Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • Finding the Safe Channel

      I once met with a boss I had great admiration for, a boss who dressed the part, had a witty remark for everyone, intelligent and clearly marked for future big shot roles in the corporation. He seemed to like me as well, encouraged my growing collection of ties and appreciated the early starts and late finishes to my work days. And then one day I walked in and told him that some employees were grumbling about some initiative or another, repeating their logic for why it wasn’t the right path for our company, relaying what I’d heard but didn’t feel strongly about in my soul. His face grew dark, he looked me squarely in the eye and told me that I should never aspire to be the messenger for other people, because it was the messengers who always got shot. Welcome to corporate America, kid.

      Fast-forward to today, I don’t wear ties much anymore. I work hard but don’t feel compelled to be the first one in or the last one out the door. And I’ve learned to always listen to but avoid repeating what other people say. But there are exceptions to this rule.

      In a recent management meeting, I lobbed a hand grenade on the assembled managers, repeating a statement from the employee of another manager who stated that he had to cover his ass with some tasks that had to be completed. When you hear something like this you might hold that card for a moment alone with that manager, or maybe bring it to the company President to discuss in private, or leave it for others to reveal. When you’re a small company and highly dependent on each other, you must identify potential problems. Without revealing the department where the trouble lay, I tossed it right on the virtual floor in front of the encircled management team and revealed it for the underlying problem it was. The thing is, there’s a time and a place and an audience for everything. This wasn’t an opportunity to undermine, it was an opportunity to mark the channel.

      When you’re out on the water, the ocean often looks tranquil and safe in all directions, but underneath the surface there are rocks and other hazards that can sink a boat if you blithely sail into them. When you identify threats, you must mark the channel, that others might continue on safely. There are some hostile environments where the channel isn’t marked, where you must fend for yourself. Progress slows dramatically in such places, and the bottom is littered with the broken hopes and dreams of those who foundered before.

      You know when you work in a culture that encourages open communication. These are clear channels that enable progress and growth. It’s an essential element in drawing out the potential in any team, and when it’s missing the team reverts to an every man for himself mentality. That tie-wearing, hard-charging kid I once was was thrown to the wolf by some men and women who didn’t dare confront the boss with objections themselves. It was no surprise that that company soon folded under the weight of competitive pressure they couldn’t adapt to. We must feel empowered to mark the hazards else we’ll surely find our ship foundering on the rocks someday. Clear channels of communication foster safe passage.

    • The Wanting-to-Know Type

      “There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

      Belief is the easy route. We suspend our own development and believe the stories other people tell us. Beliefs about other people seemingly different from us. Beliefs in political “leaders” who make promises and amplify those differences, always pointing their finger in another direction so followers don’t look too closely at them. Beliefs about religion or sports or the best movie ever made (don’t even tell me it’s not Local Hero).

      Belief is arrogant, closed, and the end of the story. Stories we’ve arrived at, or stories we’ve never left. Wanting to know is self-effacing, open, and a path to new places. When you want to know you pursue answers. Belief is static, wanting to know is dynamic and fluid. Which of these characters do we want to be in a conversation with at a cocktail party? Who would they want to be having a conversation with?

      This business of becoming is a journey with wanting to know. There’s a place for belief in this world, but the thing is, when you arrive at belief you’ve ended a journey. And who really wants that when there’s so much living still to do?

    • Meaning Abides

      “Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.” — Henry David Thoreau

      “If you want to be happy, be.” – Leo Tolstoy

      “Happiness is transient, but meaning abides.” — James Hollis

      We are all in the process of becoming whatever it is we’ll evolve into next. Blogging documents much of my own becoming, along with a few reckless photos of myself that others insist on releasing into the wild. When you document everything, the documenter captures while seemingly avoiding capture. This is a fools game, everything documented speaks, if we listen and observe closely enough. The trick is to listen closely enough to ourselves.

      The three quotes above naturally clung to each other in the course of a few weeks of reading and writing and sorting out life as it comes to you. We must consider the way in which we spend our lives, for the routines and habits offer a path to meaning and, dare we say, happiness. We are what we repeatedly do, as Aristotle reminds us (For those keeping score that’s four quotes in one relatively brief blog post—just what has gotten into this writer??).

      Perspective, of course. And an inclination to write whatever damned way suits the moment, I suppose. But don’t let me stray too far off the point here. The point is, we must spend our days chipping away at the marble to reveal the secret masterpiece hidden within each of us. Like so many of those unfinished masterpieces you see in museums, we too may run out of time. No, that’s not right—we will certainly run out of time. But we must attempt to draw as much of ourselves out of that cold marble as we possible can before we reach the end of our runway and crash into the abyss.

      We must attempt that which speaks to us. Becoming means to come to a place—what will that place be? Let it be meaningful.

    • Forgetting the Old Myths

      “We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our own terrors. If it has precipices, they belong to us. If dangers are present, we must try to love them: And if we fashion our life according to that principle, which advices us to embrace that which is difficult, then that which appears to us to be the very strangest will become the most worthy of our trust, and the truest.

      How could we be capable of forgetting the old myths that stand at the threshold of all mankind, myths of dragons transforming themselves at the last moment into princesses? Perhaps all dragons in our lives are really princesses just waiting to see us just once be beautiful and courageous. Perhaps everything fearful is basically helplessness that seeks our help.”       — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

      The latter part of this quote is making its second appearance in this blog, following a post in September 2019 when all of us were different people than we are now. I wonder, if I were to use it again in 2025, who might we all be then? Will we be more beautiful and courageous in our work? Will we embrace our personal terrors and ride them to greater heights? Or will dragons roam our minds, tricking us into timidity?

      The Latin word vocō means to “call, summon or beckon in our own voice”. From it we’ve derived the English word vocation. We often get trapped in that classic question of identity: “What do you do for work?” Isn’t the bolder question, the question that creates a stir, “What is your calling?” Words, used just so, invoke myths or magic.

      The old myths survive because we nurture them. We must be bold with our today, and slay our dragons. We must celebrate the path that brought us here but not be imprisoned by what will never be again. We must decide what we’ll be tomorrow and set the table for it today. We must create new myths.

    • Laying Tracks for the Journey

      “Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.
      So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?
      …beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life.”       — Hunter S. Thompson, via Farnam Street

      “Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

      How do we want to live? Why don’t we ask ourselves this more often? We keep adding to our collection of more (experiences, relationships, stuff, distractions) in hopes that we’ll eventually find all the answers. If we look up from our own reflection long enough we might notice that everyone else is trying to figure it out too.

      There’s a gap that emerges between people as they each follow their own path. Sometimes the path intersects again, sometimes the path diverges and you grow further apart. And sometimes one or both parties decide to find a new path together, come what may. This itself is a decision. We can’t have it all, yet we have that nagging voice that whispers that we might. At some point, we’ve got to stake our claim on a way of life that feels right for us.

      We owe it to ourselves to seek as much experience as we can, that we might draw from each some nugget of how we might want to live. That collection of more isn’t so bad after all, so long as we’re collecting the things that determine our desired future state. More ought to be railroad ties to lay our tracks upon, not driftwood.

      It always comes back to how we want to live in this moment in our lives, but also (if we dare) in our next moment. With an optimistic eye towards the future, we might pivot towards something more, or pause in more of the same. Of course there is no stasis, the world will keep moving whatever we decide on. We can’t expect the train that just left the station to come back to get us. But maybe that wasn’t the track we were meant to go down anyway. While we don’t always know our destination, pointing ourselves in a direction that feels right is a way to break free of indecision towards discovery.

      It’s always been about the journey, hasn’t it?

    • Acquiring Different Frames

      “I think well-read, well-travelled is nothing but acquiring more lenses in life to see things. The word ‘unusual’ starts dying as you travel more, as you read more. You are less shocked. You are less surprised. Because nothing seems unusual. You’ve seen it all, and therefore you have acquired different frames. And therefore, most intolerant people who have neither read nor travelled… don’t know alternate realities… We have to be able to tap into multiple biases that coexist in us by creating all these multiple biases in our head.” — Kunal Shah, on The Knowledge Project

      We’re all frame collectors, collecting frames of reference that we use to determine how we act and react in and to the world around us. When our frame of reference bumps into someone with a contrary frame of reference it may create friction, but it ought to create a measure of curiosity as well. Why do they see things differently that we do on this topic? Are they viewing the world through limited frames, or are we missing that particular frame in our collection?

      I won’t defend the worst tendencies of humanity, but I can better understand why some people blindly fall into categorizing other people based on politics, religion, race, sex, and on and on. They have limited their frame of reference to something so narrow that they’re compelled to lash out at anything that contradicts that view. This is what makes burning books or dictating what is taught in schools so dangerous—it constricts frames of reference to only what the book burner or policy maker want it to be. Which perpetuates biases and extends the chain of willful ignorance.

      And here we all thought we’d transcended our biases.

      It’s never been easier to acquire information, and never easier to acquire misinformation. We all must sift through the garbage to find a measure of truth that resonates for us. Shah, in this same podcast, points out that our minds are so fatigued with the information overload that we’re actually more susceptible to following people who state things with conviction. This explains the feverish followers of politicians, Bible-bangers and toxic faux news personalities. If you sip enough of any one flavor of poison, you develop a taste for it and tend to order it again next time you belly up to the information bar. We may be stuck in a world where we have to wade through the bullshit, but we don’t have to consume it.

      Our world is full of alternate realities, so why do we keep ordering vanilla? We must deliberately expand our pallet. We must challenge ourselves to read diversely, travel broadly, and listen more intently when others are speaking for a grain of truth we might have missed otherwise. We’re all figuring this sh*t out as we skate through life. We don’t have to listen to those who would have us skate in circles.

    • Memorable

      If it’s easy it’s not memorable. Sure, we remember things that just come to us, but remembering isn’t memorable. Memorable must be earned with effort and iteration over time.

      If you’re a parent you’ll never forget when your children were born, or when you figured out a car seat for the first time, or that first epically challenging diaper. Like scoring an Olympic gymnast, it was memorable because of the level of difficulty involved.

      We all have our lifetime and then its gone. What will make it memorable? Challenges accepted and overcome. Worthwhile relationships stuck with through thick and thin. Hard lessons and leaps of faith. A bias towards action and the will to see it through.

      We should never take the easy route, for it doesn’t lead to memorable.

    • Glimpsing Infinity

      “If you held a grain of sand up to the sky at arm’s length, that tiny speck is the size of Webb’s view in this image. Imagine — galaxies galore within a grain, including light from galaxies that traveled billions of years to us!” — @NASAWebb

      As the James Webb Space Telescope begins to share images from deep space, doesn’t it feel like we’re glimpsing infinity? We reach deeper into deep space than we’ve ever done, using the most advanced telescope we’ve ever sent into space, and it reveals billions of years of history (if you want to call it that), and yet indicates what we already knew—that it all keeps going further still. That glimpse of infinity reveals how immeasurably small our brief dance in the universe really is.

      So why do so many fixate on misery, pettiness and scarcity? The implications of this vastness indicate our smallness, forcing us to either recoil further back into ourselves or tell ourselves fairy tales that overinflated our place and power in the big scheme of things. Alternatively, we might simply accept and celebrate our small part in the infinite universe. I choose door number three, thank you.

      In a world with so much conflict, wouldn’t it be something if we all paused a moment and looked up at the universe. Our dance is ever so brief, and it doesn’t matter whether you lean left of center or right of it, the whole ball of wax is infinitesimal. We are indeed stardust—minute specs of life in a vast infinity. Isn’t it extraordinary to be alive to see it? To be a part of it?

    • Mouth Shut, Mind Open

      Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
      Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.
      — Rumi

      I had it all wrong when I was younger. I was a poser, trying to come off as someone who was on top of his game, overtly clever in my response, the one with all the answers. I knew nothing and learned nothing. It took a few years of ego knocking to start listening more and talking less. And sure, I’m still a work in progress like every other soul bouncing around the pinball machine of life.

      Cleverness denotes having it all figured out. None of us have it all figured out. We just acquire a few skills, a bit of street smarts and maybe some trivia to throw around at parties. If there is wisdom that comes with age, it’s generally learning to keep your mouth shut and open your mind instead. Life is learned on the fly.

      The point is, we’re all better off bewildered and trying to figure things out. Learning is a lifetime adventure, and we reach the end knowing we haven’t come close to knowing everything. Anyone who tells you they’ve figured it all out is expressing an opinion of themself. It might seem clever but it’s rarely more than a statement of where they are in their own development.

      This blog documents that work in progress, nothing more. It’s an attempt to document what I pick up along the way. I get a bit defensive when people I know talk about it with me, because it isn’t me at all, but a breadcrumb I left behind on the trail. It may be a part of me, but it’s distinctly apart from me. Otherwise it would be nothing but clever.

    • Stepping Into a Larger Life

      “Only in those moments when we take life on, when we move through the archaic field of anxiety, when we drive through the blockage, do we get a larger life and get unstuck. Ironically, we will then have to face a new anxiety, the anxiety of stepping into a life larger than has been comfortable for us in the past.” — James Hollis, Living an Examined Life

      Many of us chase vibrant experience through state change. Early this morning I plunged into a pool to completely change my state from groggy to vibrantly aware of the world around me. As you might expect it did the trick immediately. But we don’t need a pool to change our state, any plunge into the unknown should get us there eventually.

      Many of us avoid change at all costs. There’s a reason that early morning plunges into a pool seems so unreasonable to so many—the majority would rather hit the snooze button and slowly reconcile themselves to another day of whatever it is that dictates their lives. People who deliberately and regularly challenge their comfort zone seem a bit… unusual. When you’ve got a good thing going why rock the boat? But isn’t it fair to ask: Why the heck not? When we consider the worst possible outcome to any given action, most of the time we’d come out okay in the end. We ought to take more examined leaps in this lifetime.

      What makes us unique out of the billions of people who have ever lived is our individual experiences and the perspective that is derived from them. That thought process cranking away behind those eyes that see (or don’t see) the world around them is the core to our identity. Call me crazy if you will, but I’d rather have the jambalaya version of life than the tomato soup. Throw as much as you can in the bowl and heat it up. We’ve only got this one meal together.

      The thing is, we’re all prone to both tendencies. For all my chasing of experience in this world, I live a relatively stable, some might say boring, life. But chasing state change doesn’t mean we have to throw ourselves into chaos daily. It simply means opening ourselves up to new experiences. Try to learn a new language, walk around the block the opposite way, have tea instead of coffee, write about something [eclectically] different every day, do something completely out of the norm this weekend… whatever makes the back of your neck tingle when you even dare to think about it.

      To step into a larger life, we’ve got to get used to treading into the unknown. When we dance with a bit of mystery we release magic into our lives. That measure of magic might just make us bold enough to go bigger next time, and the time after that. So it is that we grow into our lives one incrementally bolder step at a time.