Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • 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.

    • Developing Insight, Courage and Endurance

      “Jung observed that the work of being an evolved human being consists of three parts. Psychology can bring us insight, but then, he insisted, come the moral qualities of the individual: courage and endurance. So, having potentially come to consciousness, to have embraced insight as to what a dilemma is really about, one then has to find the courage to live it in the real world, with all its punitive powers, and to do so over time in the face of opposition both external and internal.” — James Hollis, Living an Examined Life

      We’re all evolving at our own pace, becoming what we will, sorting out our individual lifetime feedback loop as it becomes apparent to us. We might have a clear idea of what we are becoming, and then again we might not. There’s no doubt that a strong compass heading offers focus and purpose to an otherwise meandering life, but that doesn’t mean a bit of meandering isn’t essential as we find our way down the path.

      Hunter S Thompson, surely more evolved at 22 than I was at that age, wrote an extraordinary letter to a friend who had asked for advice, replying that one reason he might be struggling to know what to do with his life was that “he’d lived a relatively narrow life, a vertical rather than a horizontal existence.” There’s merit in expanding horizontally, for it develops in us this insight that only comes from meandering a bit off our upward climb. Insight may lead to dissatisfaction with our current path, which in turn might stir enough courage within to make the changes necessary to climb a different path.

      Some of Thompson’s sage advice in that letter to his friend was to “decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life.” But the universe doesn’t just bow to our wishes, we must fight for the life we want to live. Inferred in that “see what you can do to make a living” nugget is finding the courage to push for what you want your life to be, not just externally, but especially, internally. Finding the gumption within ourselves to tell that internal voice inside of us to piss off and go for what we want is the real trick to a fulfilling life.

      I finally got around to reading Band of Brothers recently after re-watching the series for a third time. The paratroopers who made up Easy Company in the 101st Airborne Division who jumped behind enemy lines on D-Day didn’t just strap on a parachute and jump out of an airplane for the first time that day. How could anyone find that level of courage to do such a thing? They took small steps, first jumping off a small platform harnessed to a cable, then a higher platform, and progressing to a jump from a plane above their base. It took five of these jumps to earn their silver wings, which indicated to the world that they were paratroopers. Even then, it wasn’t until they parachuted into France under fire that they became combat veterans and earned that nickname “Screaming Eagles”.

      How are we to be expected to just jump into the thick of it in our own chosen life path? We must pay our dues, apprentice and stumble through the learning phase before we can gain any measure of expertise, let alone develop the courage to leap into the unknown and the street smarts to stand up again unscathed. Our lives are a work in progress, built layer upon layer, and the work never stops. And that’s where endurance comes in. We must strategically sprint now and then throughout our lives, but we can’t forget in our rush to get past the pack that most of life is steady state. If we don’t find a pace that we can sustain that pack will reign us back in and leave us far behind.

      It’s easy to write that we need to develop ourselves, but much harder to get out there and tackle it day-after-day. For me, reading, writing this blog (and other things better left unpublished) and generally sorting through life as it comes at me offers the necessary “chart time” to figure out both my current and future place. I’m by no means an expert at this business of living, but I’ve found that this routine levels off the highs and lows of daily living by offering and reinforcing perspective. This is my steady state between the mad dashes of life.

      So there are the three legs of the our evolutionary stool, according to Carl Jung: Insight, to help us understand what we want out of life. Courage, to pursue what we want most. And endurance, to sustain the long, arduous slog through a universe that always has other plans for us. Our daily rituals develop all three, and help to keep the dream alive with the proper fuel and maintenance. Those rituals then help us set our course for wherever we dare to take ourselves next.

    • This Milky Sea of Mystery

      “Whether you show up as you in this brief transit we call life or are defined by history, or context, or shrill partisan urgencies substantially depends on you. No greater difficulty may be found than living this journey as mindfully, as accountably, as we can, but no greater task brings more dignity and purpose to our lives. Swimming in this milky sea of mystery, we long to make sense of things, figure out who we are, wither bound, and to what end, while the eons roll on in their mindless ways. It falls then to us to make sense of this journey.” — James Hollis, Living an Examined Life

      This business of living offers plenty of opportunities to fall in line, blend in, and simply do what’s expected of us. Far more interesting to go our own way. Somewhere along the way this blog transitioned from documenting who had the best fish and chips to more a trail of breadcrumbs documenting my wade through, as Hollis so eloquently describes it, this milky sea of mystery. That doesn’t mean you’ll never see me celebrate a great meal now and then, but we become what we focus on, as much as what we eat, and a blog on becoming will leave its breadcrumbs du jour.

      The question is, where do we go from here? What exactly are we wading into anyway? One way or another it seems to come up in conversation after publishing, and doesn’t that influence what’s written next? Surely fish and chips are less of a leap.

      Hollis reminds us that the task itself is noble. Trying to make sense of this journey is bound to lead us up the wrong trail now and then. Those breadcrumbs might come in handy should we ever need to double back. If all they do is indicate where we’ve been, well, that’s okay too. Just remember that by the time you read this I’m already thinking about where I’m going next.

      Wading in

    • Understanding the Rhyme

      “Wer einmal sich selbst gefunden, der kann nichts auf dieser Welt mehr verlieren. Wer einmal den Menschen in sich begriffen hat, der begreift alle Menschen.” (Once you’ve found yourself, you can’t lose anything in this world. Whoever has understood the human being within himself, understands all human beings.) — Stefan Zweig

      I’d first read about Zweig years ago, for his story is compelling. A popular Austrian writer in his day, who’s popularity and influence reached across the world, he was swept up in the madness boiling over in Germany and Austria in the 1930’s and eventually fled to Brazil. It was there that he and his wife committed suicide in 1942. Just two more casualties of the Nazis. I wonder, had he only held on just a few more years, what he might have understood about humanity then? As it was, his view of the darkness in that moment was apparently too much to take.

      We work to reach our full potential in our lifetime, or we settle for whatever we grow comfortable with along the way. I suppose the question of motivation ought to be examined on this journey. For are we trying to rise above everyone else or reach our own personal peak? Doesn’t darkness lie in the relentless pursuit of the former, while hope lies in our earnest pursuit of the latter?

      I shake my head at some of the people in this world trying to grab for more and more power and influence, upsetting the apple cart and leaving scars on society that will take generations to heal. Zweig saw this in his time, seeing what was lost forever. Tragically, he didn’t hold out long enough for the best in humanity to overcome the worst. Who are we to judge him, for the darkest days eight decades ago were pretty damned dark. Looking at World War II, we like to think we could stand up to fight for decency and fairness like the greatest generation did. Well, we have our opportunity to prove that today, don’t we?

      When we rise up to meet our individual potential, we honor those who built the foundation we started from, and set a new standard for those who make the climb after us. But we can’t forget, in our pursuit of excellence, that foundations can erode quickly when undermined by waves of greed and hate. We are the cornerstones for the future, and must work to shore up the base. And if we understand anything about human nature, it’s that history rhymes.

    • Become a Holy Fire

      “And I have often noticed that even a few minutes of this self-forgetfulness is tremendously invigorating. I wonder if we do not waste most of our energy just by spending every waking minute saying hello to ourselves. Martin Buber quotes an old Hasid master who said, “When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      Walking about the garden upon a return from two weeks in Europe, seeing the progress of some plants and the decline of others from neglect, it’s easy to become lost in self-forgetfulness. Minor tasks become meditative when we focus on the work. So it is with hiking in solitude, where every step matters and the mind is forced to quiet itself that you may land properly to take the next one.

      If the aim is to become more open to the spirit of the world around us, surely we must quiet the chatter in our own heads. Be still, learn to listen, observe and receive the energy that might otherwise bounce off our closed mind to find a more willing recipient. What do we lose in our closed-minded self-conversation but our chance to be one with the universe?

      The thing is, most of our self-talk is useless at best and detrimental to our progress at worst. Our Lizard Brain, as Seth Godin calls it, is our worst enemy, making us feel like we aren’t measuring up, that we should have done things differently, that we don’t deserve the moment we’re in now. It’s all crap, and not what we’d expect in a close friend. But who is closer to us than ourselves?

      This Hasidic concept of receptiveness is one way to push aside the self. If we are to become a holy fire today—and in our stack of days, we must tune our receiver and accept the positive fuel that stokes our furnace. We must throw aside the wet blanket of self and accept the world as it offers itself to us.

    • Mastery is a Beacon

      “Besides, isn’t it confoundedly easy to think you’re a great man if you aren’t burdened with the slightest idea that Rembrandt, Beethoven, Dante or Napoleon ever lived?“ — Stefan Zweig, Chess Story

      My mind is still in Vienna as I write this—a city that’s had its fair share of high achievers walk her streets and contribute to humanity’s Great Conversation in their life’s work. Big names roamed those same streets, and you might feel a need to raise your game when you walk with that level of ghosts—I surely did. And shouldn’t we feel this compulsion to close the gap between the masters and where we currently reside?

      The world offers precious few brilliant shining stars. Most of us burn less brilliantly. And yet we burn just the same, and cast our own light on the darkness in the world. We may recognize that we aren’t quite at the level of a master in our field yet still have something to offer anyway. And knowing that there are more brilliant lights in human history, we may choose to stoke our fire—feed it with the fuel necessary to one day burn more brilliantly still.

      What provokes us towards greatness but comparison? We may never reach those levels, few do, but knowing there are heights we haven’t reached yet ought to inspire more. For mastery is a beacon.