Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • The Rich Lens of Attention

      The dream of my life
      Is to lie down by a slow river
      And stare at the light in the trees—
      To learn something by being nothing
      A little while but the rich
      Lens of attention.
      — Mary Oliver, Entering the Kingdom

      Restless and productive, that’s this life—knowing there’s work to be done. If not us, then who? Blame it on my GenX tendencies. I’ve been fighting it all of my life. An entire generation has fought it all of their lives. We’re all complex contradictions of motivation and awareness. Or maybe that’s just me lumping the lot of them in with me just to save face.

      Even writing this (even writing this!), I turned to my work laptop to dash off an email that’s percolated to priority. How can one linger with poetry or walk quietly amongst the trees when the mind is full of the minutia of a productive life? We must learn to say enough is enough in our lives, before it all floats away to illuminate the dreams of other, more open minds.

      The thing is, every day is our lesson in living. We choose to be aware and attentive, or we swim deeper into the tumultuous red ocean fraught with ravenous sharks and whirlpools that drag us downward into the depths of other people’s priorities. Alternatively, we can swim to calmer waters, away from the chaos that would consume us, and discover a new life.

      Decide what to be and go be it. Our lives will be the richer for it.

    • A Future Sky

      What shape
      waits in the seed of you
      to grow and spread
      its branches
      against a future sky?
      — David Whyte, What to Remember When Waking

      I saw a seal this morning, a dark shape floating quietly in the bay, unmistakeable, assessing the rising sun, perhaps, or more likely catching a breath before diving for breakfast once again. As with these things, the binoculars were handy but not the camera, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. Walking down to try to catch another glimpse, I saw nothing and everything all at once. Let’s go with everything this morning.

      My mind is full of change lately. This blog is full of change lately. The same yet different.

      We cannot predict the future or our place in it, we can only choose a path and work towards that which we dreamed of becoming. Castles in the air, as Thoreau put it, must have a foundation. Work on that today. Tomorrow will unfold as it may.

    • Release It

      “Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.” — William James

      We marvel at those who are exceptional in their pursuits. Those who reach the pinnacle of achievement are rare and fascinating to behold. We can rattle off their names, envision them rising to meet their greatest moments, and wonder at how much more we humans can achieve. That many of them are flawed in other aspects of their lives offers some reassurance that nobody is perfect. We all have crosses to bear, after all, but just look at how they soar when they leave it behind.

      Naturally, this gets us thinking about what we’re doing with our own unlimited potential. Mostly we try to get through the day, hoping the commute home isn’t too bad. To reach for personal excellence (arete) seems just out of reach. But that’s where arete is meant to be.

      We aren’t meant to ever reach perfection, we are here to climb as close to it as we may, given the limitations of a lifetime. That doesn’t make the ascent less worthy—it makes our daily excuses all the more tragic.

      Please release me, let me go
      For I don’t love you anymore
      To waste our lives would be a sin
      Release me and let me love again
      — Engelbert Humperdinck, Release Me

      (Isn’t it crazy what resides within us, yearning to be released? Some things must be released as quickly as possible. Sorry, Engelbert.)

      So what are we to do? Do what the legends of our time do: put aside our burden of excuses and focus the available time and energy that release frees up towards that which makes us shine in a world that would otherwise be darker without our excellence. Whatever that is. It’s struggling to emerge from the weight of our excuses. Release it already.

    • Possibility

      “Wanting things to be simple can become a kind of prison, it really can, because you end up staying trapped inside how you want things to be rather than embracing how they could be. You end up closed. You end up shutting doors to so many possibilities.”
      — Matt Haig, The Life Impossible

      There is a tendency to move towards simplicity as we get older and more settled in our ways. The young think in possibilities, the old embrace safety (let’s not age before our time, eh?). What is certain feels safe. Yet nothing in life is certain—certainly not our position in it. The only certainty is the end, and we shroud that in mystery and superstition too.

      Our path through uncertainty, I believe, lies in awareness and receptivity. When we are fully aware of where we are, of who we are and where we’re going, we begin to see everything as perfectly imperfect. We know that this little dance with life has its share of stubbed toes and slips. One answer is to get back up and start dancing again. Another answer is to find a new dance floor, or dance partner, a new soundtrack to dance to, or maybe a new dance altogether. Being receptive to change opens us up to possibility.

      What is possible for our lives is rarely aligned with what is probable. We must become pattern-breakers to reach possibilities. To explore the world we must leave that which we’ve grown comfortable with, if only for a little while. Having left, we won’t come back the same person. If we come back at all. So why complicate life by leaving at all? Keep it simple, the prison warden in our heads tells us. Simplicity is safe. But it makes everything beyond impossible. At least until we break free of that mind trap.

      This is not an inditement of simplicity (I’m rather fond of it myself), but an encouragement to finding more possibility in each day. Our routines save us by keeping us on track towards our goals, which are themselves possibilities. On that road to find out, it’s always worthwhile to ask ourselves if this is the path we want to be on in the first place. Often, the very next question tends to be, what else is possible? We reaffirm our direction or we refute our belief and move on to something else. Possibility is forever an open question leading us towards a more complete answer to our why.

    • One Who Seeks

      “I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.” ― Hermann Hesse, Demian

      There’s a scene in the movie Good Morning, Vietnam where the song What a Wonderful World is playing while scenes of horror unfold. I used to hate that scene, for taking a beautiful song and associating it with the ugliness of war. Now I understand that the world is always filled with ugliness, and yet it’s also beautiful and yes, wonderful. War is horror, and so sometimes is living. The dichotomy is both external and within us. We are drawn towards that which we seek. But it’s all there, isn’t it?

      As this is published, there are humans executing wars on other humans at the same time as other humans are exploring the void of space. It’s not much different than 50 years ago, is it? Vietnam and the Apollo missions and Civil Rights in the 70’s. Have a look at the headlines today and we see the same stories unfolding. Humans are complicated, and we never really change all that much.

      I may fancy myself a philosopher or a writer tapping away at my keyboard, but the rubber meets the road when we get out into the world and see the ugliness. Sometimes we ourselves are the ugliness. Sit in traffic long enough and you begin to resent the world. Sit in a meeting listening to others ramble about nonsense and we become nonsensical ourselves. In such times, the journey must turn inward. Just who do we want to be anyway?

      I may look around one day at 94 and realize that I’ve got everything figured out, but it’s folly to believe it so. To reach 94 would be an epic journey in and of itself. To reach old age with a sound mind, with the clarity of purpose burning within and a body capable of sustaining the drive, well, that would be a miracle. The odds are stacked against us humans. And yet people get there, and thrive well beyond that random number we call our age.

      Let’s see how it goes. I’d like to survive the madness we live in now, let alone try to skip to the end of the book to see how it ends. One page at a time is the proper way to immerse ourselves in a great book or a compelling life. It all goes fast enough already—tempus fugit—so do try to be here, now. All change begins within. The worst in us and the best in us are both awaiting which side we truly want to have emerge.

    • Being the Meteor

      “I wondered if I was starting a new era or if I was taking too much with me. This is the challenge of life, isn’t it? Moving forward without annihilating what has gone before. Knowing what to clasp onto and what to release without destroying yourself. Trying not to be the meteor and the dinosaur at once.” — Matt Haig, The Life Impossible

      There is a Latin phrase, “Vince Aut Morire” that translates to “Conquer or Die”. Forget the militaristic, testosterone-filled connotations in the phrase. We aren’t conquering others here, we are mastering ourselves. Mastery is reached through successfully navigating the obstacle course we call our lives.

      “Sure, in each moment we have never been so old, but we are of course also the youngest we will ever be.” — Matt Haig, The Life Impossible

      We are not getting any younger, friend. But we will never be as young as we are right now. So we ought to use this youthful vigor to do bold things with the time. This is our opportunity. That older version of us tomorrow will wish we’d used today better.

      Wishing for change won’t do the trick—we must be the meteor. Annihilating all that must go in hopes of a better tomorrow. In construction we must demo the old to make room for the new. We are no different. This is today’s mission, always and forever.

    • The Doorway

      It doesn’t have to be
      the blue iris, it could be
      weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
      small stones; just
      pay attention, then patch

      a few words together and don’t try
      to make them elaborate, this isn’t
      a contest but a doorway

      into thanks, and a silence in which
      another voice may speak.
      —Mary Oliver, Praying

      I had lunch with a friend earlier this week. She asked me about my writing, wondering when I’d get back to publishing. I mentioned that I’ve been publishing every morning for years now. The blog hides in plain sight. It’s a marketing person’s nightmare I know. Yet here it is, as it always has been, if one should wish to find it. A quiet voice in the storm.

      I don’t write for views and likes—I write to enter that doorway Mary Oliver describes above. I share it because it’s not a journal, but my idea of creative output. The jury may be out on just how creative the output is, and I’m okay with that, simply because I don’t seek them even as I appreciate them. And appreciation is surely one reason to get up every morning to begin filling our blank page.

      There is also attention and awareness. I believe we are all aware as children but grow out of it through formal education, narrowing viewpoints and the hectic lives we embrace in the quest for success (whatever that is). Some never reach that state of wonder again, while some of us spend the rest of our lives working to grow back into it. May we all reach back into wonder before we reach the end.

      I aspire to write as efficiently, as beautifully, as a poet. To convey with brevity and emotional weight all that is encountered in this brief go at things. As this is published, it will be post number 2,850. Is that enough to say, or should I keep entering new doorways? The answer lies in how far we have left to go.

    • Forget About It

      “To get rid of what is passed on to you, you have to develop a forgettory instead of a memory.” — Alan Watts

      I have a series of regrets in my life that I think about now and then. Some are big, like not looking both ways before I tried to run across the street at the age of 10*. Ouch. Some are relatively silly, like not mentioning The Wall is my favorite Pink Floyd album when having a conversation about best albums with some wine-sipping chuckleheads I have a high regard for. One regret changed my life (and could have ended it), while the other changed how I remember that night with the chuckleheads. I may also regret picking up that word chucklehead too, but here it is again.

      We ought to remember some regrets for the lessons they offer, so we don’t make the same mistake again. And we ought to forget others, as carrying them with us for eternity detracts from the experience of living now, as opposed to living in the past. The past ain’t coming back, friend. The only way is forward. We can meet there one day, and talk of our plans for the future.

      Don’t get me wrong—there’s great value in memory. It’s our life, after all, and we are the sum of all those memories brought to life when we reflect on them. But we can’t forget to live today as we play our greatest hits and biggest flops in our heads. Life is unfolding ahead, awaiting our attention. So forget about it and focus on what’s possible today. Just be sure to look both ways before crossing the street.

      • – If memory serves me well, a big anniversary of that run-in with a car is coming soon.

    • This Vessel

      “Do good, bestow kindness, strive for beauty, seek and find the river that leads to life everlasting, and draw from the fountain that never runs dry.” ― Allen Levi, Theo of Golden

      I needed a beautiful book for travel. As with people, beauty is not the outside sleeve, but rather that which is hidden within. Theo of Golden is such a book. The cover is rather ordinary. We must let it unfold page-by-page to get to know the character. This is a book for these angry times.

      We become what we consume, so why consume anger? Why not find a way to drink from a more beautiful stream? We may confront the world with eyes wide open, but also with a full heart and generous soul. Navigating towards a more beautiful life is a daily choice of accepting joyfulness as a natural state. Nurture this nature and watch it grow.

      If this all sounds rather naive, well, so be it. I’ve been there myself, angry and jaded by the state of the world and all that I cannot control. We confront it every day in everything from what the character in the White House just said to the person who just cut us off. These things are outside of us. What we carry within may be a cool stream of consciousness. A joyful life is a deliberate life, carried towards the sublime in this vessel we call our days. Just where is this one carrying us?

    • Pattern Breaking

      “If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow — you are not understanding yourself.”
      — Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do

      Breaking from routine creates space through disruption. I write this out of ritual, and yet I am transformed by change simply by being somewhere else than I normally am. Perspective changes because there is change all around us. We can’t help but change as a result.

      That is the power of travel, or job change, or simply deciding that the routine that so firmly established our identity is simply not what we want anymore and forcefully inserting a new routine in place of the old. Pattern breaking begins when we lift our head out of the fog of routine and see where we’d rather go.

      Routine, and the rituals of habit that make up our days, deserves scrutiny. Is this who we have become? Is this where we want to be? What has a greater hold on us than our habits and routine? What leads us to something greater than awareness and the willingness to change?

      Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not insisting that you change, or even that I change. The ask here is simply to be aware of where autopilot is carrying each of us. Beyond that, the choice is ours whether the pattern suits us or not.