Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • Adapting to the Alpha Dog

      “Without the spur of competition we’d loaf out our life.” — Arnold Glasow

      We invited another dog into our home for the holidays, to help out a nephew who is away for a few days. The holidays are an interesting time to get to know a new dog, but she’s been a sweet pup in most every way. She is most definitely an alpha, and quickly established herself as such with our own pup. Our pup in turn learned to eat her meal immediately or risk losing it altogether to the other. We feed them in different rooms, but a girl only has to see her food eaten by another once or twice to hammer home the lesson. Live with urgency when your world turns competitive.

      I joined a new company a couple of months ago and have received phishing emails and texts from someone posing as the CEO a couple of times per week ever since. It’s easy to let our guard down in such circumstances, but we must always be vigilant. Those who would take all we’ve earned grow more sophisticated every day, and so we ourselves must learn and grow as well. A simple check with IT confirmed what I knew already: it was a phishing attack. The real CEO can still reach me if he wants to chat.

      We know that our true aim is personal excellence, but we still must keep an eye on the world around us. This world has always been competitive, and will be long after our last day in it. There’s always someone who wants what we want, so we must work harder to earn what we want for ourselves. And there’s always someone who wants what we have, so we must grow ever more resilient to protect what we’ve earned.

      It’s easy to get comfortable when we reach a certain place in our lives. The world in 2025 will surely be different from the years preceding it. We can’t just loaf our way through the changes, we must keep reinventing ourselves to survive, and maybe even to thrive. All of this reinvention may feel exhausting at times, but it’s simply personal growth hidden as work.

      That alpha dog visitor is still with us for a few more days. She’s been wonderful, but goodness she’s brought some changes to our home. It’s good to remember that our visitor is adapting to the challenge of living in a strange new home for a few days, full of creatures she doesn’t know all that well, and absent the people she’s grown to trust the most. We aren’t the only ones adapting to change. So reminding her that we’re equally invested in making it work is a good first step to growing together.

    • It’s the Zombies Who Burned the Witches

      “All empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability. Propositions, for instance, which set all the truth upon one side can only enter rich minds to dislocate and strain, if they can enter at all, and sooner or later the mind expels them by instinct.” — William Butler Yeats

      I stumbled upon the social media rantings of an old college friend recently. I was shocked by the conspiracy theories being spouted, and recoiled at the gap that has developed between her worldview and my own. I’d tried to debate her before on her accuracy, but alas, she wouldn’t budge. Another college friend reminded me of the line they use when logic isn’t working: If you only knew what I knew. Right. If only…

      I understand better how people once burned witches. They were simply too devoid of experience to understand the things happening to them. When we know how to prevent smallpox or the plague, or to mitigate infant mortality or crop failure, we stop blaming the neighbor’s daughter who looked at us funny. We’ve entered a time when extreme opinions are paralyzing our progress, and it’s a direct result of the poverty of experience in the daily diet of so many. We’re all in danger of being burned at the stake as we look at these people who once seemed normal spiral into conspiracy theories fueled by an over-reliance on “Internet facts”.

      Have you noticed that all of the people living in the world’s intellectual centers perish in the zombie apocalypse movies? The survivors all move to remote walled villages with high walls and guns that somehow kill already dead people. In the real world, the zombies are the people building walls that close out contrary opinions and buying guns to fend off those who would dare cross them. We all agree that we must not become zombies, we just don’t agree on what a zombie actually is.

      In truth, I am conspiring—to keep hope alive. To help people find informational nutrition, and with it, to form better opinions. To seek experience beyond the walls, where insight lives. That pendulum has to swing back to consensus and shared beliefs some day, right? The alternative is to build our own walls, and doesn’t the world have enough of those already?

    • Becoming Better at Seeing

      I was talking to one of my in-law’s neighbors while walking the pup on their street. The neighbor has reached a place where you might call her elderly and frail, but was out shoveling her driveway because her grandson hadn’t shown up to do it. We’re all so busy this time of year… the grandson surely wouldn’t have let his grandmother shovel her driveway alone on a frigid day, but he wasn’t there to witness it and step in. My daughter and I were, and finished her driveway, cleared off her car and asked her if she wanted to come over to join us at the holiday party we were having. She politely declined and thanked us for the invitation.

      We become comfortable in our routines, even when those routines don’t make sense for us anymore. In a perfect world the tribe would revere and support the tribal elders. We live in a world where we’re tapped out and stretched thin, and sometimes we don’t get around to making the call or stopping by to see how those tribal elders are doing. Often they’re holding on by a thread, doing the best they can. A burst of snow quickly freezing into concrete has the potential to put someone over the edge without a lifeline.

      When we slow down a beat and stop rushing on to the next thing with our blinders on, our peripheral vision improves greatly. There are people moving through this world who easily see gaps and fill them with their full attention. I aspire to be more like them, while knowing I’m one of those people who are often too busy to have that situational awareness. We all want to help, don’t we? We just don’t always see. As we move down our path towards personal excellence, becoming better at seeing and solving is something to aspire to. We’re all in this tribe together, aren’t we?

    • Stepping Into Change

      So let this winter
      of listening
      be enough
      for the new life
      I must call my own.
      — David Whyte, The Winter of Listening

      I met a friend for a pint yesterday. It turned into a small pub crawl between two breweries as the crisp air filled with swirling snow. We talked of the familiar and the forever changing as the snow accumulated and the town roads clogged with drivers uncertain about what to do when the world turns white again. With a nod to the familiar we needed to return to, we cut our reunion short and joined the other drivers while our heads were still clear enough to join the fray.

      Snowflakes melt on the back of my neck as I moved the brush around the truck, feeling my footing on snowy concrete with the anticipation of slippery roads. Like any skill that’s been dormant for some time, walking and driving on icy roads is muscle memory. It all comes back quickly, we just need to take it slowly while the rust clears. We’ve been together before, the winter whispers reassuringly, and sure enough one tentative step brings us to the next and soon we’re safely home again.

      December often hints at changes to come in our lives. Mine is no exception; change has whispered in my ear for months. When the world starts swirling with the forever changing, we may carry the reassurance of having been here before. The landscape may change in disorienting ways, but we’ve developed the skills to navigate this new world safely on our journey of becoming. Keep a clear head and listen for what whispers. Stepping into change is nothing new for us.

    • Time Is Our Treasure

      If I could make days last forever
      If words could make wishes come true
      I’d save every day like a treasure and then
      Again, I would spend them with you
      — Jim Croce, Time in a Bottle

      When I was younger, I felt that time flew by. Now my kids talk about how quickly time flies. One day maybe I’ll have grandchildren making the observation. Humans have been making this observation since our brains developed to discern such things as time and our place in it. Tempus fugit.

      We’re told to treasure each day, for each is the most valuable thing we can spend. Time is our treasure. Some spend frivolously, some frugally. We ourselves work to maximize our days, but still see too much of our time slip away. We aren’t meant to have it all, maybe just enough. All we can do is the best we can with it.

      Awareness seems to be the magic ingredient for savoring. We develop a taste for living when we view it all as buried treasure in the sands of time. What lies hidden from us is revealed day-by-day, captured in photographs and memories. Our treasure is as substantial as we make it.

    • The Heart of Wisdom

      “Anticipation is the heart of wisdom. If you are going to cross a desert, you anticipate that you will be thirsty, and you take water.” ― Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War

      I’m anticipating a busy day, filled with traffic and a desire to get there already. Knowing what’s in front of me, I’ve already filled the gas tank, arranged the dog sitter, agreed on a meeting place and worked through contingency plans. And all of this is just for a Thursday night in the city. Anticipation can make us nervous and edgy, or it can set the table for success. It’s all in how we dance with it.

      All that preparation is wisdom in disguise. We learn from past mistakes and, having survived it, prepare better for the next time. Challenges arise as they always do, we’re simply more ready for them than we might have been before we accumulated that wisdom.

      Taking care of the basics first is essential. The act of taking water with us anywhere we go is rarely going to work against us (TSA checkpoints excepted), along with a snack and another layer to make us comfortable when the weather inevitably changes. Maybe mom was right all along.

      And this hints at the secret to wisdom. Perhaps the wisest thing we can do is to borrow wisdom from those who have suffered similar challenges before us. History offers lessons for those who pay attention. We may be making great leaps forward in technology and available knowledge, but none of it means a thing if we go back to reinventing the wheel at the start of each journey.

    • The Noble Road

      “There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” — Ernest Hemingway

      I was out for a walk on the local rail trail, looking at the ice formations developing on the ledge, when I noticed someone had tagged some of the rock face. My opinion of tagging isn’t positive. It’s someone spray-painting inane symbols of self importance on something that in many cases was more beautiful before the affront. And yet I’m a fan of street art. It’s the same paint, but in my opinion the intent is different. I value order over chaos, and tagging nature is chaos in my mind. Collectively, we must choose a better path.

      I’m a better technical writer than I once was if only because I think more about the semicolon in Hemingway’s quote and the em dash I used to credit him for the quote than I did when I began blogging. But being a technical writer was never the aspiration (no doubt my writing still makes an editor shudder). Being a person who has something interesting to write about is the true goal. Some days are full of growth in this regard, some days leave something to be desired. The road to better continues upward.

      Better in and of itself is useless unless we leverage it for growth and enlightenment. The noble road is a path of goodwill towards others, of mutual support for common goals and uncommon dreams. It’s Kaizen (constant and never-ending improvement of the self) with the aim of arete (that forever evasive personal excellence). We may never reach excellence, but the climb towards it has a nicer view.

      We know that art is highly subjective, and one person’s junk is another’s art. I may not understand or appreciate some art for all that it represents, but I generally find connection in the intent of the work. When an artist aspires towards excellence, it shines through in both their art and in how they move through the world. We can see when someone is on the noble road just as easily as we can see when they’re on the road to ruin. The trick is to rise above the distractions of life and see which road we ourselves are on.

    • The Thing Speaks For Itself

      I’m not a lawyer by trade, but I still believe in law and order. In legal doctrine there is a Latin phrase, “res ipsa loquitur” that means “the thing speaks for itself.” We may apply that phrase to many things in the world right now, and shake our heads at how we got here, but ultimately we must begin with what we can control. When it comes to our own behavior, the law is our standard for who we want to be in this world, and order is our routine or system, best seen in the daily habits that make something of our days.

      Bill Belichick has a philosophy that every New England football fan can recite in their sleep; “It is what it is.” Applied to our lives, these two phrases clarify where we are. The good, the bad and the ugly are all laid out for us. It is what it is, and the thing speaks for itself. We may add, “We’re on to Cincinnati”, as Belichick also famously said. For those in the know, that means what’s done is done and we’re only focused on this next thing now.

      But we can’t just flip the script and move on to whatever the next thing is in our lives without awareness of where we are, how we got here and thus, what to change in our way of doing things that will put us in a position for success on that next thing. To change we must know what needs to change. Jim Collins calls this confronting the brutal facts, that we may move from good to great.

      We’re close to the end of the runway on this year. What have we done with the time? No doubt there were some brilliant moments, but also a few stumbles. Which habits held up? What’s fallen by the wayside that needs to be changed or revived? Whatever we’ve done, whatever we’ve become, the thing speaks for itself. So what are we going to do about it?

    • A Sense of Our Season

      “The follies which a person regrets the most in his life, are those which he didn’t commit when he had an opportunity.” — Helen Rowland

      What season are we in? I don’t mean autumn (as this is published), I mean what season of life are we in? There are things we regret not doing in each season of our life carrying us to here, and things we celebrate having done before that door closed forever. The trick is developing a sense of our season and learning to optimize wherever we are now.

      Lingering in the past is either a comforter that warms us or an albatross weighing us down. Either way, it’s not serving us today. We may know that our past decisions created who we are now, whatever that looks like for us, but it only influences tomorrow to the extent that we keep holding on to whatever we’re carrying. Previous choices are merely lessons learned that must be invested in our decisions going forward. Just learn the most important lesson: don’t make the same mistakes over and over again.

      I’ve reached a point where I don’t want to carry the weight of what a younger version of me didn’t do once in another season and instead focus on doing what I can do in the now. For me, comfortable routines were always the whisper of what felt like reason holding me back from adventures I might have taken. Knowing that tendency within me, I simply ask myself whether the next step is towards comfort or adventure, and which will I regret not taking one day in my future? What’s the worst that can happen? It’s usually not all that bad, and probably not as bad as carrying regret for the rest of our days.

      The currency of our lives are time, wealth and health, and we spend what we have in each season. Saving for the future makes some sense (we all like having a nest egg), but some currency can never be used in future seasons and can’t be wasted by not spending it now. Health is a good example of that. A younger, more fit version of me toyed with the idea of running a marathon. Those days are long gone now. Will I regret not having run one on my deathbed? Probably not, but the fact is I missed my chance.

      We may never have just the right amount of health, wealth and time, but we may have just enough of each to do something special with the season we’re in. And whatever that season is, we ought to do more with it, simply because we may not have the right ratio of currency in future seasons. And that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Do something special with this season before it’s gone, when all we’re left with are regrets.

    • Far More Than Nothing

      You get up every day, you are entitled to nothing.
      Nobody owes you nothing.
      You can have talent, but if you don’t have discipline, you don’t execute or focus, what do you get? Nothing.
      If you’re complacent and not paying attention to detail, what do you get? Nothing.
      So nothing is acceptable except your best.
      Everything is determined by you trying to be your best so you can build on positive performance.
      That is the only thing, and there should be nothing else.
      We can’t accept nothing but our best.
      — Nick Saban, The Importance of Nothing

      We must ship the work in its time, as Seth Godin reminds us, even when it doesn’t feel like the best we could offer the universe when it ships. Nothing matters more than putting out the best we’ve got at the moment. We learn and refine and grow from that release of our work to the universe, and must then leverage that to do it all over again, but better.

      Our best changes all the time as we change. My best rowing time for 2000 meters was in my early 20’s, and I know I’ll never see sub-6 minutes again in my lifetime. But I can get more fit than I am now, and beat the times I’ve posted earlier this year. Improvement is relative to where and who we are now. Better is always on the table for something.

      I’m a better writer than I was ten years ago, simply because I do it every day and I’ve developed the muscle memory to convey what I’m thinking into words on a screen. More than that, I’ve read a few hundred books in that time span, lived through a pandemic and my children growing up and people I care about passing away and a whole host of other experiences that have tangibly changed who I was then to who I am now. Simply put, our best is way better at some things now than ever before. There is always a season for some highly developed skillset or knowledge that we may bring to the world now.

      Without shipping our work we have nothing. Doing our best at the things we feel are most essential for us is the clear path to personal excellence (arete). Perhaps a poetic speech by an old football coach will be just the thing to shake those ideas loose, that we may do our best in our one and only today. Perhaps arete will be evasive today, but we may get that much closer to it than ever before. Maybe our best will be enough for today, or maybe not. But the attempt to reach it is far more than nothing.