Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • Identity and Place

      “You have to pick the places you don’t walk away from.” — Joan Didion

      Life is change. Those of us afflicted with wanderlust amplify our lives with travel and exploration. But eventually, perhaps even relentlessly, we come home again. Whatever that means to us.

      In a few weeks I’ll have been anchored to the same plot of land for 24 years. I’ve replaced everything from the appliances to the light fixtures to the front door. Two babies became adults and, as it should be with nests, moved on when they learned how to use their wings. Everything but the two residents who hold the mortgage have changed. But haven’t we changed too?

      Having a sense of place is essential to our identity, but it isn’t the land or the house or even the collection of books on the shelves that define who we are. Identity lies in the gap between who we were and who we’re becoming. Likewise, place is in the gap between what feels most familiar and what eventually comes after. Identity, and place, aren’t the gap—they fill it.

      So as we look for that which we won’t walk away from in this ever-changing world, we ought to begin by asking ourselves—what fills that gap?

    • Kindred Contributors of Light

      Kindred comes from a combination of kin and the Old English word ræden (“condition”), which itself comes from the verb rædan, meaning “to advise.” — Merriam-Webster Dictionary

      Talking to a friend about poetry, I mentioned a poem by Li-Young Lee, and paused our phone conversation while she read it, waiting for the payoff when one reacts to great poetry. We do this now and then; find some magic in the world and bring it to light for others to see. We each find our fellow torchbearers by the light they bring to the world. We learn, don’t we, that our light alone is not enough in the darkness? But just as the stars bring light and meaning to the infinite void of the universe, kindred spirits bring hope to us back on earth.

      Another poem, discovered in the infinite darkness of social media, drew me to Lee, and I in turn put his work out there that others may see:

      So we’re dust. In the meantime, my wife and I
      make the bed. Holding opposite edges of the sheet,
      we raise it, billowing, then pull it tight,
      measuring by eye as it falls into allignment
      between us. We tug, fold, tuck. And if I’m lucky,
      she’ll remember a recent dream and tell me.

      One day we’ll lie down and not get up.
      One day, all we guard will be surrendered.

      Until then, we’ll go on learning to recognize
      what we love, and what it takes
      to tend what isn’t for our having.
      So often, fear has led me
      to abandon what I know I must relinquish
      in time. But for the moment,
      I’ll listen to her dream,
      and she to mine, our mutual hearing calling
      more and more detail into the light
      of a joint and fragile keeping.
      — Li-Young Lee, To Hold

      We are co-conspirators, you and I, each kindred contributors of light to the universe. We wrestle with the why, make the most of the how, and reconcile our when. It’s a fragile grip we have on our moment, but our hold feels more secure when the load is shared. Eventually we all must release our hold, but think of the light we might pass along before our torch burns out.

      But let’s not talk about fare-thee-wells now
      The night is a starry dome
      — Joni Mitchell, Carey

      Thanks Joni. Yes of course, there’s more: Hope. Meaning. Dreams realized. To be a contributor of light in the face of infinite darkness is to illuminate possibility. To live a full and wonderful life requires the friction of active engagement with all that this world offers us. We must wrestle with thoughts and ideas and opinion and find a greater truth than the myths we were taught to calm us in our moments of doubt. Friction creates a spark that, nurtured, brings light. Here we may warm ourselves in the glow of our potential, realized in this, our moment of fragile keeping.

    • Raw Ingredients, Transformed

      It dawned on me in the shower just the other day that I’ve chopped countless onions in my lifetime. For me, the process is meditative, and the resulting transformation of the raw ingredient is integral to whatever it happens to be I’m cooking at that moment. Inevitably, and no matter how much I wash my hands after the act, the shower I take after chopping onions, even a day later, results in the smell of onions in the shower. This naturally made me think of onions once again, and the virtual stack of chopped onion bits one can pile up in a lifetime. Funny, the thoughts a nose triggers.

      Perhaps you’ve had the same experience with onions, or with wood smoke after a campfire. These are things, like memories and moments, that linger with us well after the occasion. Within the family we still swear we can smell a sailboat we’ve long since parted from, but to be fair that sailboat’s smell was uniquely pervasive. Even writing about it I shudder at the hours spent attempting to wash that aroma away. Yet I smile when I think of that boat; how it changed me.

      We pick up things from the world. Some, like onions and memories, resonate longer in our senses than others. As fragile beings in an indifferent universe, things that resonate tend to be special things indeed. We remember certain moments always and forever, and forget other things that ought to seem important, like where we placed our wallet. Just what makes one thing echo through time and the other a cymbal choke? The weight we place on it in the moment.

      A certain song or smell often bring us back to a memory, a moment long forgotten. Our senses combine to remind us of our identity, or who we are, of who we were once. Some things aren’t us anymore, some will always be us, but it all brought us here.

      “I am pieces of all the places I have been, and the people I have loved. I’ve been stitched together by song lyrics, book quotes, adventure, late night conversations, moonlight, and the smell of coffee.” — Brooke Hampton

      What resonates within us begins with the act of being present in the moment. Moments, in turn, are the building blocks of our life, lifting us up from the earth one experience at a time, elevating our perspective and making us more whole in our time. We aren’t some pile of onions waiting for a pot to sauté in, we’re more than that. Still, those onions make a case that they’re part of us too. Each moment in our lifetime is the raw ingredient transformed into our whole. Into whom we’re becoming.

    • Sipping Coffee, Reading Poetry

      He is seated in the first darkness
      of his body sitting in the lighter dark
      of the room,

      the greater light of day behind him,
      beyond the windows, where
      Time is the country.

      His body throws two shadows:
      One onto the table
      and the piece of paper before him,
      and one onto his mind.

      One makes it difficult for him to see
      the words he’s written and crossed out
      on the paper. The other
      keeps him from recognizing
      another master than Death. He squints.
      He reads: Does the first light hide
      inside the first dark?

      He reads: While all bodies share
      the same fate, all voices do not.
      — Li-Young Lee, In His Own Shadow

      Feeling reclusive lately, too reclusive for the part played in this life, I’ve grown weary of online planning meetings and year’s end introspection. I’ve begun to reach out to the world again in earnest, just to be sure it’s still there. I’m a social being trapped in an introvert’s mind, or is it the other way around? We humans are complex creatures.

      Amongst the pile of books crying for attention was a book of poetry, purchased eagerly, stacked deliberately, shuffled downward reluctantly. We prioritize finishing what we started, after all, and then some other pretty thing catches our attention, and soon that work of enchantment is put aside for weeks on end, biding its time while we squander our own. Until the moment of reckoning when it surfaces again.

      Sitting in the morning darkness, quietly shuffling with a fresh cup of coffee back to a reading chair, my mind rebelled against the non-fiction staples demanding my attention. Mind craving sustenance of a different kind, like vitamin A to help my vision, I find what’s been calling to me all along. In the growing ambient light of morning, sipping coffee and focusing my mind for the cadence of poetry, I’m quietly floored by a simple stack of words, set just so. And forgot I’d had coffee at all.

      While all bodies share the same fate, all voices do not. The spell cast upon us through poetry is in the way it slays you in these moments of truth, a mirror of words reflecting back at you. Recovering my senses, I set about finding my own voice again, knowing the steepness of the climb before me, feeling my own shadow and the lesson to the core.

    • Spending Time

      Planning is generally done in earnest this time of year, but at some point, action must take over. Too much planning becomes procrastination. We can plan ourselves all the way to the grave if we let ourselves. We must do to become. I believe it was Melissa Heisler who said living is a verb, not a noun. There’s a deep truth in that statement. We must act to live a full life.

      We must begin in earnest, today, to build on those hopes and dreams we spent New Year’s thinking about. For if not now, when? There is no other time. Baby steps turn into long strides that turn into giant leaps forward. There’s momentum in forward motion.

      “Six months from now, what you will you wish you had spent time on today?” — James Clear

      Where we spend time matters a great deal. We forget that sometimes as we go through our days getting from here to there. But where is there anyway? Is it simple here with a few more aches and pains? Time well-spent resonates differently for us than wasted time does. Wasted time feels hollow, while our well-spent time feels far more fulfilling. Who wants to look back on a day or a year or a life feeling empty?

      We intuitively know not to drink stagnant water, but forget we’re mostly water ourselves. Are we flowing towards something or settling into stagnant? Puddles stagnate then evaporate. We must find our ocean before we turn to dust. Too harsh? The point is to find the channel that keeps us flowing creatively, contributing to a greater purpose, so we might ultimately look back on this part of the journey as the point where we broke through the dam and really began making a splash.

    • Experience and Understanding

      “If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.” — Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82

      “I shall act as I now think—as a man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” ― Charles Darwin, The Life & Letters of Charles Darwin

      (Quick aside: I’ve posted a link to Darwin’s autobiography above, just know that the content is included in the Life & Letters link as well if you’re interested in reading online without purchasing.)

      I read these two quotes from Darwin as the reflections of a man who realizes that life is short and all work and no play makes Charles a dull boy. Darwin was anything but dull, of course, and lived an extraordinary life full of contribution to our understanding of evolution and humanity’s place in the universe. But it seems he couldn’t summon a verse of poetry off the top of his head. We all beat ourselves up over something, don’t we?

      The thing is, the accumulation of experience and seeking to understand it all are bold and beautiful acts, and transform us from soulless cogs in the machine into free-spirited humans actively engaged in living. This blog evolved from a travel blog to a living experience blog in which I process all that I encounter as best I can in the moment. Sure, I may lean in on philosophy and productivity more than the average bear, but it all counts, doesn’t it?

      Clever quotes inspire us by drawing on the magic derived from a few words written or spoken by someone we might admire. I generally see a quote and wonder where it came from, seeking out the books and poetry that the line was plucked from and trying to understand the larger meaning of those magical words. In each quote above, you’ll see I’ve done just that—going beyond the famous quote to add some meaning. You can do the same by clicking on the latter link and searching for some key words in the quote to find the original. Blame it on the researcher in me: One must get to the source to truly understand the subject matter.

      And here, friends, is our subject matter: Darwin understood what we all know deep down: this ride is a short one, and we ought to make the most of it. This living business is a deliberate act, and we are what we focus on. We must push aside the atrophy of a limited life and expand our experience and understanding. For that is where growth happens. We dare not waste an hour of our precious time.

    • We Are Shaped

      “We, I would venture to guess, are the books we have read, the paintings we have seen, the music we have heard and forgotten, the streets we have walked. We are our childhood, our family, some friends, a few loves, more than a few disappointments. A sum reduced by infinite subtractions. We are shaped by different times, hobbies, and creeds.” — Sergio Pitol, The Art of Flight

      What we experience matters a great deal in our lives, for these are the building blocks to a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us. What we experience defines us, making us more inclined to learn more, which in turn prompts us to leap into another unknown. That accumulation of experiences is our sum. Our sum is us at this moment, with more to come.

      What shapes us is most interesting in the context of omission. For what we miss also shapes us. Perhaps explaining why FOMO (fear of missing out) is such a common experience, but more likely just leaving us not fully fleshed out in an area where we sense we don’t have the full picture. We all wonder at what might have been at times, thinking about pursuits cut short, excuses we made about time or money or priorities that created a void of omission that nags us still. Friends offering a quarter berth any time I want to visit their sailboat is a tantalizing draw even as I write this, wondering if the opportunity will ever present itself again. Omission haunts us, even as life fills in around us.

      “We must resist the temptation to drift along, reacting to whatever happens to us next, and deliberately select targets, from activities to relationships, that are worthy of our finite supplies of time and attention.” — Winifred Gallagher, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life

      The trick is to avoid the drift. Put aside the insignificant distractions that relentlessly steal our time and attention and decide what will shape us. Life is short enough, we ought to set our sails in the direction we want to go in, and accumulate the experiences that will define our identity for the rest of our days.

      As our accumulation of experiences grows it naturally builds momentum. It makes us more interesting at cocktail parties, perhaps, but it mostly puts wind in our sails. We become more confident in our ability to handle the unknown, to make it known, and in turn make it part of who we are. When done well, we become deliberate in what those experiences will be. In this way we create our identity while we define our lives. That’s something to aspire to, don’t you think? For it leaves us wanting more, which is a great way to begin each day.

    • The Steps Between Hurdles

      “Set it in your mind right now that the process is more important than the result. You don’t control the result; what you control are your actions.” — Brian P. Moran, The 12 Week Year

      It’s that time of year, when some of us are more hyper-focused on improving our productivity and effectiveness in our chosen work than usual. I have a few friends who roll their eyes when I start rattling off words like productivity and execution, but they’re also highly productive and execute on the things they choose to focus on. Think about what you’re most passionate about in life, be it your family, your writing, your fitness level, or your career—each thing that we’re highly engaged in features higher levels of execution and attention than the things we find less interesting. We naturally try harder to be good at the things that matter more.

      But what are we to do with the things that matter less but still matter a great deal? Nobody wants to stumble through life, we all want to lift ourselves and others through our contribution. And that’s where developing good habits and a process or system for living matter a great deal. If we fancy ourselves writers or athletes or accountants, we ought to refine our system of living to optimize our efficiency and results. I write best in the morning but find the afternoon better for a workout. You might find the morning the only effective time for a run, and late night the best time to focus on your best work. We learn what works over time and apply it to our lives.

      “Accountability is not consequences; it’s ownership.” — Brian P. Moran, The 12 Week Year

      If change is our constant companion, then refinement of our processes is our tool to overcome the hurdles we encounter. Each day is an opportunity to reflect on what’s working, what’s not, and what we must change in our system to be effective in this new reality. What we can’t do is bury our head in the sand and hope the world changes back again. We might as well finish the job and bury the rest of ourselves at that point. We must rise up, dust ourselves off and get to work on improving our lot in life.

      I’m not a runner, but I’m deeply invested in people who are. Having spent many hours on tracks, I know that effective hurdlers use a 3 step technique to clear hurdles in sprints. Some people use 4 steps between those hurdles because they have shorter legs or their gait between hurdles is off. This is less efficient and slower than 3 steps, but the point is to get over the hurdle and try to improve your steps on the next one. It seems this is a good analogy for our lives between hurdles too. The trick is to quickly adapt on the fly for what comes next.

      We’ve all just been through quite a hurdle, and yet we cleared it. Sure, maybe we banged our shin or stumbled a bit on our landing, but we’re on to the next hurdle now. That’s life in the race, isn’t it? We must focus continually on where we are and what we must face next. Best to have a system that enables, not hinders.

    • We Begin Again

      You always have two options.
      You can push harder.
      You can remove friction.
      — Greg McKeown

      We all know where we should push harder in our lives to reach personal goals. We also ought to think more about elimination. Shedding ourselves of artificial expectations and dreams that don’t resonate. Moving away from habits, tasks, people or careers that create tremendous friction in our path to a better life. Sometimes we can’t see the gaps because our way is jammed with trivial distractions. We must clear the gap to see how far we must leap.

      So it is that we begin again, reconciling accumulation (bad habits, weight, things, acquaintances, etc.) and the gap between where we are and where we wish to be. This shouldn’t be a once-a-year exercise, it should be a daily reflection. We have our stack of days ahead of us, and the gift of each should be measured and contemplated just the same. But how?

      Intentions are nothing, action is everything. Incremental improvement trumps grand plans, and each day, each bite or sip, each step, each page read, each meaningful conversation and each written word bring us closer to whatever compass heading we’ve set for ourselves. Alternatively, we can incrementally drift off course to a point where major changes are forced upon us. Don’t we owe it to ourselves to make the choice for ourselves instead of having it imposed on us?

      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?
      —Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

      Mary Oliver’s words inspire bold dreams, and there’s nothing wrong with dreaming big. But to be attained we must break those dreams down into bite-sized habits. Today, like many of you, I will assess where things are, make a course adjustment and begin again. I won’t do this with bold, unattainable goals with unrealistic timeframes but with a few incremental changes I can track daily. I’ll take the shiny new calendar and map out the big trips and events that should be highlights for the year and identify time to add micro-adventures and brief flings with bolder living.

      Sailors have their log book, and so too should we. Log each day and reflect on it. My personal favorite is the line per day journal, which boils down each day into whatever notable thing you choose to write down. I’ve been doing this for a few years now and strongly recommend it. In fact I just gave each of my kids a LEUCHTTURM1917 Some Lines A Day 5 Year Memory Notebook to begin this habit themselves, but you don’t have to spend much to seed a habit — a simple notebook will do. The point is to begin doing it and never break the streak. Magic ensues.

      This year I’m doubling down on my line per day by adding a picture per day, using an iPhone and an album dedicated just to this. Combined, these habits should be fascinating for me (if perhaps exceedingly dull for the rest of the world). If nothing else, each forces us to add a spark to the moment at hand and wonder to our lives.

      If we don’t step out on the dance floor we’ll forever be wallflowers. You know what’s more fun than stepping out onto the dance floor? Dancing to the dance floor. Remove friction, work hard on what matters most and track progress. Find your groove thing and let it loose. That, friends, will make the New Year meaningful in the end.

    • Here it Comes

      Another year already? With so much left undone?! So many good and bad days, rolled into twelve months. It’s been a great year. It’s been a horrible year. And now it’s over. And so it all begins again tomorrow.

      If we’ve learned anything from our stack of years, it’s that time flies, and 2023 will go just as quickly as 2022 did, and 2021 before that. We ought to feel that urgency and apply it to our days. I hope we do.

      Ready or not, here it comes. Beginning with today and tomorrow and each precious nugget of living. May we use it wisely.

      Happy New Year!