Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • To Back Up or Pivot

      Try new things enough and something will go wrong.  The trick is in the recovery.  Yesterday I downloaded a new theme that would work well with Elementor to enhance the look of the blog.  Two minutes after downloading it my site was sending out random posts in Latin.  No, we can’t have that.  I copied my last five days worth of posts and used Jetpack to backup to a different version of my site.  I chose to go back two themes ago, just in case there was anything in the first iteration that triggered the mess that occurred in the second.  As I warned, the blog is a work in progress.  I’m still assessing where to take it from here, but it will continue to evolve.

      Life doesn’t always offer the do-over.  We all find ourselves wishing we’d done something differently, taken the different path, not said that stupid thing, or a thousand other mistakes that proved somewhere between disappointing, embarrassing, disastrous and devastating.  But so long as we avoid plunging too deep into the devastating bucket we’re all human and mistakes happen.  Governors in the United States are facing the real consequences of politics and public pressure over science as they re-open restaurants, bars and beaches and see COVID-19 cases spike.  But so do the rest of us.  We either take it seriously or we risk it all.  No do-overs in a pandemic.

      One troubling thing in our current culture is the tendency of people to judge others by a mistake they made.  Public shaming of people who appear to be doing something horrible or outrageous.  I think of the Covington Catholic High School kids who appeared to be confronting an older protester.  People judged them as thugs until the rest of the video was shown and it became obvious they were just reacting as they passed the man.  I’m sure those kids went through hell, and might still get some hate mail from ignorant people.  The thing is, it’s easy to judge others, it’s a lot harder to look at ourselves and see what we need to work on.

      I quietly deleted the Facebook app again yesterday.  I gave it another three months after deleting it from January to April, and frankly the ratio of angry opinion, shaming of others and political debate remains way higher than the sharing of pictures of family and friends.  Add in all the garbage Facebook is pushing on you and it just doesn’t seem to be a healthy place to hang out.  With the Election coming up in the United States, it’s only going to get worse.  So I pivoted away from Facebook once again.  If anyone wants to know what I’m up to they can find me here.  I make a point of reaching out to others and find I do it more when I don’t rely on Facebook to show me what they’re up to.

      Seeing the need for change is one thing.  Doing something about it is quite another.  Sometimes its as easy as deleting an app or backing up to a different version of your blog, but sometimes it requires a lot more work.  2020 is a year many wish we could have a do-over on.  We can’t have the time back, but we can use it well while we’re living it.  We shouldn’t always move forward, but we also can’t always back up.  Sometimes all we can do is pivot and move in a different direction entirely.  And do the work to make the present a bit better and the future better still.  Here’s to the good days ahead.

    • What We Know

      Two nights in a row I was stumped by the sound of birds in the neighborhood.  The first was my old friend the Carolina Wren, making a call that sounded different enough that I didn’t believe it was what it turned out to be.  The second was a Northern Flicker, which I don’t recall hearing in the 21 years I’ve lived in this house.  More likely than not I just hadn’t paid enough attention and they’ve been calling to me in vain for years.  Either way, it reminded me once again of what I don’t know.

      The more the mind opens up to the world, the more we realize what we don’t know about it.  In general I can tell you a thing or two about many things, but I can’t tell you everything about anything, including myself.  Subject matter experts, as the name infers, tend to dive deep into specific subject matter.  I’m more of an informed generalist myself, seeking to learn and understand many things and being proficient enough to fill in the blanks with the help of those who know the way.

      People who demonstrate that they know everything about one thing are eagerly embraced by those who seek to understand the way forward.  On the other hand, People who say that they know everything about everything raise eyebrows and are only followed by zealots.  Who really has it all figured out anyway?  Here’s a hint, it’s not the guy who tells the world he knows everything, no matter what their title is. But it’s also not the subject matter expert.  We know what we know, and work through the rest the best we can.

      We’ve all learned a lot during this ongoing pandemic.  Things we didn’t know about ourselves, about others we thought we knew pretty well, about the way the world works, about what we can live without and can’t live without.  None of us would do a pandemic all over again, but we might miss the simplicity of day-to-day social isolation when its over.  What we thought we knew about pandemics and politics and racial injustice and the people we have known for years is not what we know now.  And it promises to be different again tomorrow.

      “There is only one real knowledge: that which helps us to be free. Every other type of knowledge is mere amusement.” – Vishnu Purana

      I read two page-turner novels over the weekend.  Blew through them in no time. Yes, it was mere amusement, but it was also a nice change of pace from the usual stack of books that I try to tackle.  I try to sprinkle in fun with learning, and reading is fun until you make it a chore.  Reading philosophy, history, poetry and biographies inform and mould the mind in new ways.  But all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  What we know shouldn’t make us boring and one-dimensional.  What we know should lead us to explore our assumptions more, engage with others more, debate and learn from them, and above all keep moving closer to the truth and freedom hidden just from view.  The learning path is one minor miracle of discovery after another, at least it is when the student is eagerly peaking around the corner at every bend.  I feel I’ve reached that point in my own learning.  I hope that knowledge quest continues until the end.  I’d like to think it will.

       

      Originally posted 6 July 2020

    • Getting Lost is Not a Waste of Time

      “We can park the van and walk to town
      Find the cheapest bottle of wine that we could find
      And talk about the road behind
      How getting lost is not a waste of time
      Le Bois d’Amour will take us home
      And in a moment we will sing as the forest sleeps”
      – Jack Johnson, What You Thought You Need

      I was thinking about getting lost, and how it never really turns out that badly.  There are different ways to get lost, of course.  Getting lost on the road used to be common until we put global positioning services in our pockets.  Shame really, in most cases when I wasn’t in a particular hurry, I used to love pulling the atlas out and looking up the street name I was looking at to figure what the heck went wrong on my drive.  There’s magic in maps, and the whole world would open up for you in that moment of realization of where you were.  Now people just follow directions from a phone.

      I see a generation of students graduating with degrees that don’t really tell them what the directions are.  You get a degree in Electrical Engineering you generally know the first step on the path after that.  But what of the Philosophy or the Business major?  What shall they do as a first step out into the world?  Suddenly lost in a world that seemed to offer clear steps to take every moment until this one.  And to double down we’ll throw a pandemic at you.  Enjoy!  So it’s no surprise that so many are looking around saying What next? and hoping for an answer.  The answer lies within, friend.  You’ve been told what to do for your entire life, now it’s your turn to tell us what you want to do.  Don’t know?  Welcome to adulthood.  Take the time to listen.  Do things that pull you in different directions.  Uncertainty is a gift should you use it wisely.  Most don’t use it wisely. Life is full of transition moments where you need to sort through things to find your way.  Not what you “have to do” but what you wish to experience.  What is the path that brings you there?  Be patient, you’ll find the way.

      “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
      – Ralph Waldo Emerson

      Closely related is being lost in your mind.  Not losing your mind in a road rage sort of way, but lost in your thoughts.  Driving an hour and realizing you’re already there and not quite sure where you were for the duration.  Where did the time go? Getting lost is a gift.  It’s the soul’s way of gently steering you towards another track.  I find I’m spending less time lost in my mind as I write more and as I’m more present in the moment.  I take long walks trying to get lost in my mind and realizing that I’m present the entire time.

      “To be awake is to be alive.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      Thoreau was awake, but he was restless and lost until he had time to sort through things.  Walden was a great example of sorting through things and putting it on paper to help the rest of us find our own way.  I think of the moment before he went into the woods, when he was living a life of quiet desperation and lost on the path.  He found it in writing and contemplation and conversation with great thinkers like Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne.  I should think there might be no better place to find your way than getting lost in conversation amongst great thinkers.  That might not be possible with that cast of characters, but we can still tap into their thoughts, conveniently downloadable right onto that magic computer in your pocket.

      “Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

      And here I think of the scene from Dead Poet’s Society where the boys find the cave and reveal the great works of time to each other.  The magic is in discovery and sharing and lifting each other up.  Conspiring with some fellow soul and realizing that hours have gone by like minutes.  Helping lost souls find their way, together.  Until the adults get in the way anyway.  Rejoice in getting lost in conversation and in reflection, for getting lost is not a waste of time.  It’s a pivot point in our lives and a chance to find a new direction.  If you’ll just stop listening to the adults telling you where to go and listen to yourself.

      “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” –  Ralph Waldo Emerson

      It’s easy to get lost in this mad world.  Billions of souls all trying to find their way – how do we figure out our place in all of this?  The world sparkles in light and breathless magic.  The world also grinds down dreams into dust and feeds it back to you as cake if you let it.  Who says everyone else has it figured out anyway?  I can assure you they don’t.  Celebrate being lost.  It’s far more interesting than knowing every step laid out in order like those cars in amusement parks that ride on tracks.  Remember how boring that got as you realized you weren’t really going anywhere special?  Suddenly the only interesting part was crashing into the car in front of you or getting bumped from behind.  I’ve seen many career paths that look just like that.  There’s nothing wrong with finding yourself off the track.  You’ll be amazed at the view as new paths open up ahead of you.

    • On Humility

      “I began, slowly and dimly, to realize that humble was the only finally truly honest way to be in this life.” – Brian Doyle, The Final Frontier

      “You must trust that you being the best possible you matters somehow. That trying to be an honest and tender parent will echo for centuries through your tribe. That doing your chosen work with creativity and diligence will shiver people far beyond your ken. That being an attentive and generous friend and citizen will prevent a thread or two of the social fabric from unraveling. And you must do all of this with the certain knowledge that you will never get proper credit for it, and in fact the vast majority of things you do right will go utterly unremarked.” – Brian Doyle, The Final Frontier

      There are recurring themes in Brian Doyle’s writing; of wonder and humility, of facing hardship and death with dignity and grace, and of striving to do your best in the face of it all.  This frantic, breathless, clickbait world could learn something from reading Doyle. But mostly they’ll read 7 Easy Steps to Millions or watch a TikTok video instead.  Doyle is for thinkers and seekers.  Count me amongst the shivered, Brian.  I’d like to believe I’m a thinker, but that wouldn’t be very humble, would it?  No, more a student I suppose.  So I seek his writing out the way I linger on Mary Oliver poems or ponder Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

      Humility is the path to happiness in this insane world.  But humility isn’t celebrated, isn’t sexy, and most of all doesn’t drive traffic to your web site or prompt viewers to binge watch your work.  And so there’s a disconnect on how to live and how the world projects how one should live.  I believe most people live in distraction to avoid the naked truth of existence.  They puff themselves up into characters that startle and awe the crowd, and are celebrated for being larger than life by other people seeking distraction.  It all explodes into an orgy of narcissism and ego and greed and hunger for more.  Empathy and humility are shoved aside as signs of weakness by the loud talkers and outraged finger pointers and the UPPER CASE WRITERS who want to be seen as the experts on all such things.

      Last night I took a walk in air so thick I could swim in it.  Just me and the bats swirling above, and nobody else lingering in the soupy air.  I noticed more contrails splitting the atmosphere than I’ve seen in some time.  Perhaps things are getting back to normal again, or maybe it’s just planes full of Amazon Prime packages floating across time to the waiting arms of consumers everywhere.  Either way there were more planes than before.  But thankfully more bats swirling in their chaotic dance across the dusky sky.  The silence was broken by the roar of a testosterone-fueled, would be Fast & Furious stunt driver with modified muffler accelerating on the main road to speeds well above safe limits.  I quietly saluted him as he roared past, oblivious to my presence on a side street nearby, but surely celebrating his Right (capital R) to express himself under God and the Constitution he’s never read.  On the face of it he and I don’t have a lot in common, don’t listen to the same music, don’t watch the same movies (I’ve never seen a Vin Diesel car movie) and might not even vote the same way.  But we’re both living at the same point in history, dealing with the realities of a pandemic and economic uncertainty and climate change and political divisiveness, albeit in different ways.  In short we’re roughly the same, just handling things differently.

      “I thought
      how the sun
      blazes
      for everyone just
      so joyfully
      as it rises
      under the lashes
      of my own eyes, and I thought
      I am so many!”
      – Mary Oliver, Sunrise

      I’ve found people to be the same all over the world, largely generous and caring.  We tend to focus on the outliers and the boisterous instead of the humble and kind.  A reminder that we’re all in this together is helpful now and then.  For all my anger at images of the very small percentage of uninformed, outraged misfits burning masks or some such thing, there’s a vast majority of people handling things with dignity and a healthy dose of humility.  And that gives me hope for the future.  Humanity has made a lot of mistakes in how we handle the environment and each other, but we mostly want to get it right so that those we care about can have a good life too.  Humility is thinking beyond your own needs and ego, of recognizing there’s something bigger than you in this world, and for all the madness of 2020 I see far more reasons for hope than despair.

       

    • Blank Places

      To those devoid of imagination a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part. – Aldo Leopold

      Blank places on maps are increasingly rare.  With technology we’ve managed to reveal extraordinary detail on the contours of the land, water sources and potential sites to camp for the night.  You can hike many trails virtually from the comfort of your home with street view images of what you might see.  Even some of the most remote places in the world have 360 degree images uploaded from some soul that visited before.  And yet there are still blank places on maps that tease and mock those who would plot the world.

      Blank places on calendars betray opportunity lost, or not fully leveraged.  Time is money, they say, and to leave blank places on calendars is to waste our most precious resource.  Make the most of your day and fill every moment with appointments, meetings, conference calls, time for tasks, workouts, dates, drive time and even time to think.  There’s merit in a full calendar, but there’s also merit in blank places on the calendar too.  Some of my best career moments came in blank places that developed into magic moments.

      Blank places in ourselves are harder to see, but we know they’re there.  Revealed in quiet moments, in challenging tasks completed, in new things tried and most especially in things avoided.  Risks not taken reveal as much as they forever hide what might have been had we just begun.

      “Oh, I kept the first for another day!
      Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
      I doubted if I should ever come back.”
      – Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

      The funny thing about maps is that they reveal where others have already been.  When you follow the map you’re just following someone else’s path.  Way leads on to way, and blank places might never be revealed.  That’s true for most everyone, isn’t it?  We tuck aside those unreasonable pursuits in favor of the tried and true path, never getting around to seeing what’s down that other path.  Don’t despair for what might have been, but be bold enough to see what might be.  See where stepping into the unknown leads you.  Should you find you need to double back the world will be just as you left it.  They might not even look up from their screens long enough to realize that you left.

    • Thoughts on the Garden

      I spent an hour deadheading the roses early in the morning.  Just me in the garden, giving haircuts and quietly staking overeager plants that have reached too far to the sky for their slender stalks to support.  In the garden I don’t think about the political and environmental mess we have on our hands.  Instead I meditate with flowers and vegetables that don’t care a whit about the makeup on Trump’s collar or the temperature in the Arctic Circle.  I care about climate change and world peace and equality, but you have to have moments where you quiet your mind and take care of yourself for a spell.  For me the garden is as good a place as any to cast that spell.

      I found myself looking up the garden club in the town I live in, wondering who I knew that was a member.  I didn’t recognize a face or a name.  All women with an average age about 25 years my senior.  I could really shake up a club like that if I were to join.  Introduce cocktails with the clematis Tuesday nights, or run for garden club President on  a platform of composting for all ages.  It reminded me that a lot of people assume that my wife is the gardener in the family.  My wife, respectfully, is definitely not a gardener.  She’d rather hit the pavement in running shoes than linger in the loam.  But it’s easy to see why people assume she might be when you look at the typical garden club membership.

      If 2020 had been a normal year I had planned to downsize the garden a bit.  Fewer containers filled with flowers would mean less maintenance, which would mean more freedom to travel, hike, sail or pursue crazy ideas like Scuba diving again.  It takes commitment to have a good garden, that’s all.  Time and money and sweat equity and you get rewarded with a lovely show.  And you want to enjoy the show, but all you see are the bare spots where something didn’t perform as planned, or the leaves the rabbits are nibbling on, or the cursed chipmunk holes.  And you roll up your sleeves and get back to it.

      I know many people who do the bare minimum for landscaping, hire someone to mow for them, treat the lawn with chemicals, and even plant flowers for them.  That all seems quite attractive somedays, but that’s not me.  I’ve had a garden for as long as I’ve owned a house, and couldn’t see hiring it out to someone else.  Why should they have all the fun?  I even purchased a push mower so I could get more steps in.  Those days of coming home from work to see the lawn freshly cut in expertly angled lines by the landscaper are behind me for now.  And walking the entire property has proven to be more therapeutic than I thought it would be.  I might not be hiking a mountain, but I’m getting a good amount of exercise and spend a few seconds enjoying the fruits of my labor before moving on to some other task.

      The time to enjoy the garden is when the world is asleep and it’s just you and a hot beverage, watching the world wake up around you.  The garden is a magnet for bees and hummingbirds, but also for rabbits and groundhogs and chipmunks and hornets and snakes.  I take the good with the bad, and try to minimize the damage that the unwelcome visitors do while encouraging more visits from the stars of the garden.  It all becomes an immersive experience, better than any virtual reality game.  Why live virtually when there’s so much to see right outside the window?

      And so this morning at an hour most people shake their heads at I quietly tied twine onto stakes and gently coaxed thorny roses upward.  A few thorns managed to catch the back of my hand in the process and drew blood, which I wiped away and finished the knots.  The roses looked happier for the support, but a bit resentful for the restraint.  We all want freedom, don’t we?  For me the garden is my stake in the ground, offering support and refuge, though at times I grow resentful at the commitment.  But then I remember that the commitment is exactly what I was looking for all along.

    • Resetting the Mind

      Monday morning wasn’t offering me any free rides today.  The well of creativity felt tapped out.  I looked through the 27 drafts I had going and wasn’t inspired to pursue any of them.  I tried sitting in my favorite reading chair and read Seneca’s On the Happy Life for inspiration, highlighting many passages yet finding no inspiration for today’s blog.  I put on headphones and listened to my favorite create something of substance song (Wild Theme) on repeat.  Nothing yet…  but getting closer.  Coffee cup drained.  Walked outside and sat on my favorite outdoor muse capturing device and waited.  And finally it came to me.

      “One of the most effective ways to reduce the friction associated with your habits is to practice environment design….  “resetting the room”.
      The purpose of resetting each room is not simply to clean up after the last action, but to prepare for the next action…
      How can we design a world where it’s easy to do what’s right?” Redesign your life so the actions that matter most are also the actions that are easiest to do.”
      – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      It occurred to me that I’ve set a few spaces to optimize productivity.  Sit/stand desk, noise-cancelling headphones, proper lighting, indoor and outdoor spaces at the ready.  All of this is setting the room, as Clear writes about.  And it’s setting the mind as well.  When I hear Wild Theme I get creative.  When I sit in a specific chair my mind focuses on writing.  And eventually it clears the fog and I get to it.  These are all methods of flipping the switch.  Want to work out first thing in the morning?  Put your workout clothes out so they’re front and center when you get up.  Writing is the same way – take the necessary steps of setting the “room” to prepare for the next action.

      Ultimately resetting the room means resetting the mind for the actions you wish to prioritize.  Having a dedicated workspace is important so personal time and work time don’t bleed over into one another.  I think that particular point has been hammered home by just about every business or lifestyle writer out there.  I won’t regurgitate the key points here.  For me it’s not about the space you place yourself in but the mindset you achieve.  Monday mornings are generally difficult because you’re transitioning from weekend activities to the work week.  I don’t recall having a similar challenge with Friday nights or the first morning of a vacation.  It’s all in the mind, this calendar mentality, but the uncertainty of which hat am I wearing at the moment? is valid.  So in times of transition, to reduce the friction, the question how do we make it easy to do what’s right? is paramount to actually getting things done effectively.

      And that brings me back to Seneca, which didn’t seem at all connected to this topic when I started writing this morning.  In speaking about virtue, Seneca’s pointed out that he hadn’t quite gotten to a virtuous life just yet.  To which his critics pounced, saying why should we listen to a man who hasn’t mastered the very thing he lectures us on?  But Seneca turns this around on his critics, pointing out that:

      “I make this speech, not on my own behalf, for I am steeped in vices of every kind, but on behalf of one who has made some progress in virtue.”

      We all tend to think that everyone else has it all figured out, don’t we?  And it can be unnerving when someone who is “showing us the way” admits that they’re a work in progress themselves.  But I’ve come to a point where I view anyone that tells me they have it all figured out is a con artist – be it a fundamentalist, politician, overly aggressive business person: you know the type.  Like you I’ve learned to be skeptical of people who say they have it all figured out.  Instead, I write to show myself the way.  On behalf of one who has made progress in the things that I myself strive for.  Finding a way to flip the switch on a misty Monday morning, and sharing in the process for arriving at the desired state.  The well feels a bit less empty even as I tap from it.  Funny how that happens.

    • Is It Yourself You Seek?

      It is yourself you seek
      In a long rage,
      Scanning through light and darkness
      Mirrors, the page,

      Where should reflected be
      Those eyes and that thick hair,
      That passionate look, that laughter.
      You should appear

      Within the book, or doubled,
      Freed, in the silvered glass;
      Into all other bodies
      Yourself should pass.

      The glass does not dissolve;
      Like walls the mirrors stand;
      The printed page gives back
      Words by another hand.

      And your infatuate eye
      Meets not itself below;
      Strangers lie in your arms
      As I lie now.
      – Louise Bogan, Man Alone

      I seek myself in early morning quiet, listening for the whisper.
      I seek myself on long walks in rough terrain, one step at a time with an eye on the footing and the other at the way forward.
      I seek myself in the long drives to faraway places, with nothing playing but the soundtrack of the tires on pavement.
      I seek myself in pictures, vainly attempting to capture the light and never quite reaching perfection but smiling at the moment anyway.
      I seek myself in the dusty soil, that traps under fingernails and turns into beauty with water and time we hope we have.
      I seek myself in deep plunges into water, thoughts rising with the bubbles as we break the surface, clearer than before.
      I seek myself in lyrics captured from songs in the air, hearing words for the first time and desperately grabbing at Shazam to find the source before it disappears forever.
      I seek myself in habits made and promises to myself broken, with hopes of trying again tomorrow.
      I seek myself in reaching out in service to others, to rejoice in the moment of connection ever fleeting.
      I seek myself in old battlefields and graveyards and monuments to ghosts who only wish to be remembered once more.
      I seek myself in freshly chopped vegetables, sautéing in snaps and pops that betray my anticipation.
      I seek myself in the words that dance on the page, my own or those of strangers in my arms.
      I seek myself in skimming across water, skipping like a stone on the pull of an oar or the puff of the wind and wanting only to fly a little bit longer.
      Tell me, where do you seek yourself?

    • The Second Best Time is Now

      “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb

      Today is June 15th, which is the halfway point of the month that concludes the halfway point of the year.  The first half of 2020 felt like a decade with the massive shifts happening in the world.  I won’t subject you to a retelling of the tale now as you’re quite familiar with the journey we’ve been on.  If there’s a silver lining during this first half of the year, it’s the re-focusing on what’s important.  It’s the time with family and friends and looking at the simple things we’ve taken for granted, like going out for dinner or to a concert.

      I’m grateful for the opportunity to spend more time with immediate family, regret the opportunities lost, and look forward to getting back to it when there’s less risk to others.  Risk to others is always the calculus, not risk to myself.  I wear a mask in crowded places and wonder at the growing crowd of people who aren’t wearing one.  We aren’t there just yet folks, as much as we want to be.

      I’ve completed a long list of home improvement tasks and find that the list doesn’t get shorter.  Still, I walk around and I’m less inclined to say to myself I need to get to that someday when I look at a wall or ceiling or some other nook and cranny of this place I spend so much time in now.  Better weather has opened up an entirely new canvas for improvement.  It’s all a work in progress, and will continue until the pandemic releases its hold on us.

      I’ve taken to rowing 5000 meters at lunchtime every workday.  Weekends are reserved for other activity with the nicer weather.  Rowing replaced walking at lunchtime because it’s more efficient and there’s a timeless feeling I get when I’m on the rowing ergometer.  It could be 2020, or it could be 1990, the only thing that changes are the splits and the soreness afterwards.

      I’m ever so slowly learning French, and I’ve added Portuguese as well.  I have an eye on the world and will return to travel again someday, and speaking one language is simply not enough.  There are place to visit far from the tourist traps, where people expect some measure of knowledge of their language.  Je dois les rencontrer à mi-chemin – I’ve got to meet them halfway.  France is to be expected, but I also feel the pull of Portugal and Brazil.  And so I’ve added a third language, even before I’ve mastered the second.  Aprendi a seguir uma paixão e ver aonde ela leva – I’ve learned to follow a passion and see where it leads you.

      I’ve checked a few important boxes in my job that I’m pleased with and see all that might have been if only the world were normal. But it’s not normal and time flies relentlessly by anyway.  Some of the biggest project I was tracking have stalled in the quicksand of social isolation.  Even as things ramp up they may be a long way from where they should have been.  I’m grateful to work for a company that views the world through a long lens and measures its value by the people who work for it.

      And so we approach the second half of 2020, and more epochal moments are surely in store for us all.  There’s an election coming up in America.  Professional sports are tentatively starting up again.  People are dipping a toe back in the waters to see just how cold it really is.  And I find myself thinking about the trees I haven’t planted:

      When I was 18 I was a certified SCUBA diver.  And then I went to college and discovered rowing and girls and I gently tucked away the mask and fins and never went back to it again.  I’m told that the sport of diving is suffering a decline as people find other ways to spend time and disposable income.  I recognize the pull away from the water that’s held me away since I was a teenager, but also hear the siren call of the deep dive.  I’m going back to the deep water again, and depending on restrictions around COVID-19 I’ll do it in the second half of 2020.

      There’s another siren that’s been calling me for years, and it’s hiking.  I’ve long talked of hiking the Appalachian Trail and hold that out as my 60th birthday present to myself, when I get there.  But in the meantime I’m not hiking any other trail most days.  This won’t do at all.  I’m going back to the mountains in 2020, but not chasing others around.  I’m going to return to the 48 4000 footers in New Hampshire at my own pace, and check this box that’s been nagging me since I was a kid.

      So there you go: My own small version of Navy SEAL training.  Top of the mountains to the bottom of the sea.  Self-paced and documented.  Multilingual, multidimensional and adventurous in spirit.  Beats painting another room.  As my son would say, let’s go!

       

    • Masters of the Art of Life

      Dive deep with me on this quote, there’s a lot to it:

      “In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister [“Only the master shows himself in the limitation,”] says Goethe. Mâle résignation, this also is the motto of those who are masters of the art of life; “manly,” that is to say, courageous, active, resolute, persevering, “resignation,” that is to say, self-sacrifice, renunciation, limitation. Energy in resignation, there lies the wisdom of the sons of earth, the only serenity possible in this life of struggle and of combat. In it is the peace of martyrdom, in it too the promise of triumph. – Henri Frédéric Amiel, Amiel’s Journal

      “Manly resignation” seems counterintuitive, contradictory and weak to some. But dig deeper here into the words used to describe resignation: self-sacrifice, renunciation and limitation. These are anything but weakness, they’re honorable traits. It takes courage to stand up and voice a counter argument, to say this isn’t right, this will not stand. It takes courage to face ridicule and violence. The weak are the blind followers.  What shall you be?

      Only the master shows himself in the limitation… visually I leap to Obi Wan Kenobi raising his light saber in concession to Darth Vader in Star Wars. But who really won in the end? In real life, it means finding common ground, conceding a point, compromise for the greater good. The art of diplomacy.  The REAL art of the deal, not the con man version.  All very adult traits that Congress might wish to return to. Traits any good leader has. Any good parent. Any good spouse. The United States is not currently being led by someone who shows himself in the limitation. But the country recoils and will spit out this poison pill eventually. I hope in a few months.

      “Masters in the art of life” suggests the easy path on its face. But life isn’t easy, and the art of life is making it look easy while you press ahead doing the work that matters.  Any fool can set aside responsibilities and chase after pots of gold on the other side of the rainbow. Decide what to be and go be it, but remember the truly great people, the masters in the art of life, are the people who sacrifice of themselves for the greater good.  Not frivolously, but for the things that matter.  Who are the masters in the art of life?  I think of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa, Gandhi, Winston Churchill, John Muir, George Washington, Clara Barton, and dozens more.  All of them very human, with flaws some were/are eager to point out as if to elevate their own standing.  But all rose above the common man or woman, showing themselves in resignation, not of the fight, but of the easier path.

      Maybe we all can’t be the answer on some future Jeopardy trivia question, but we can be an anchor in our family, in our community, in our careers.  We can be linchpins, as Seth Godin would put it, that hold things together even in the most trying of times.  And maybe that’s enough. To throw another couple of movie characters at you, it’s so much harder to be George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life or Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, but don’t we have to try?  Looking around at the moment, it seems plenty want to try.  That’s the recoil in action.  The pendulum swinging back to center.  This is not who we ought to be.  This will not be who we will be from now on.  We can be better than this.  Decide what to be and go be it.

      In a bit of trivia perhaps interesting only to me and the parents who conceived me, Amiel wrote that entry in his journal 114 years to the day before I was born. He was 31 at the time. He was wise beyond his years. If there’s a joy in reading, its in mining gold from the ages. Tapping into the Great Conversation is available to all of us, so why don’t more people seize the opportunity?  To master the art of life, it helps to learn from those who have been here before.  I’m a work in progress myself, but try to learn a bit more every day, and apply some of that wisdom in my own life.  I may not be Obi Wan Kenobi, but I can try to be George Bailey.