Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • Every Morning, So Far, I’m Alive

      “Every morning I walk like this around
      the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
      ever close, I am as good as dead

      Every morning, so far, I’m alive.  And now
      the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
      and burst up into the sky – as though

      all night they had thought of what they would like
      their lives to be, and imagined
      their strong, thick wings.”
       – Mary Oliver, Landscape

      I’m doing Mary Oliver an injustice not putting the entire poem here, for the full meaning of a poem comes from reading the entirety, but then again I’m pointing emphatically towards all of her work, imploring you to read more.  When I first read this poem, Landscape, it was a gut punch for me.  I’ve returned to it a few times and these lines still grab me, for they perfectly capture the frame of mind I’m in in my own life.  It’s not lost on me that Mary Oliver passed away in 2019, and somewhere along the way that may have been how I found and keep returning to her work.

      2019 has been a profound year of growth and change for me, from stoicism to spirituality to poetry, immersive trips to some places close to home and some bucket list travel to places further away.  There’s friction in me that the writing has revealed, whether that’s mid-life nonsense or creeping unfinished business that gnaws at me, disrupting my day-to-day thoughts.  I’ve become a better person this year, but know there’s a long way to go still.  For as much as there is to be grateful for, Memento mori whispers in the wind, and I can hear it more than ever.  Remember, we all must die…  but every morning, so far, I’m alive.  What shall you do with this gift?  More, I say to myself, and this De Mello challenge comes to mind:

      “People don’t live, most of you, you don’t live, you’re just keeping the body alive.  That’s not life.” – Anthony De Mello

      This isn’t a call to leave all that you’ve built, but instead to be fully alive and aware of the world around you.  Break off from the rest of the darkness and be fully alive.  Thoreau didn’t leave Concord, he immersed himself in the world at Walden Pond but still maintained contact with the people in his life.  But his awareness grew in the stillness.

      “Be it life or death, we crave only reality.  If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business…  Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.  I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.  Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      So I’m doing better at this awareness thing, and this making the most of the time you have thing, and I keep flapping the wings and fly when I can.  Life isn’t just stacking one adventure upon another one, real living is immersion and awareness.  Mary Oliver joined De Mello and Thoreau on the other side of life this year, this very year that I’ve made a few leaps forward in being more alive.  Maybe adding her voice to the chorus of whispers from those who have left us was the tipping point, or maybe I was already there.  But I’m grateful for her contribution nonetheless.

    • Sunrise in Bitter Cold

      It’s no secret in my world that I’m a sunrise junky.  There’s nothing wrong with sunsets, and I love a good one as much as anyone, but there’s something to be said for earning the show the way getting up early for a sunrise does.  There’s also the mindset of the beginning, rather than the ending to the day that I appreciate.  I like beginnings it seems.

      This morning the sunrise rose over the hills, split into fragmented rays by the trees in the woods, and finally reached my face as I did some outdoor chores before work.  It’s been bitter cold the last few days, but the sun would have none of my complaints.  Blame your Mother for turning a cold shoulder on me, the sun seems to say.  And I nod, silently thankful for the warmth that does reach me.  And I thought of a beautiful turn of words from this Mary Oliver poem that I’d read recently, appropriately named Sunrise, “it is another one of the ways to enter fire”:

      “… 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!
      What is my name?

      What is the name
      of the deep breath I would take
      over and over
      for all of us?  Call it

      whatever you want, it is
      happiness, it is another one
      of the ways to enter
      fire.”
      Mary Oliver, Sunrise

    • All The Mind’s Ghosts

      “The intelligent and the brave
      Open every closet in the future and evict
      All the mind’s ghosts who have the bad habit
      Of barfing everywhere.”
      – Hafiz, The Warrior

      “You’ll see the miracles that happen to you when your senses come unclogged.” – Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      A month ago I had one of those head colds that just gums up the works, making it hard to focus on anything.  I caught it in London, carried it in Scotland and then back to New Hampshire with me.  You carry on in circumstances like that, but you know you’re not playing your A game.  Perceptions, mistakes, past glories, biases and self-limiting beliefs are like that head cold; holding you back and keeping you from doing things for too long or forever.

      I’ll confess I’d never heard of Anthony De Mello until this book was mentioned on a podcast, but it’s one of the most profound books I read this year, and I keep pulling quotes out of it.  They say when the student is ready the teacher will appear, and this year I’ve been heavily invested in my education.  And I think it comes back to the writing.  You commit to writing daily, and sometimes you’re writing about some woman in a kimono or a battle that took place where you stood that day, but other times you mine the mind, clearing away years of crap and dig deep for the good stuff.  Maybe it comes across in the writing, or maybe I’m not there yet, but I feel the improvement and the refinement that comes with daily discipline.

      The rest of that Hafiz poem is worth reading, and I thought of posting the entire thing, but instead added a link to it.  Hafiz put a spotlight on my own ghosts, barfing away in the mind, needing to be evicted.  We all need to clean out the past, stop planning for a future we may not see and live in the now.  Easier said than done of course.  And it doesn’t mean to ignore the past and not learn from it.  Nor does it mean to ignore the future.  To live in the moment is to eliminate the concerns of the past and the worries of the future.  We’re all going to the grave one day, but if we’re lucky maybe not today.  So given the blessing of being alive in this moment, why not make the most of it?

    • Chess Boards and Calendars

      The chess board and the calendar are one and the same.  

      For each demands strategy and each is a game,

      of reaction and discipline and boldness in kind.

      I marvel at masters, 

      while struggling to keep more than two moves in mind

      I marvel at poets as well, for my words betray me as a clydesdale and my words as poetry on the fly.  So be it – not every dance is a tango.  Back to the topic at hand, the similarities between the chess board and the calendar.  I win my share of chess matches, but I find my vision of the board betrays me at times.  I focus so much on my own moves that I don’t always see the threat lurking on the other side.  But I know sometimes I can overcome a threat, while strategically making a noble sacrifice, with action towards my objective.  Chess and the calendar do demand reaction and discipline and boldness, and I try to play both with equal grace, but still struggle with each.  We never master the game of chess, just as we never master the calendar.

      I look at the moves I’ve made with time over the last twelve months, and know that I’ve made some moves I regret, but also many that I’m quite pleased with.  2019 is a year of brilliant highlights mixed with some real duds, which makes it like just about every year I’ve been on the planet.  We build the calendar and hope for the best.  I can stand back and see myself in the beginning of a pivot, but the direction I’m pivoting isn’t entirely clear yet.  So I press on, filling the calendar with necessary meetings and positive habits that offer incremental growth.  A few have paid off, a few have been complete failures, and a few are just in the embryonic stage and need a bit of nurturing to grow.  Such is life; we never look like what we once were when we grow.

      Playing chess last night against the computer instead of a human, I felt bored and was going through the motions.  Passing the time.  That’s a great time to walk away from something when that something doesn’t move you towards a place you need to be, and I finished the game and turned off the computer.  Life is too short to play boring games, and chess had lost its luster for me for the moment.  In some ways the calendar has too, and it’s a wake-up call to see where the calendar is taking me and start filling it with more things that get me where I’m going.  Wherever that may be. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it, as the saying goes.  As in chess, stop being distracted by reactionary moves and be more bold.  Better still, weave a little more magic into the calendar.  Ready?

       

    • Telling Stories

      “No story lives unless someone wants to listen.” – J.K. Rowling

      There are two ways to look at this Rowling quote. There’s the story we try to sell to the audience – read my blog or my book, buy my product or service, hire me for the job, let’s do lunch… whatever. The story we tell others to persuade them to invest time, attention or money into what we’re offering. But there’s also the story we tell ourselves, “I am a writer”, “I am here to help others”, “I am a rainmaker”, that ultimately has to come first. If you don’t believe your own story how can you expect others to buy into it?

      I was thinking about a George Mack Twitter thread on high agency that’s stuck with me for since I read it a year ago. Here are the key points from that thread:

      “High Agency is a sense that the story given to you by other people about what you can/cannot do is just that – a story.
      And that you have control over the story.
      High Agency person looks to bend reality to their will.
      They either find a way, or they make a way.

      Low agency person accepts the story that is given to them.
      They never question it.
      They are passive.
      They outsource all of their decision making to other people.

      If in doubt, ask yourself, what would Wetzler do?
      1. Question everything
      2. Bend reality
      3. Never outsource your decision making”

      (Alfred Wetzler was a prisoner who escaped Auschwitz and helped bring awareness to what was happening there).

      Pushing myself to become more high agency, less low agency has been a mission ever since.  What story am I telling myself?  That I’m someone that gets things done, or someone who falls in line and does what is expected of me?  In general I’m proactive in reaching out to others, tackling projects (high agency) but tend to stall when I hit roadblocks (low agency).  In general I follow the rules of the game (low agency), but what if the rules aren’t really there in the first place?  Everything in social life is a construct, so why not construct my own life?  That’s high agency, and a better story than passively going through life as a cog in someone else’s story line.

      And so I’m pushing myself more in my career (which requires high agency thinking), and I’m writing more out of my comfort zone, and questioning other things in my life that I might have let slide before.  This bending reality to my will thing seems arrogant on the surface, but that’s passive thinking, isn’t it?  I have plenty of examples of people in my life bending reality to their will who I wouldn’t call arrogant, but instead adventurous and bold.  And who doesn’t want their main character to be adventurous and bold?

      The thing about high agency living is that it builds on itself.  You start with one bold question, push back a little and go in a different direction and it changes you.  Do it again and you change a little more.  Pretty soon you have momentum on your side and step-by-step eventually you’re living audaciously.  And that’s a story I’d like to see more of.

       

    • The Encouragement of Light

      I’ve come late to Hafiz, and that both saddens and delights me. Three writers I’m following separately pointed me towards his poetry, and I finally woke up and paid attention. Where was that attention all those years when Hafiz was right there all the time? But that’s the way life is in all things. Writing came to me late too, even though I knew it was there waiting. So instead of sadness I delight in the discovery:

      “How

      Did the rose

      Ever open its heart

      And give to this world

      All its

      Beauty?

      It felt the encouragement of light

      Against its

      Being,

      Otherwise,

      We all remain

      Too

      Frightened.”

      – Hafiz, It Felt Love

    • Cracking the Egg

      I still remember the moment I watched the woman crack the eggs on the countertop and quickly move them into the hot pan to cook.  Swift, efficient and thoughtless.  This woman had cracked thousands of eggs for hundreds of guests, and I was just one more in the line.  She didn’t respond to my pleasantries, just cooked the eggs, slid them onto a plate and mumbled something about having a good morning before turning her attention to the next guest.  She was done with me, but ten years later I’m not done with her.  Or more specifically, the way that she cracked those eggs on the countertop.  Years of awkwardly tapping eggs on the rim of a bowl or frying pan hoping you wouldn’t make a mess of it had been eliminated in one encounter with a surly omelette chef in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

      We all have techniques, life hacks and learned skills that make our day-to-day more efficient, effective and safer.  Most of these we pick up as we march through life from a parent, friend or co-worker.  Some are aha! moments where someone shows you a keyboard shortcut or a way to crack an egg more efficiently, and some are less aha! and more ohhh, now I get it.  Walking on ice is best learned through example instead of trial and error.  When you see someone walk on ice you observe the technique and with practice become adept at navigating your way across a pond or down a driveway.  That doesn’t always keep you from slipping, but it greatly enhances your odds for success.  Learned skills are like spoken word history or fables; lessons passed from person-to-person for centuries.

      I learned how to drive a standard transmission car by learning how to drive a Ford tractor and soon after I took that skill to cars.  Once someone shows you the basics and you practice it a bit the skill stays with you forever, as I learned in Scotland driving a standard on the opposite side of the car with the stick on my left hand instead of my right.  Am I going to win the Grand Prix with this skill?  Nope, but I can comfortably get in a car and drive myself anywhere.  And I can tie a bowline knot, or spin a log to the right spot to split firewood, or know where to step when I’m descending a steep hiking trail, or to blunt the tip of a nail so I don’t split the wood when I drive it.  We all do a million small techniques and skills that we hardly ever think about.  Sometimes I catch myself and think about where I learned that life hack in the first place, and the person who taught me the lesson.  Ripples across time, connecting me to someone long ago when we were both different people.  These ripples I’ll continue to use, and pay forward for others in turn.  Another form of time travel for all of us, connecting the past to the future, disguised as a cracked egg.

    • Sun, Sand and Time Travel

      Friday morning, one last meeting in Buffalo, New York before I turn East and head home to New Hampshire. As I look at the calculated time necessary to get to my appointment I consider two quotes I’ve read this week on our perception of time. It’s a human creation, and as the saying goes, its relative. What is hard and fast is our small blip of “time” on the planet, so best to get to those priorities now. I love this reminder from De Mello of the trick time and the speed of light play on us when we look up at the sun:

      “When you see the sun, you’re seeing it where it was eight and a half minutes ago, not where it is now. Because it takes a ray of the sun eight and a half minutes to get to us. So you’re not seeing it where it is; it’s now somewhere else.” – Anthony De Mello

      “As you get older, and the patterns become more obvious, time speeds up. Especially once you find your groove in the working world. The layout of your days becomes predictable, a routine, and once your brain reliably knows what’s next, it reclines and closes its eyes. Time pours through your hands like sand.” – Jedidian Jenkins, To Shake The Sleeping Self

      I’m thankful for travel, for it keeps me on my toes. And I’m thankful for reading so many new perspectives this year that force me to reconsider my perceptions. Time does indeed seem to accelerate as you get older, and this pair of quotes points out that it’s never really what we think it is anyway. So make the most of the moment, for time – whatever it is – is slipping by. All this inspires me to visit a tropical beach again as soon as possible. Where you spend your time counts too.

    • Getting There

      “What got you here won’t get you there.” – Marshall Goldsmith

      Indeed.  But knowing where there is is an essential part of making the shift in the what.  December is a great time to think about then and there stuff, but really every morning you should reflect a bit on where you’ve been and where you’re going.  What went well, what went badly, what can change, what must change…  and how do we begin right now, today?

      Personally, I function better with Bullet Journal type lists.  Check things off, move things forward that you didn’t do, etc.  Lists of tasks are easy.  Lists of life goals are a little harder.  The Warren Buffett/Mike Flint 25/5 exercise is harder still, but time marches on and if you don’t reflect on where you’re going you’re going to end up somewhere else with the things you wanted to do undone.  I did this 25/5 exercise a year ago, and I’m going to do it again this week.  Essentially, you write down 25 things you want to accomplish – start a business, write a book, run a marathon…. whatever.  You then circle the 5 most important goals and avoid the other 20 at all costs until you’ve accomplished the circled 5.  It forces you to focus on what your real priorities are, and what the real distractions are to getting there.  It’s challenging because we all want to be good at everything, but in being generalists we fail to achieve our biggest goals.  Hell yes or no.  Essentialism…  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People story of putting the big rocks in the jar before filling the rest with pebbles, then sand and then water…  Whatever you want to call it it’s the act of saying no to many things to enable you to achieve the few big things.  And the few big things are the “there“.

       

       

    • The Great Repertoire

      I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t depend on the people in my life for happiness, I’m quite happy whether I’m with my family, spouse, best friend or favorite pet or alone.  Don’t misunderstand:  All of the dancers on the floor with me certainly enhance my life and my happiness in profound ways.  But if experience and a whole lot of business traveling alone has taught me anything, it’s that I don’t require others to be happy.  Does that diminish the value of the people in my life? On the contrary, I believe it highlights that they’re in my life for all the right reasons.  So in reading this magnificent book Awareness, I was jolted by the following:

      “What I really enjoy is not you; it’s something that’s greater than both you and me. It is something that I discovered, a kind of symphony, a kind of orchestra that plays one melody in your presence, but when you depart, the orchestra doesn’t stop. When I meet someone else, it plays another melody, which is also very delightful. And when I’m alone, it continues to play. There’s a great repertoire and it never ceases to play.” – Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      I downloaded the Kindle version of this book after hearing it referenced by both Tim Ferriss and Ryan Holiday in a podcast interview and in a book, respectively.  I read a lot, and have a lot of books to get through sitting in limbo, but sometimes the neon sign points to one you should read first, and this was it.  De Mello passed away in 1987, and this book was published posthumously in 1990, building a passionate following ever since.  I’m taking my time reading it, not because it’s tough to read, but because there’s a lot to chew on.  It’s a lovely and profoundly compelling book, and well worth reading.

      This week I’ll see a lot of family I don’t see enough, while next week I’ll be traveling alone in New York and will only see business acquaintances.  Will I be more happy this week than next?  I don’t think so.  But will I enjoy this week more than next?  That’s highly likely.  This all sounds a bit narcissistic to me, but good God I’m really just not that into myself.  Instead I’m trying to be outside looking in objectively. De Mello shakes away any illusions of grandeur anyway:

      “Have you ever experienced your is-not-ness? In the East we have an image for this. It is the image of the dancer and the dance. God is viewed as the dancer and creation as God’s dance. It isn’t as if God is the big dancer and you are the little dancer. Oh no. You’re not a dancer at all. You are being danced!”

      So there’s a little humility for you as we dance (sorry) with the concept of non-dependent happiness. History and travel are actually easier to write about. They seem less… self-indulgent. Whatever: Make the most of the day at hand, wherever you are and whomever you’re with. Dance with life a bit, otherwise what’s a life for?