Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • The Benefit of Being Lost

      Lately I’ve doubled down on getting lost. Now, I understand that deliberately putting yourself into a place where you’re lost might seem counterintuitive and odd. But the thing about being lost is it forces you to find your way out, and this is where learning takes place.

      Case in point: I dove into the deep end with learning languages, doubling down on French and German (!) and forcing myself further beyond my comfort zone with each. I’d been doing the bare minimum with French for a couple of years, never really proceeding beyond “Je m’appelle John. Je suis un homme. Où est le toilette?” Barely functional and not exactly conversational.

      Something triggered me to dive deeper into lost. With French it was a lingering dissatisfaction with scratching the surface of feminine and masculine terminology, never diving into the nitty gritty because I stuck with the bare minimum to check the box for the day. With German, well, I booked a trip to Austria and Germany and forced my hand to figure it out.

      The only way to truly learn a language is to immerse yourself in it. That’s true for a foreign language or the language of your craft. Want to understand the world of finance or a testing laboratory? Immerse yourself in that world and learn the world of pie charts or pipettes. Want to know how to build a house? Join a crew and start hauling lumber. Every apprentice begins completely lost in the world they’ve immersed themselves in. But then something funny happens—your hand is forced and you slowly, awkwardly begin to learn. We’ve all experienced this in school and in our earliest days after graduating and beginning careers. But then we get comfortable and stop challenging ourselves. We stop getting lost. And in our comfort we stop growing.

      Taking the easy path slowly kills our learning and kills us in the process. Comfort kills our brains. Kills our dreams. Kills any momentum for big leaps and dramatic turns. In nature we grow or we die, there is no stasis. Yet so many seek stasis.

      Maybe diving deeper into a couple of languages doesn’t quite equate to growing or dying. But then again, maybe it does. Challenging our own status quo begins with making ourselves uncomfortable now and then. It begins with stumbling through challenges and finding our way out of it. As with physical fitness, growth comes from stress. There are benefits to being lost. For in being lost we may find our way.

    • The Possibility of Beauty

      “What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      Positioning this idea of beauty in the world seems quaint when wars and pandemics flood us with so much ugliness and darkness. What are we to do but find light in the darkest corners? Life is a dance along the edge between chaos and order, and we must know both. But we can’t dwell in either. Still, if we are to become what we focus on the most, why not focus on beauty?

      Writing, like photography, focuses us on what we want to find in the world. We seek out wonder while our opposites wrestle for control and influence. If the world teaches us anything it’s that life is textured and imperfect and more than a little unfair. But it’s still a blessing to be here in it. To celebrate the inexhaustible beauty in this complicated world is a mission of possibility and hope. What we make of it is up to us.

    • Playing At the Edges of Knowing

      I believe I will never quite know.
      Though I play at the edges of knowing,
      truly I know
      our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving,
      which is the way I walked on,
      softly,
      through the pale-pink morning light.
      — Mary Oliver, Bone

      Like the beach Mary Oliver walked in this poem, life ebbs and flows. We either surf the rip or get pulled under by it. This latest period of chaos could overwhelm us or strengthen our resolve to persevere in the face of it.

      We never quite know all that we seek to understand. Just when we think we’ve got it figured out the world throws another curveball at you. Coming out of a pandemic, thinking that things will finally get better and… they don’t. Not yet anyway. You know that this too shall pass, somehow. But life asks us to wait just a bit longer still. Or life tells you that your time has come, sooner than you expected it to. Just when you thought you’d arrived.

      Our part is not meant to be easy. Our part is not knowing, but staying with it anyway. Our part is to support one another in the face of uncertainty.

      Amor Fati, or “love of fate”, is the stoic’s answer to these times. Amor is not quite right. We don’t have to love our fate. But accepting it frees us to focus on the moments we have together. While there’s still time.

    • The Lingering Glow of a Great Book

      There’s a feeling that lingers in you when you finish a magnificent book, a glow that feels a lot like the feeling you have when you’ve had a wonderful conversation with an old friend, returned from a beautiful vacation, or still feel the magic stay in the air well after a stunning sunset slips beneath the horizon. For all the bickering and sickness and change in the world, we know delight and wonder when we feel them. For it makes us forget everything else in the world and celebrate that one brief moment for all it brings to us.

      “Alexander Rostov was neither scientist nor sage; but at the age of sixty-four he was wise enough to know that life does not proceed by leaps and bounds. It unfolds. At any given moment, it is the manifestation of a thousand transitions. Our faculties wax and wane, our experiences accumulate, and our opinions evolve—if not glacially, then at least gradually. Such that the events of an average day are as likely to transform who we are as a pinch of pepper is to transform a stew. And yet…” — Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

      It would be a disservice to you to offer more than this. Like life itself, this book unfolds before you, revealing wonder and delight and frustration and finally that lingering affection for a novel that has no right to grab you by the shoulders, spins you around and firmly shouts, “Look! Do you see it now? This is how it’s done!”

      When you finish a book that completely captures your imagination, that becomes an old friend in the span of a few days, you want to raise your own game. You feel the stirring warmth and the catch in your throat from the magic you’ve been breathlessly consuming. You see once again just what is possible should you commit yourself to it. If you’re wise, you surf that swell of emotion to places beyond the pages of the very book you’ve finished. The very best storytelling lingers, and it inspires greatness within us.

    • Life’s Incessant Aspiration

      “I tell you that as long as I can conceive something better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or clearing the way for it. That is the law of my life. That is the working within me of Life’s incessant aspiration to higher organization, wider, deeper, intenser self-consciousness, and clearer self-understanding.” — George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

      I understand old George, for I’m right with him on this point. When we hear the siren, when we strive for something better than ourselves, we begin a lifetime process of chipping away at the stubborn facade that hides that potential deep inside. What we don’t quite realize when we begin is just how tough a journey this can be. For it takes a lifetime, and even then some, for we never quite reach what we aspire to, do we?

      “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” – Michelangelo

      Is it any wonder most people just skate in their lane? Who needs to lump more pressure on themselves when we can just enjoy where we are? Well-meaning friends and family remind you to keep your blinders on and stick with what brought you here. We experience this most deeply in work, where we’re often thought of as who we were when we walked in the door, not who we become as we grow and learn. Isn’t that why so many change jobs?

      We aren’t salmon in a fish farm, we have streams and oceans to explore! We have an opportunity—an obligation—to reinvent ourselves daily. To reach for something better than ourselves in all that we do. Life is a short game, unfair and fickle. We’ll all leave something on the table in the end. Don’t let it be that which means the most. Aspire for that which you might be, and do the work to set it free.

    • The Proof Will Be In Your Living

      “I don’t know what that means. To truly live.’…
      ‘To find work that you love and work harder than other men. To learn languages of the earth, and love the sounds of the words and the things they describe. To love food and music and drink. Fully love them. To love weather, and storms, and the smell of rain. To love heat. To love cold. To love sleep and dreams. To love the newness of each day.’
      He stared at his hands.
      ‘To love women. To pleasure them. To make them laugh. To be foolish for them. To respect them. To listen to them’ He paused. ‘They are the lifegivers. To live is to love them’
      ‘You will see,’ he said. ‘The proof will be in your living”
      ― Pete Hamill, Forever

      Forever is one of those books that I’ve come back to a few times, and I celebrate the magic Pete Hamill weaves into the novel. We must weave magic into our own lives, mustn’t we? Books do that for us, even when the world itself doesn’t always measure up.

      I’ve returned to reading the stack of fiction that’s been mocking my time with business and history books. I give a nod here to Forever, but my attention is on novels new to me that spin their own magic. Perhaps I’ll quote them in the blog, but certainly I’ll learn something from each writer’s style. What is your writing style? And is there enough magic weaved in to transform the reader?

      The central character in Forever is a man named Cormac O’Connor who comes to New York City and lives forever as long as he doesn’t leave the island of Manhattan. When you live forever you get a chance to accumulate experiences and languages, master a musical instrument or two, navigate a few relationships from beginning to end, and reinvent yourself every new day. There’s joy and pain inherent in watching people come and go in your life, there’s accumulated wisdom of bringing each day’s lesson home with you.

      You and I won’t live forever. But we too can accumulate our share of experiences and celebrate the newness of each day. We too can weave magic into our lives. Ultimately, the proof will be in our living.

    • Upon Reflection

      “Long had he believed that a gentleman should turn to a mirror with a sense of distrust. For rather than being tools for self-discovery, mirrors tended to be tools of self-deceit. How many times had he watched as a young beauty turned thirty degrees before her mirror to ensure that she saw herself to the best advantage? … When the celestial chime sounds, perhaps a mirror will suddenly serve its truer purpose—not revealing to a man who he imagines himself to be, but who he has become.” — Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

      I was looking for a quote online, recalling a bit of it but not enough to find it easily. In my search I stumbled on a few sites lingering near the very top of Google’s results with titles along the lines of “inspirational quote for your Instagram post” or some such nonsense. And I thought about how fragile the collective ego of this online world really is.

      Want to improve your reflection? Put yourself out in the world more. Read more. Join the conversation. Stumble a bit more. Write badly and steadily find your voice. Live a bigger life. But do it on your terms or you’ll never be satisfied with yourself.

      Life is about becoming the person we want to be, and learning to live with our shortcomings. Whether your reality check is a mirror or a bank account, number of followers or the stamps in your passport, we all have our reckoning with self-deceit. If we’re honest with ourselves that reckoning might just lead to self-discovery and a new path on our journey. Venture out to meet your future self one step at a time. We never quite reach that perfect image of ourselves, but we reach a point where we’re satisfied with the person looking back at us.

    • Living a Bit More Like Thich Nhat Hanh

      “People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child—our own two eyes. All is a miracle”. — Thich Nhat Hanh

      When Thich Nhat Hanh passed away in January, I didn’t treat it like a celebrity passing, I didn’t mention it at all, really. I let the moment pass with a virtual bow. He may have passed from this world, but he’ll live on as Thoreau or Mary Oliver or Marcus Aurelius lives on. Such is the power of the written word.

      “I promise myself that I will enjoy every minute of the day that is given me to live.”

      We live in a contentious, angry world. And yet, you and I aren’t angry or contentious. You and I are living a contemplative life, a celebratory life. We embrace every moment for all that it implies. We walk through this world like our feet are kissing the earth, gently embracing our time here. We fight the urge to amplify hatefulness, and offer love instead.

      “Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.”

      If we pick up anything from Thich Nhat Hanh, it ought to be this hyper-awareness of each moment for all that it offers to us. We will surely slip back into the hectic and annoyed frenzy of our purposeful action bouncing up against an indifferent world, for life isn’t just meditation and sipping tea, but his wisdom offers an opportunity to recenter ourselves. A chance in the madness to pause, breath in and celebrate the miracle of that particular heartbeat.

      “My actions are my only true belongings.”

      Sure, celebrating each moment of aliveness is lovely, but what are we offering back to the world for our being here? What is our contribution? This is where East meets West, for we all want to bring something to the dance, don’t we? The very question means we don’t see the forest for the trees. Our lives should be a positive vibration that tickles the fancy of those we touch, that inspires a smile for the encounter. Maybe that’s our ripple.

    • Stop Gulping Life Like a Power Lunch and Savor It

      “What else is going on right this minute while ground water creeps under my feet? The galaxy is careening in a slow, muffled widening. If a million solar systems are born every hour, then surely hundreds burst into being as I shift my weight to the other elbow. The sun’s surface is now exploding; other stars implode and vanish, heavy and black, out of sight. Meteorites are arcing to earth invisibly all day long. On the planet the winds are blowing: the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades. Somewhere, someone under full sail is becalmed, in the horse latitudes, in the doldrums; in the northland, a trapper is maddened, crazed, by the eerie scent of the chinook, the sweater, a wind that can melt two feet of snow in a day. The pampero blows, and the tramontane, and the Boro, sirocco, levanter, mistral. Lick a finger: feel the now.” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      The universe swirls about madly all around us, and we, living in our small circle of sensory awareness, trust in it blindly. When you feel the breeze on your skin, do you wonder where it’s calling to you from? Do you ever look up at the stars and wonder at the infinity in between each? So many feel trapped in their human construct, as if any of our petty human thoughts matters to the universe. What is a construct but a story we tell ourselves? A fabrication of the moment?

      Our awareness of this moment is a celebration of being alive. If that sounds rather New Age crazy, well, I get that. That’s the frenzied mind talking, the part of us that thinks we don’t have time for such mad thoughts. We have things to do, places to be, ideas to bring to the table, transactions to make… Sure. But what else do we have but this instant with infinity lurking all around us?

      So why then do we grind away in jobs, sheltered from the elements, sipping coffee to power through another day? Why do anything disciplined and proactive at all when the universe stares back with blank ambivalence? Because our small circle reverberates. We touch others through our deliberate engagement with the world. Steve Jobs might have thought he was putting a dent in the universe, but really it was a ripple through humanity. Our ripple might not change an industry, but it can reverberate in the now. We’re here to be in the mix: a part of each other’s lives as we each sort out the implications of all that swirls around us.

      Be who you are. Become who you might be. But maybe just savor a bit more. Why do we gulp life down like a power lunch? Pause between the big gulps of living and taste the moment. Feel the now.

    • The Power Is in the Journey

      If a tree could fly off, it would not suffer the saw.
      The sun hurries all night to be back for morning.
      Salty water rises in the air,
      so the garden will be drenched with fresh rain.

      A drop leaves home,
      enters a certain shell, and becomes a pearl.
      Joseph turns from his weeping father, toward Egypt.
      Remember how that turned out.

      Journeys bring power and love back into you.
      If you cannot go somewhere, move in the passageways of the self.

      They are like shafts of light, always changing,
      and you change when you explore them.
      –– Rumi, The Importance of Setting Out

      Talking with a friend of mine, we discussed the logistics of writing about exploring the world when you aren’t presently out there traveling as much. But we’re all on a journey, aren’t we? Sometimes it’s waterfalls and mountaintops and coastal sunsets, sometimes it’s a poem that draws you into a corner of your soul that hadn’t previously explored. Writing about it every day, you end up blazing a trail you might follow back again someday, or offer to others who want to explore similar territory.

      You notice changes in people when they’ve been on a journey. And you notice changes in yourself as well. Life is the processing of the changes we put ourselves through, the growth we see and feel as we move through the world. This world is beautiful and full of joyful encounters. This world is dark and on the verge of collapsing on itself in environmental disaster, war and plague. What do we do with the truth in both of those realities? We go out and experience it for ourselves, wrestle with what it means to us, and if you’re courageous publish it for the world to learn what you’ve been thinking about.

      Who would want it otherwise?