Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • The Right Time

      “A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.” — Carlos Castaneda

      I spent a lifetime
      Waiting for the right time
      — Elvis Presley, Its Now or Never

      It’s been bitter cold the last few days. The kind of cold that stings bare skin. These are the days when building a roaring fire to warm ourselves was exactly what we envisioned when we were busy chopping and stacking firewood. Indeed, all that chopping and stacking led us here; so make use of that spark we jealousy hold onto and light the damned fire already!

      All that planning and goal setting to start the year is useful, but now we must get straight to the business of executing on that plan. Start the streak of productive days, or keep the streak alive if we’re fortunate to be on the right path already. The trap is to keep on planning for a bold life, instead of living it.

      There is no right time for anything, there’s only now. Do what must be done in the time we have. We all want to be the hero in our own epic journey—so what are we waiting for? It’s now or never, friend. There comes a time when chopping and stacking firewood is no longer the best use of our precious time.

    • ‘Tis Time for Action

      Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.” — Benjamin Disraeli

      Some of us are excellent planners. I pride myself on planning every detail of a trip, whether business or pleasure, to ensure I make the most of my time wherever I’m going to. There’s room built in for discovery, but the key building blocks of an impactful and successful trip are covered. The key to maximizing the return on that time and effort investment spent in planning is action. We must do the things we said we were going to do.

      We’ve turned the corner into a new year. All that planning must now be realized through action. The workouts, the calls we promised to make, the books we said we’d read and the waterfalls we said we’d go see are all lined up and waiting for us. We must keep our promises to ourselves and do something with the opportunity.

      Everyone wants to be happy, but what is happiness but a byproduct of action? What is a long term, happy marriage? Ask someone out on a date, find there’s a spark, build bridges out of common ground, and thirty years later find that we’ve built a hell of a life together. Happiness is the series of actions by each player in the relationship to keep it all together through all that life throws at us along the way.

      What is the opposite of happiness? Indifference. Which is manifested by inaction. Every day I play frisbee with the pup. The moment one of us becomes indifferent the game is over. One side is waiting for the other to be present again and momentum fizzles away. It’s not such a leap to see this applies to more than frisbee. When we go through the motions, skip steps, and drift away mentally or physically, the gap grows between the state we wanted and the reality of our life. We must invest ourselves daily in the work necessary to keep the game alive, whatever that game is for us.

      So here we are with all that planning just waiting to be executed on. We know the first step is going to be awkward, but still a bit thrilling. We know our inclination may one day—maybe tomorrow, maybe next week—lead to indifference. Just as indifference kills action, action kills indifference. Each day we show up builds momentum. So we must show up and honor all that planning with action.

    • All This Scribbling

      “But what does all this scribbling amount to? What is now scribbled in the heat of the moment one can contemplate with somewhat of satisfaction, but alas! to-morrow—aye, to-night—it is stale, flat, and unprofitable,—in fine, is not, only its shell remains, like some red parboiled lobster-shell which, kicked aside never so often, still stares at you in the path.
      What may a man do and not be ashamed of it? He may not do nothing surely, for straightway he is dubbed Dolittle—aye! christens himself first—and reasonably, for he was first to duck. But let him do something, is he the less a Dolittle? Is it actually something done, or not rather something undone?”
      — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      We aren’t the only ones who wonder at our writing. Thoreau telegraphed his own doubts in his journal, but kept writing nonetheless. And what of us? A friend asked me today if I would keep the blog going in the new year. Which raises the question of why. Why keep this going at all? Well, why not?

      Does our daily routine lead us somewhere or are we going in circles? It’s a new year and a new day. These are the times that stir the imagination. Where will we go with it? What might we do that we may be proud of?

      When it comes to the blog, and maybe some other writing of consequence, the journey is worthy of the time investment. It feels to me that all this scribbling leads somewhere very much worth going to. Onward then, into the great unknown that is the new year. Let’s see where it all takes us.

    • Our Opportunity of a Lifetime

      We know what we are, but not what we may be.”
      — William Shakespeare, Hamlet

      The final day of the year offers us a clear idea of who we are, and tantalizes us with the mystery of what we may be in the next year. So here we are again, friend. What have we become? What will we become? All the weight of identity placed on a turn of the calendar. But every day offers these questions that only we may answer. To be or not to be, that is the question: every single day.

      This year coming to an end offers us the answer. We have become both in what we have consumed (food, media, books, feedback, time) and what we have produced (art, presence in the lives of others, our chosen professional work, our acceptance of or anger at our fellow humans to the sum of each in the world). We are the sum of our consumption and production to this point. We either like who we’ve become or we may reset the compass and go in a new direction entirely. That’s the beauty of a new day and the New Year: reinvention.

      It always comes back to what we say yes and no to. Today’s post completes a promise I made to myself a year ago to write every day. Regular readers know that I considered stopping to focus on other things, but pushed through the no to arrive back at yes. I’m inclined to say yes to this promise again in the next year, knowing that there will be hurdles once again. We all have those things that set our day in motion, don’t we? Writing is my motion setter.

      We may take that concept of setting things in motion to tomorrow, today. Whatever that audacious resolution may be, today offers an opportunity to set the stage. What we may be remains our unique opportunity of a lifetime. Why wait another day to get started on the path to becoming?

    • The Two Characters We Meet Every Day

      “I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.” — Michel Foucault

      “When the person you could have been meets the person you are becoming, is it going to be a cause for celebration or heartbreak? ” — Seth Godin, This is Strategy

      It’s been a couple of weeks since I stopped using Duolingo, and even though I grew dissatisfied with the app, I’ve grown more dissatisfied with not consistently working on being multilingual. And so I purchased a competing app, Babbel, to give that a go. I’ve evaluated it before, but at the time didn’t want to invest in a second app. So we’ll see how it goes.

      This will not be a blog post about learning a language. It is (partially) about becoming the person we could be if we just applied ourselves to the task every day. I fancy myself a writer, and so I write. The blog isn’t quite enough for me, and so I’ve set daily goals beyond the blog that I must honor. As with Babbel, we’ll see how it goes, but we learn with everything we aspire to in our lives that it’s now or never.

      There’s a reason that Planet Fitness sponsors the New Years Eve celebration in Times Square. They’re aware that we’re all looking at who we’re becoming as the year turns and deciding whether we’re going to be heartbroken by the encounter or have reason to celebrate. We all want this next year to be our best year ever, don’t we? The trick is in how we realize that. One resolution does not an identity make, but our incremental daily actions carry us a long way.

      The thing is, that character we’re becoming is simply the course we set for ourselves. The character we live with every day ought to be interesting, productive and fun or we’ll inevitably back away slowly to find a better dance partner. Becoming is a daily reckoning of who we are with who we want to be. The key to a successful, joyful life is to make the character who is marching towards the future to meet our desired future self the kind of person we want to be around every day.

    • Domino Days

      “I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.” — Françoise Sagan

      At some point in our lives we must turn our best intentions into action and do the things we claim we want to do. Otherwise we are adding our voice to the choir of quiet desperation Thoreau warned us about. Playing a bigger part in the play of life naturally leads to more things to talk about, which is nice in conversation, but it also leads us to a string of ever-larger dominos disguised as days. The thrill is in seeing how big we can grow our days, simply built upon the one before.

      There’s nothing wrong with lining up a row of our days of like size, one after the other, for a time that suits us. When we raise children, every day feels like the same-sized day of changing diapers, making lunches, helping with homework, driving them to practice, teaching them how to drive and suddenly(!) moving them to college. We’re simply helping them line up their own domino days, along with our own. It turns out those days are growing in scope too, we were just to busy to realize it at the time.

      There are days when it feels like we’ll never topple those larger dominos, but each incremental day builds towards something more substantial still. Our unbroken string of days pays off with an ever-bigger life. It’s the gaps that force us to start all over again. Mind the gap, as the Brits say, and step into the next thing. Soon we’re really going somewhere.

      The blog you’re reading now (thank you) is a string of dominos disguised as daily posts taking both of us somewhere bigger than where we started. When we view our writing and our lives in this way, we begin to see that it’s all about building and sustaining momentum, thus increasing our contribution for the days beyond this one. Growth is inevitable in both our writing and our lives when we just keep pushing a little further along.

    • Becoming Better at Seeing

      I was talking to one of my in-law’s neighbors while walking the pup on their street. The neighbor has reached a place where you might call her elderly and frail, but was out shoveling her driveway because her grandson hadn’t shown up to do it. We’re all so busy this time of year… the grandson surely wouldn’t have let his grandmother shovel her driveway alone on a frigid day, but he wasn’t there to witness it and step in. My daughter and I were, and finished her driveway, cleared off her car and asked her if she wanted to come over to join us at the holiday party we were having. She politely declined and thanked us for the invitation.

      We become comfortable in our routines, even when those routines don’t make sense for us anymore. In a perfect world the tribe would revere and support the tribal elders. We live in a world where we’re tapped out and stretched thin, and sometimes we don’t get around to making the call or stopping by to see how those tribal elders are doing. Often they’re holding on by a thread, doing the best they can. A burst of snow quickly freezing into concrete has the potential to put someone over the edge without a lifeline.

      When we slow down a beat and stop rushing on to the next thing with our blinders on, our peripheral vision improves greatly. There are people moving through this world who easily see gaps and fill them with their full attention. I aspire to be more like them, while knowing I’m one of those people who are often too busy to have that situational awareness. We all want to help, don’t we? We just don’t always see. As we move down our path towards personal excellence, becoming better at seeing and solving is something to aspire to. We’re all in this tribe together, aren’t we?

    • Time Is Our Treasure

      If I could make days last forever
      If words could make wishes come true
      I’d save every day like a treasure and then
      Again, I would spend them with you
      — Jim Croce, Time in a Bottle

      When I was younger, I felt that time flew by. Now my kids talk about how quickly time flies. One day maybe I’ll have grandchildren making the observation. Humans have been making this observation since our brains developed to discern such things as time and our place in it. Tempus fugit.

      We’re told to treasure each day, for each is the most valuable thing we can spend. Time is our treasure. Some spend frivolously, some frugally. We ourselves work to maximize our days, but still see too much of our time slip away. We aren’t meant to have it all, maybe just enough. All we can do is the best we can with it.

      Awareness seems to be the magic ingredient for savoring. We develop a taste for living when we view it all as buried treasure in the sands of time. What lies hidden from us is revealed day-by-day, captured in photographs and memories. Our treasure is as substantial as we make it.

    • The Heart of Wisdom

      “Anticipation is the heart of wisdom. If you are going to cross a desert, you anticipate that you will be thirsty, and you take water.” ― Mark Helprin, A Soldier of the Great War

      I’m anticipating a busy day, filled with traffic and a desire to get there already. Knowing what’s in front of me, I’ve already filled the gas tank, arranged the dog sitter, agreed on a meeting place and worked through contingency plans. And all of this is just for a Thursday night in the city. Anticipation can make us nervous and edgy, or it can set the table for success. It’s all in how we dance with it.

      All that preparation is wisdom in disguise. We learn from past mistakes and, having survived it, prepare better for the next time. Challenges arise as they always do, we’re simply more ready for them than we might have been before we accumulated that wisdom.

      Taking care of the basics first is essential. The act of taking water with us anywhere we go is rarely going to work against us (TSA checkpoints excepted), along with a snack and another layer to make us comfortable when the weather inevitably changes. Maybe mom was right all along.

      And this hints at the secret to wisdom. Perhaps the wisest thing we can do is to borrow wisdom from those who have suffered similar challenges before us. History offers lessons for those who pay attention. We may be making great leaps forward in technology and available knowledge, but none of it means a thing if we go back to reinventing the wheel at the start of each journey.

    • The Experience-Collecting Years

      “We all have at least the potential to make more money in the future, we can never go back and recapture time that is now gone. So it makes no sense to let opportunities pass us by for fear of squandering our money. Squandering our lives should be a much greater worry.” ― Bill Perkins, Die with Zero

      I saw an old friend at the local hardware store and caught up with him while juggling my handful of fasteners and domestic life enhancers. ’tis the season for stumbling upon old friends, as every errand seems to offer a harvest of good conversations with acquaintances from different parts of my life. When people get out of their homes more often serendipity offers opportunities we don’t get when holed up behind locked doors. Life is best experienced together, don’t you think?

      My friend in the hardware store asked me where I was traveling to next, thinking of me as a world traveller. In fact, most every friend I see asks me this question. Perhaps I overshare on social media, or perhaps they don’t travel much themselves. Who knows? I feel I don’t travel nearly enough, and that’s a driving force for more travel still. I view myself as a collector of experiences more than passport stamps, but the two tend to go hand-in-hand, mostly because if you want to experience something like climbing the Tower of Pisa or to navigate the labyrinth of the four quarters of the Old City in Jerusalem, you’ve got to travel to them.

      According to the Pew Research Center, only 11% of Americans have traveled to ten or more countries. I’m fortunate to be well past ten, and have a bucket list of countries I’d like to add to the list in my healthy, experience-collecting years. Once we’ve acquired just enough money and time to collect experiences (and it’s often a matter of prioritization), the only other currency to consider is our health. And friend, we aren’t getting any younger. With many experiences, it’s now or never. A Canadian friend, who travels far more than me, has a strategy to go to the farthest, most challenging places now, because when he’s older he won’t be able to do it. That seems pretty logical to me.

      We all have some idea of what a full life means for us. I admire people who are happy staying within the community they were born in, living a full and meaningful life within those borders, but for some of us that’s not quite enough. For we are nomads and adventurers, ambassadors and explorers. The experiences we seek aren’t meant to be for bragging rights at cocktail parties and local hardware stores, the experiences fill some void we feel within us, making us more whole.

      Our handful of experiences offers a return on investment in memories and perspective that is invaluable as we navigate the rest of our lives. In ten years what will the world look like? Will we even be able to cross certain borders? If we defer, will we be able to walk on ancient cobblestone roads or hike up icy trails in that evasive “someday, when”? There’s an opportunity cost to saying no to travel, just as there’s a financial cost to saying yes. I’m not advocating being irresponsible with financial currency, just don’t be too frugal with those health and time currencies. The best experience-collecting time is usually now.