Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • Expression

      The reason we’re alive
      is to express ourselves in the world.
      And creating art may be the most
      effective and beautiful method of doing so.

      Art goes beyond language, beyond lives.
      It’s a universal way to send messages
      between each other and through time.
      — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

      Walk through a museum and inevitably some work calls to us from across the room. We’re drawn in, connecting to the human who created it who may live next door or lived a thousand years ago on the other side of the world. Human connection through art, literature and poetry, music, photography, architecture and engineering or really any expression that is mined deep within and brought to the world binds us now and through time. Artistic expression is thus a time machine.

      It follows that one who makes art may wonder whether their particular expression is enough. Sure, it’s our verse, but why are we making this and not something else? Why do I write a blog post every bloody day, no matter what? Why does a hiker I know spend every free moment redlining the trails of New Hampshire? Why choose a certain career path over another, potentially more profitable career path? We do it because something within us demands that we do it. Each pursuit fulfills something within, making us whole. And in turn we express that outwardly as part of our identity. This is who we are, doing this, at this moment in time. We are trading our precious time to express this pursuit, but feel more alive for having chosen it.

      Throughout life we acquire skills, develop muscle memory, navigate triumph and tragedy, age and learn and grow through the years that we’re given. All of that changes our perspective about what it is to be a human being. If we choose wisely we maximize our experiences along the way, and if we aren’t wise with our time we accumulate regrets for not doing certain things in the time we were given for it. Our reward is perspective. We grow as people and as artists to the level that we open to the experiences of a lifetime.

      The work that we produce is a time stamp of our experiences, created one after the other, indicating who we were when it was created. Our lens of now is forever altering our perspective, and thus alters our expression. When we think back on the person we were ten years ago, do we smile or shudder? The work that we produced, the routine we built our life around at the time, the people we surrounded ourselves with, all brought us here, to this place and time, where we may express ourselves yet again with this newfound perspective. Expression is a gift of our time and perspective to those who choose to use their time to connect with it (and in that connection perhaps alter their own perspective). We owe it to ourselves and our audience to draw out the best we can in the moment.

    • A More Available Life

      “The more you move, the more available you are to chance and little wonders.” — Douglas Westerbeke, A Short Walk Through A Wide World

      To be open to experience is risky. Openness requires more of us than to simply stay in place, doing what we’ve always done, in this familiar way that we’ve always done it. That sentence either sounds like comfort to us or a death sentence, depending on who we have grown to be.

      Westerbeke’s novel is a page-turning wonder itself, as its hero moves through the world. For those of us with travel lust, it stirs those familiar feelings. To leave all of this and go find out more about that, whatever and wherever that is. In experiencing that, we learn a lot about who we are in the process. We are moving beyond the self in such moments. We are living a more available life.

      It sounds wonderful to be forever traveling, forever moving from place to place, as if we’d die if we stayed too long in any one place. In reality, we need a safe harbor to return to now and then, to catch up with old friends and family, to tend a garden and to be there for the harvest, to know the way and what to order at certain restaurants. Familiar has its place in our lives too.

      To weave oneself back into a community is a lovely thing indeed. My barber knows my face and exactly how to cut my hair the moment I walk in the door, even if he hasn’t learned my name in the twenty years I’ve been going there. Honestly, I don’t need him to know my name, only that I’ll be back again in a few weeks to do it all over again. The stories I tell him about where I’ve been since the last time he cut my hair carry him away from that barber shop even as I settle into the familiarity of it.

      As we begin this year, as we venture into an uncertain future, what are we inclined to chance upon? What will we wonder at? Sometimes it’s right in front of us, or within the pages of a book. But often it’s beyond our current experience, simply waiting for us to venture to it. To add venturing to our lives naturally lends itself to more adventure. To go and be and do and yes, to return again forever changed, in the time we have available to us.

      Tempus fugit: Time flies. Every moment of now is rapidly receding into then. How we use now isn’t always up to us, but sometimes—more often that we believe, it is ours alone to spend. Will this day, this year and the balance of our lives be full of familiar routines and comforting safe bets or will we dare to venture beyond?

    • There Was Happiness

      “And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live.” ― Stephen King , The Dark Tower

      Did you watch Stranger Things? Did you care about it at all? The answer to both of those questions was yes for me. Not the emphatic yes! of a super fan, but most certainly a yes. Like Game of Thrones and a few other select shows, it grabbed many people and wouldn’t let go. And the ending was about as good as it could have been. So bravo to the entire crew that put it together, beginning with the Duffer brothers.

      So many stories try to end perfectly, with all the answers sown up neatly to satisfy everyone. Life isn’t so tidy. Sunshine and roses may please the masses as the credits roll or we close the book, but we all return to the reality of life in all its complexity. There are no happily ever afters, but there will be happiness. And that may just be enough. We are as happy as what we choose to focus on in our lives. Mostly it’s mindset that determines our outcomes.

      We simply cannot have all the answers to our questions. Life is full of contradictions. It’s unfair yet seeks balance, complicated yet simple, and of course joyful and devastatingly tragic all at once. No storybook endings, but an end with many questions. We learn and grow and do the best we can along the way. Maybe that’s not enough, or maybe it is everything.

      It may help to remember that every ending is a new beginning. We wake up to a new day and have a choice as to how we react to it. If we hated how yesterday ended, we may write a better story today. If we loved it, build on it. The only way to live is to rise to meet each day as best we can, having learned from the last one. It was never about a happily ever after, it was about rising to meet the future one day at a time.

    • Part of Us

      George Malley: You know, if we were to put this apple down, and leave it, it would be spoiled and gone in a few days. But, if we were to take a bite of it like this,
      [bites apple]
      George Malley: it would become part of us, and we could take it with us, forever.
      [offers the apple to Glory, who takes a bite. Al refuses]
      George Malley: Al, everything is on its way to somewhere. Everything.
      — Gerald DiPego, scene from the movie Phenomenon

      The last few days of the year are meant for reflection of what has been, blended with anticipation for what may be in the New Year. The places we go to, the books we’ve read, the things we’ve done or not done all accumulate and become our identity. We are here because of all of that, layered into who we are. It’s all a part of us, carried for our evermore.

      Reflecting on what we’ve added to our identity, what we’ve subtracted from it, leads one naturally to consideration of what one might add to our identity going forward. Just who do we want to become next anyway? What, like that apple George Malley bit into, will become a part of us forever and always? We ought to make it the juiciest and most delicious apple we can find.

      We are all on our way somewhere. Forever accumulating, subtracting, showcasing or burying deep within. Life is what we carry, but also what we build from the blocks we’ve gathered together in our lives. Want a more magical life? Gather bits of magic and make something of them (those magical bits are everywhere when we train ourselves to be aware of them).

      What will tomorrow bring? Who knows? But eternity will surely show its indifference to our plans either way. This is our verse to write, beginning forever today. What in the world are we waiting for? Take a bite already.

      Happy New Year!

    • Places You’ll Go

      “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” — Dr. Seuss

      Where will we go in the New Year? It begins with a spark of imagination, a wee bit of boldness and the inclination to follow through on the things we promised ourselves we would do one day. But just when is one day? It’s the day we step towards it.

      Having made the decision, booked the flights, reserved a room, and blocked off the calendar, the wait begins until the day of departure. But really, the trip has already begun. We anticipate, add to our itinerary, brush up on the local language, and (for some of us) read some history of the place to better understand what we’re walking into.

      We grow into travel, just as we grow into our careers, relationships and parental responsibilities. Each trip offers lessons, each lesson leads to more adventurous travel. We stretch, learn and grow some more. And our lives become larger before our eyes.

      So as we take stock of where we’ve been this year, it’s natural to imagine what’s next for us. Just where will we go next? What will we see and do? Just who will we be on this next trip around the sun? The answers begin within.

    • Inevitable Leveling

      “Yes I know that the drop of water carried along by its weight, can ascend to the sky in vapor only to fall again in rain. But the wear and tear of rock, the gravel that the stream carries to the river and the river to the sea, the granite that disintegrates, I know that all that will not again go up the fatal incline; and the highest mountains dissolve into the valley, the plain where their ruins accumulate and become equal. Everything falls from a height less and less lofty with a fall more and more shallow. This inevitable leveling is accomplished hour by hour and minute by minute under our very eyes. In life manner the whole material world equalizes and tempers its energies.” — André Gide, Autumn Leaves

      The world is full of political upheavals, violent ascents to power and greedy grabbers of gobs of money. It has always been this way, it likely always will. Such drama always grabs headlines. We may even say rightfully so, for we all ought to pay attention to those who want it all, because we’ve seen where the pursuit of everything leads them.

      It’s the gradual leveling out through democracy, diplomacy, equal opportunity and consensus-building that quietly builds worlds, results in decades of relative stability and peace. We get a little too complacent in such times. We grow comfortable and lazy with democracy. We stop being frugal and become over-exuberant in our spending habits. We forget that to be indebted to others is to be an indentured servant. The opportunists see their opening and away they go.

      Time settles everything. It likely won’t be in our lifetime, but maybe in that of our grandchildren’s children maybe humanity will reach its potential. Assuming we don’t destroy humanity and mother earth in the interim. Earth will bounce back when she shrugs us off (she has eternity to level out again, after all). It’s humanity’s story that is being written through time.

      It’s easy to lose faith in humanity when things seem so ugly. But even now there is an inevitable leveling happening right before our eyes. It’s best to be patiently aware, ethically opportunistic and emotionally resilient when ugliness reigns. After all, we’re playing the long game. It’s best to remember that, especially as others forget.

    • The World Within

      “There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.”
      — Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

      How many countless worlds within are never realized? The tragedy of Thoreau’s “quiet desperation” is its prevalence. Living an unreal life is a tragic consequence of ignoring what’s been calling to us all along. But in a world so relentlessly distracting, who has time to stop and listen? The easy path is to simply do what is expected of us.

      We may choose to stray into expression. To learn to release that which is locked within and create reality from a dream. Imagination is a powerful ally when given given room to grow, fed with attention and allowed to manifest into something real.

      Realizing our masterpiece is a long way down the road from a first draft, begin anyway. It will be incrementally closer than what we did yesterday. Leaps are pretty things, but don’t happen without sustained momentum. Tap in to within, and make the imagined real. Reality is only asking for us to assert ourselves, once and for all.

    • The World Will Be What We Make It

      “I should like to say to the young people disoriented by the absence of faith: to make the world rime with something is up to you alone!
      It is up to man, and man is the starting point. The world, this absurd world, will stop being absurd; it is up to you alone. The world will be what you make it.
      The more you tell me and insist there is nothing absolute in this world and in our sky, that truth, justice and beauty are man’s creations, the more I insist that it is then up to man to maintain them, that his honor demands it. Man is responsible to God”
      — André Gide, Autumn Leaves

      Gide took on the existentialists with this quote. In the aftermath of World War II, as an old man looking around at disoriented youth in France and beyond, he stood for faith and a higher power. In a book that often felt like a rambling conversation to this point, he shook the room with this chapter entitled “Literary Memories and Present-Day Problems” from a lecture he’d done in 1946. The world was licking its wounds then, and in many ways we still haven’t recovered.

      Just who created truth, justice and beauty? Was it man or God? If it was the former, can it not simply be undone by mankind? Do we not see that happening in the world today? To put our faith in humanity to find its way back to the pillars of truth, justice and beauty relies on humanity being inclined to ascend to higher ground in the first place. Have you seen what people focus on?

      I write, perhaps too frequently, about arete or personal excellence as the standard. The fact is, most people are just trying to get through the day, never considering their own agency. To aspire to excellence for all of humanity seems naive at best. And so people turn towards God as the logical creator.

      I’m not here to challenge your faith, or to advocate for it either. I believe what I believe, you believe what you believe, and we may coexist peacefully to the end of our days and find out who was right on the back end. But even writing that sentence would have been deemed too radical in some points in history, and in some places in the world today. So how are we to reach consensus on raising the standard for all of humanity? It seems beyond our collective ability to even try.

      Perhaps we may agree that the world is absurd. It surely is for those who pay attention to such things. And what are we to do with this absurdity but maintain our stance, that we aren’t knocked over in the tumultuous days that inevitably follow? We must be resilient, and build resiliency into our lives, that we may survive the ineptitude and carelessness of others. That we may dare to thrive in a fractured world.

      In order to maintain our stance, we must find solid ground on which to make our stand. For many, this is religion and faith. For others, it’s philosophy, nature, science, and law and order. One may of course believe in both, but those aren’t the people screaming for heads to roll. People become radicalized when they feel that their very foundation is being eroded by the whims of others. Nobody likes to have their foundations torn away by the non-believers of their particular belief.

      So where do we go from here? Honor demands more of us, if we are to ever be—what’s the word?—Great. But one person’s great is another’s chaos. No matter which “side” we fall on, we may agree that we have a long way to go. But agreeing requires consensus, not sides. There’s still so much work to do in our fight for truth, justice and beauty. And the world will be what we make it.

    • Friends and Adversaries

      “Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      We work hard to avoid being critical of others, but the thoughts are there just the same. We develop a good filter as we grow, keeping some thoughts to ourselves, finding that polite way to say something that must be said, and practicing active-avoidance when absolutely necessary. The last few years there’s been a fair amount of active-avoidance as chaos ensued in the world at large. This is a survival skill, garnered from a keen value for the preciousness of time.

      My opinions are generally known by my closest friends and adversaries(the people who pay the most attention). Who has more at stake in knowing who we really are? If I’m learning anything as I move towards another decade checked off on this planet, it’s to stop working so hard to be an adversary and accept the path that I’m on myself. Let others take the prizes once coveted, my quest now is to learn and grow. And this shift in attitude, this shift in focus, is itself growth.

    • Plans and Adages

      “It is easy to make plans in this world; even a cat can do it; and when one is out in those remote oceans it is noticeable that a cat’s plans and a man’s are worth about the same.”
      ― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

      I planned to do a few things this week that simply didn’t happen because of other things that were more pressing in the moment. Perhaps this has happened to you? Naturally. We’re all human, we make our plans and God laughs. We all have heard this adage and accept it even as some question the laugher, because plans have a way of changing no matter how stubborn we are about sticking with them.

      Mark Twain, bobbing around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, was likely wondering what went wrong with his own plans that brought him there. He’d accepted a lecture circuit around the British Empire because he’d lost most of his fortune in bad investments. Through adversity we find opportunity. Finding the silver lining is a path to resilience. We are built to transcend obstacles and challenges, even if we don’t always realize it at the time.

      Speaking of challenges, trying to eat well and to drink in moderation (or not at all) during the holidays is just about as challenging as trying to fit in a solid workout when the days feel so short and frenzied. It’s easier to simply give in and eat the cookies and chocolate that people seem to throw at you this time of year (why does everyone bake so much in December?). What’s one more cookie anyway? The truth shall set you free, and when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Or at least stop eating and go take a walk. The dog would like that, and so would the waistline. After all, a rolling stone gathers no moss.

      If I’ve learned anything from having a few of these holidays under my belt, it’s to celebrate the season, but maybe temper that enthusiasm for treats with a bit more active lifestyle. Nothing ventured, nothing gained may be true, but don’t venture into too many treats and too few steps!

      Earlier this week I met with a couple of industry friends at a brewery. It became apparent that I’ve (thankfully) lost my ability to keep pace downing pints, and I opted out of the latter rounds in favor of staying under the legal limit for my commute home. All things in moderation, we tell ourselves. Just remember that moderation for some is excess for others. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

      It may be true that we are never too old to learn, but it’s also true that we aren’t getting any younger. So sure, we ought to do things now that will be impossible to do later, but maybe lean into the healthier choices that build a stronger foundation for that future version of us that we hope is strong and vibrant and maybe even a little scandalously adventurous for the age we are at the time. At least, that’s the plan.