on. All of these aspects affect our ability to distinguish good from very good, very good from great. They help us determine what’s worthy of our time and attention…
      The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness. So we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work.” — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

      We have the opportunity to do something with our lives. We may reach closer to personal excellence (arete) and achieve that which we’d only imagined. Arete looks different for each of us, but we know when we see a glimmer of it in those who rise to meet it. And it stands to reason that if we wish to get closer to personal excellence ourselves, we must also rise to meet greatness where it resides. We must climb beyond where we’ve been and work towards it.

      I have some exceptional people in my life who are currently outraged by the things happening in the United States. I grow quiet when they talk about it, not because I’m not also outraged, but because focusing on the worst in others takes our focus away from our own climb to greater things. It recalibrates us for outrage.

      The point isn’t to ignore it all and just let it fester, it’s to grow into one’s own potential. We are what we focus on the most. We mustn’t be dragged down by putrefaction and the strategic dismantling of our higher collective vision. We are builders of greatness—don’t ever lose sight of that. We must take to the heights, now more than ever.

      The heights by great men reached and kept
      Were not attained by sudden flight,
      But they, while their companions slept,
      Were toiling upward in the night.
      — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Ladder of St. Augustine

      This is a time in our lives when we may achieve greatly, whatever that means for us. The world is more frustrating than ever, but it’s always been so. In our darkest days of human history, those who would reach for personal excellence found a way to climb. And so too must we in our time.

      Climbing requires energy and a level of focus that comes from inspiration. We are what we repeatedly do, and surely we are also what we repeatedly consume. To actualize excellence, to bring it into existence within ourselves and our work, we must develop a taste for it. Nurture a deep hunger to do more with our brief time before it all goes away. We may find excellence throughout human history, including today. There it all is, hiding in plain sight: we must simply lift our gaze to find it. Having seen it in others and in their contribution, we may then climb to meet it ourselves.

    • Tiny Robots

      “Some years ago, there was a lovely philosopher of science and journalist in Italy named Giulio Giorello, and he did an interview with me. And I don’t know if he wrote it or not, but the headline in Corriere della Sera when it was published was “Sì, abbiamo un’anima. Ma è fatta di tanti piccoli robot – “Yes, we have a soul, but it’s made of lots of tiny robots.” And I thought, exactly. That’s the view. Yes, we have a soul, but in what sense? In the sense that our brains, unlike the brains even of dogs and cats and chimpanzees and dolphins, our brains have functional structures that give our brains powers that no other brains have – powers of look-ahead, primarily. We can understand our position in the world, we can see the future, we can understand where we came from. We know that we’re here. No buffalo knows it’s a buffalo, but we jolly well know that we’re members of Homo sapiens, and it’s the knowledge that we have and the can-do, our capacity to think ahead and to reflect and to evaluate and to evaluate our evaluations, and evaluate the grounds for our evaluations.

      It’s this expandable capacity to represent reasons that we have that gives us a soul. But what’s it made of? It’s made of neurons. It’s made of lots of tiny robots. And we can actually explain the structure and operation of that kind of soul, whereas an eternal, immortal, immaterial soul is just a metaphysical rug under which you sweep your embarrassment for not having any explanation.”
      ― Daniel C. Dennett

      I finally deleted some social media from my phone. I’ve tried hard to simply ignore it altogether, to be the one who posts pictures of family and friends, to wish people a happy birthday or sorry for your loss. To generally be that supportive, trusted associate that I try to be in real life. I felt like the social media version of Sisyphus, forever pushing that rock up the hill only to have it roll back down again to start over. Why push against advertisements and zealots? Move on to living life one blessed day at a time.

      I believe what is wrong with the world right now is that there are millions of people who are getting excited without direction. It’s like a petri dish with electric wires zapping the inhabitants now and then, just to see them get excited and bump into each other. That’s media and politics and some so-called religious organizations, all zapping the masses. But it’s also us, stirred up and zapping each other. Why stay in that mosh pit of despair and anger? The only answer is to climb out of the petri dish and see the world for ourselves.

      The thing is, when we step away from the noise, we may read more, or catch up with people we’d like to see more of. We may phone a friend, just to surprise them when they see our name pop up out of the blue. We may take a walk or row 5000 meters without distraction, listening instead to our bodies, even if we may not love what it has to tell us. Read a little poetry, dance and sing along to a naughty song from our youth, plant some seeds in hopes of a better tomorrow. There’s so much more to do than to forever push a rock uphill.

      Our daily lives are a series of habits and routines channeling us from one day to the next. We may love who we are and where we’re going, but it stands to reason that we ought to question everything anyway, just to affirm that this is in fact what we ought to be doing with this one precious life. This whole game is our miracle, and we ignore the fact that it’s a miracle and it’s our one go at the game at our peril. We may be made up of tiny robots, but the sum of us may choose to think and act towards a higher vision of itself, should we steer the ship in a direction that genuinely excites us.

    • Curiosity and Wonder

      “Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why.” — Bernard Baruch

      Having raised a couple of exceptional humans with my collaborator bride, I appreciate the wisdom in nurturing curiosity and wonder in our children. Even as they now expand further into adulthood, we may still offer them clues about how to navigate the world through our example. I suppose we become successful in life when people view our perspective as some form of wisdom, instead of as an example of what not to do. We should aspire to always be the adult in the room, while entering that room with a playful, curious heart.

      We step into the future as if turning the page in a mystery novel. Sometimes eager, sometimes fearful, but hopefully always with the ripe anticipation of something. Each day well spent with curiosity and wonder brings us progressively closer to that evasive goal of wisdom and personal excellence. We may know we’ll never reach either but still get closer with each day. We hand what we’ve learned to future generations with the hope that they’ll avoid the same mistakes we made.

      Humanity celebrates discovery as milestones in our collective wisdom. Those millions of people who observed apples falling before Newton asked why knew the connection between their own two feet on the ground and that apple seeking to join the party, they just didn’t write it down and publish it first. We may all celebrate the discoveries and miracles in our everyday without the notoriety. The real question we must forever be asking ourselves is, what are we really looking for? And why does it matter anyway?

    • Principled and Pliable

      “For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” — Charles Bukowski

      This is no time to be frozen in fear at the future. Life teaches us that those who remain rigid eventually get shattered when the cold wind blows. Be pliable but principled. This is our magic elixir, our truth serum. The juice that makes us truly alive.

      Borrowed principle is taking the word of some authority figure of the moment saying theirs is the only truth and blindly following along with it. That’s not pliable, that’s being unrooted in principle. Those who are unrooted get swept up in the current and are eventually flushed away.

      Principle is the discipline developed and set from within. It’s come from the mind, body and soul. This is who I am, and this is what I stand for. We all must develop principle or we will forever stumble through the darkness, latching on to anyone’s supposed truth as a lifeline.

      Pliability is a reaction to the forces beyond our control. Don’t let those forces break you, friend! Learn to bend when a bend is needed, but develop the agility necessary to not break at the application of forces out of our control. Pliability doesn’t mean compromising our integrity, it means questioning the dictates the world lays down upon us and finding the truth for ourselves. We become what we say no to perhaps more than for what we say yes to.

      This is our path forward. Principle and pliability: strongly rooted but flexible enough to stand the storm. This too shall pass. We may dance in the maddening winds of change and make this time our own, just hold on for dear life to something solid within.

    • Free Will

      “That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call ‘free will’ is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom. [This is] the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and character.” — Ayn Rand

      “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
      ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

      We ought to listen more to the voices of those who survived the darkness of authoritarianism. We ignore their voices at our peril, we remind ourselves, without fully grasping just how close darkness can be in any given moment. This is no time for apathy and indifference. Ah, but there is no time in our lives when apathy and indifference should be allowed to exist. It’s our life, after all! We must choose the path of self-determination and active participation as if our very future depended on it.

      Our toll in this lifetime is to live fully aware of all that exists and to deal with it with the currency we have available. The universe will remain forever indifferent, the world itself will attempt to shrug us off, and life will always be unfair. Wars and natural disasters and tragedies are always going to be a part of our story. We may wish it weren’t so, but wishing doesn’t pay the piper. We may choose how we react to these truths in this ridiculous blip of time we exist in before we are drawn into the vacuum of infinity.

      So choose well! That is our only real choice today and forever more. Face the truth of who we are and what surrounds us, muster up all that we’ve accumulated thus far in our database and make the best choice possible now. We may choose to step into the next moment boldly, exercising our free will and the audaciousness that develops with routinely going a little farther than we did in our last choice. In this way we may freely dance into our future self for as many days as we are given.

    • Reasonable Times

      “No man can predict the time when others will choose to return to reason.” — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

      We find ourselves in unreasonable times. We know this because reason and logic are shouted down and marginalized by lusty zealots with a thirst for power, and their behavior is celebrated by their followers and enablers. When enough reasonable, logical people are shouted down, the rest learn to keep their mouths shut. That’s no way to climb the mountain of progress, it’s a spiral into chaos.

      Whether the world shifts towards order or towards chaos is largely out of our control, all we can control is how we react to the forces around us. We may choose to be reasonable (to thoughtfully use reason) ourselves. To seek first to understand and then to act in a way consistent with our climb to personal excellence (arete). There’s nothing excellent in shouting down someone we disagree with, nor is there excellence in bowing to the will of a bully or in putting our head in the sand and wishing it would all go away.

      It’s said that the universe favors chaos over order. That doesn’t mean that we should accept riots in the streets, but rather, that change is inevitable. Our own stability lies in toeing the line between chaos and order and learning how to improve our balance. This too shall pass—it always does eventually. If we put ourselves in a position to meet change prepared, antifragile and resilient, we may actually thrive on the changes. So maybe these times seem unreasonable, and really, who am I to argue? But we have agency, we have reason, and we may endeavor to hold the line that favors order in our own lives.