Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • Coffee Collaboration

      “As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move…similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle.”
      — Honoré de Balzac, The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee

      May I take a moment to dwell on the mug of coffee recently departed from this world? Now, the typical time to dwell on coffee is while it is still with you, but mine seemingly evaporated before my eyes. One moment I’m having my first sip, the next? Empty cuppa. Our time is fleeting, isn’t it? Surely a reminder to slow down, stop rushing through life and savor what we have in the moment. Sure. This is coffee, and coffee demands we get going already.

      My morning ritual is two glasses of water while the coffee is brewing, then two cups of coffee while writing. I might get away with one cup of coffee if I were to tolerate room-temperature coffee (or, god forbid, microwaving coffee to reheat it). Alas, I don’t tolerate such things, I savor the first few sips, and guzzle the last few. ’tis not the writing that distracts from the drinking of coffee, ’tis the coffee that lubricates the ritual. One without the other would be possible, but not delightful. Don’t we need to dance with more delight in this life?

      The thing is, we each have our rituals that make our days shine a little brighter, make us more productive in our pursuits, and make us more aware and alive. Writing and coffee go together well, but so do reading and coffee, or catching up with a fellow life-traveler and coffee, or any number of things. Coffee isn’t selective in the habit you pair it with, it goes with the flow. And doesn’t that make it the perfect partner to collaborate with?

    • Full of Answers

      “Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” — Joseph Campbell

      I spent yesterday in a busy office, bouncing ideas off of others, being interrupted from my work flow to discuss projects or weigh in on what some other characters should have for lunch, catching up on who has left and who is carrying the burden of their absence (clever executives believing doing more with less is a model of efficiency), and generally being in the mix of team dynamics.

      What brings us to life, if not our engagement with others, and the world beyond? We find productivity in solitude, but richness with company. There is a healthy balance to be found as an integral part of the tribe sometimes, and in quietly going our own way other times. It’s not so much that we need others, it’s that we choose to be with others, for all that others bring to us and we in turn bring to them.

      What has meaning in an empty house? Nothing, I suppose. But is a house empty if we are in it, assessing its relative emptiness? Fullness comes from within. Here too, we find the seed of meaning from which to grow a life. The answers in our lives always begin from within, and yet we must reach beyond the self to realize them. We will never truly escape the labyrinth in this lifetime, but who ever said being full of answers was the purpose of the game anyway?

    • Our One Passenger

      “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” — Henri Bergson

      We are not who we once were. We come to know this, and either work to reject the premise or accept that change for all it represents. The former is rather sad in the end (when the truth catches up to us), the latter may be sad initially, until we move on to the next. Replaying our greatest hits (and misses) simply chains us to a standard that no longer exists. And none of us want to be the person making a fool of themselves (even if we’re pretty good at it).

      The trick is to be young at heart and vibrant to the end, but also wise beyond our years. How do we balance this? I believe it’s by being active: To be fit and moving kicks that old body we’ll grow into down the curb for as long as possible. To forever be a student of life keeps the mind engaged and growing. The dream is a body, mind and soul that is sharp and in peak form for whatever age we find ourselves at. When we are at our best we open up the best possibilities available to us here and now. Surely that is something to aspire to.

      How does this look in practice? Instead of dwelling on what once was or what will never be, look at the progress made. Growth is easy to see when we are aware of the distance we’ve come. It’s an ever-expanding catalog of books read and re-read, experiences savored or sometimes simply survived. It’s the expanding menu of foods, languages, hobbies and pursuits accumulated over a lifetime.

      I may not be a golfer, but I’ve played enough golf to delight in a great shot and laugh at myself for a horrible shank. I may never master French or German, but I’ve gone down the path of learning each language. I may never eat fermented shark fin again in my lifetime, but I’ve lived to tell the tale. Those hikes gone terribly wrong? Survived those too, and laugh as I cringe thinking about some of them. It’s all accumulated into who I’ve become, even as it isn’t who I am.

      It’s all our endless creation—until the end. We may be as creative as we wish to be in the pursuit. Not to dwell on the highlights and low points, but to build a better vessel. It’s all ours and nobody else’s. We are one of a kind, forever reinvented for the delight of our one passenger. Knowing how far we’ve come, we may have our courage bolstered for the journey ahead.

    • There and Aware

      “If there seems to be no communication between you and the people around you, try to draw close to those things that will not ever leave you. The nights are still there and the winds roam through the trees and over many lands.” — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

      Walking the pup last the last few nights, quietly celebrating her birthday in our meandering walk of stargazing and lawn sniffing (we each have our ritual), I replayed some of the day in my head while the universe spun above like a kaleidoscope of wonder. The waxing crescent moon the last couple of night stuns and delights. Hints of auroras in the air, not reaching us but worthy of diligent glances nonetheless. Venus and Orion have shared the same sky, creating a sky that made the pup’s long investigative sniffs seem shorter.

      The pup appreciates my stargazing, for it gives her time for her own night’s work. Sometimes she’ll lead me off onto a lawn if I’m especially distracted by the sky. Just a reminder that she’s there and aware, so maybe I ought to get my head out of the clouds a bit more. That’s been the goal the entire time, of course. Awareness in the moment—away from all that isn’t here and now. No earbuds, no screens, no replaying the hits and misses of the day. Simply being present on our walks together, until it was time to head back in once again.

      Perhaps we’ll meet again tonight, to do it all over again? The sky will surely offer something completely different to wonder at as the day slowly fades into memory. How long have we been doing this? Three years with this pup, longer with our old friend that preceded her. How many dogs will we have in a lifetime? Such calculations aren’t worth considering. Not when we have this one, now, and such a beautiful sky above and lawns full of smells only a dog could love.

    • Be Generous

      “The things you do for yourself are gone when you are gone, but the things you do for others remain as your legacy.” — Kalu Ndukwe Kalu

      Generosity is more than beginning with the end in mind. Legacy may or may not be important to us in any given moment of decision (clearly, so many choices in a lifetime don’t involve how we’d like to be remembered), but something within us leads us to or away from generosity. As the not-so-generous might ask, what’s in it for us by being generous?

      The answer is literally beyond the grasp of the selfish among us. Generosity is reaching beyond the self to touch the lives of others. The act of being generous connects us to others, physically or spiritually. One generous act ripples beyond our self. In this way we grow into someone far beyond the self. We touch upon the infinite.

      I may never have a wikipedia page covering the highlights of my life, but the donation I make to someone’s GoFundMe or letting someone turn into traffic are examples of quietly extending my reach. Leading by example in a world that often feels too self-absorbed and selfish. It’s what we do here and now that brings light into the world.

    • Fluidity

      “When you cut water, the water doesn’t get hurt; when you cut something solid, it breaks. You’ve got solid attitudes inside you; you’ve got solid illusions inside you; that’s what bumps against nature, that’s where you get hurt, that’s where the pain comes from.” —Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      Be fluid and the world becomes easier to navigate. Be rigid and you’ll soon find you keep running into things that contradict all that you believed. ’tis easier to flow through life open to whatever the day brings. If we find we don’t like what we encounter, flow in a different direction. We get to reinvent ourselves with every step if we break the mold of identity that holds us in place.

      We know that there are plenty of people who are rigid and unmoving. The “my way of the highway” types. Many of these people rise to power and influence history. But they’re often weak at the core; predictable, playable, easily distracted by a skilled tactician. They may be powerful, but they’re vulnerable at the same time. When we are creative, fluid and aware, we can navigate our way past them. The river always finds its way to the ocean.

      “Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
      Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
      ― Bruce Lee

      Does fluidity mean that we don’t stand for anything? Is that which we stand for a sign of rigidity? This is an exercise in what is essential for us in our lives. Is our identity locked in family or career or accolades? Is it honor? What is honor but a rigid belief in how we will navigate the world? I’m not suggesting we be dishonorable, merely that we know why we are rigidly holding to a standard. Our why is always what we will flow to, once we get beyond the obstacle that is blocking us from proceeding there.

      “Wherever you go, there you are.” — Thomas à Kempis

      Where are we? What is holding us in this place? Sometimes it’s forces beyond our control, but usually it’s something within us. When we know what the obstacle is, we may then find a way around it. Fluidity is simply openness to change. We are here, facing this. Is this a dam or will we find a way through or around whatever is keeping us here? More change is on the way (it always is), and flow is inevitable. Are we truly open to it?

    • A Day Away

      “If you repeated what you did today 365 more times, will you be where you want to be next year?” — Kevin Kelly

      We are all creatures of habit. The question is, are our collection of daily habits taking us where we want to go? Put another way, if consistent action leads to transformation, have we chosen the right actions to take? If we’re delighted with the answers, then by all means keep doing the same things. But if there’s a gap between who we want to become and who we are now, the answer lies in changing our days. Today is as good a day as any.

      Last summer I embarked on a journey called 75 Hard. It was exactly what it said it was going to be, and it ended with radical transformation. Sure, I lost a lot of weight, read some books I’d been leaving off to the side a little too long and found myself overall far more healthy, but the key lesson was in time management. We all have the same 24 hours in a day—how do we fill those hours? If I learned anything while doing a structured lifestyle program, what we subtract is as important as what we add.

      Fast forward eight months and fragments of that lifestyle change remain. One step back picked up in that time is a nagging injury that I’m working to correct with physical therapy. So it goes. Others have it far worse and still do what must be done. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that excuses fill the void where action once thrived. We are always a day away from healthy lifestyle change. We just have to make that change today and not tomorrow. To act today as if our lives depended on it. Doesn’t it?

    • A Higher Standard

      “The people they want to ingratiate themselves with, and the results, and the things they do in the process. How quickly it will all be erased by time. How much has been erased already.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      It’s easy to get caught up in the madness in the world. The evil-doers and the zealots and the profiteers. What are they but a constant flow of distraction and detraction drowning us in nonsense? We must build a resilient mind that shrugs off the insults and affronts. We are here for greater things than a circus clown show.

      Knowing this, what are we waiting for? Why succumb to such distraction when time is growing short? A higher standard awaits us still.

    • The Rich Lens of Attention

      The dream of my life
      Is to lie down by a slow river
      And stare at the light in the trees—
      To learn something by being nothing
      A little while but the rich
      Lens of attention.
      — Mary Oliver, Entering the Kingdom

      Restless and productive, that’s this life—knowing there’s work to be done. If not us, then who? Blame it on my GenX tendencies. I’ve been fighting it all of my life. An entire generation has fought it all of their lives. We’re all complex contradictions of motivation and awareness. Or maybe that’s just me lumping the lot of them in with me just to save face.

      Even writing this (even writing this!), I turned to my work laptop to dash off an email that’s percolated to priority. How can one linger with poetry or walk quietly amongst the trees when the mind is full of the minutia of a productive life? We must learn to say enough is enough in our lives, before it all floats away to illuminate the dreams of other, more open minds.

      The thing is, every day is our lesson in living. We choose to be aware and attentive, or we swim deeper into the tumultuous red ocean fraught with ravenous sharks and whirlpools that drag us downward into the depths of other people’s priorities. Alternatively, we can swim to calmer waters, away from the chaos that would consume us, and discover a new life.

      Decide what to be and go be it. Our lives will be the richer for it.

    • The Ideal Life

      “Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.” — Mark Twain

      Lately, I’ve spent a lot of quality time with some good books. I’ve had less of that quality time with good friends, but we make it count when we reconnect. Life is what we make of it, and maintaining connection is a large part of a great life.

      Friends amplify experience. Going out and experiencing life solo has it’s perks, but try multiplying what we experience by one and see what it equals. Those friends also help us live longer, more vibrant lives. If increasing one’s health span is the ultimate goal, relationships with others is clearly the path to be on.

      Have I sold you on maintaining friendships yet? How about that sleepy conscience Twain refers to? Who else are we going to be foolish with than our friends? Who will know our stories, and keep them locked up in a vault only we can reminisce about? An ideal life is full of stories, whether we tell anyone else about them or not.

      (Happy Birthday, my friend)