Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • Nietzsche, Vonnegut and Doris Day Met in a Blog

      “My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

      Where I live, this month is trending as unseasonably cool and wet. Great for ducks, I suppose. The rest of us could use some warm, sunny days. But so it goes.

      That phrase, “So it goes”, is rather sticky. It’s a Kurt Vonnegut nugget that stays with you if you’ve ever read Slaughterhouse-Five because it’s repeated so often throughout the book that it hammers home in the memory bank. I’ve read it at three distinct phases of my life just to see what changes as I’ve changed. From the abundant horror of Dresden comes a fatalism born of experiencing it. One may ask, why? Just don’t expect an answer.

      “Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?” “Yes.” Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three lady-bugs embedded in it. “Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

      To write a book that someone would be inclined to read a few times over, instead of simply reaching for the next book on the pile? That’s notable. To write a book well enough that people are drawing quotes from it generations after it was written? That’s timeless. Surely something to aspire to in our own writing.

      But I digress. So it goes, in the context of the book, is a fatalistic acceptance of death. That’s not exactly how I used it in the opening paragraph of this scattered blog post, but it applies in one key way: Amor fati (love of fate). Or if you prefer a playful tune with a somber message, Que Sera, Sera (whatever will be, will be, with a nod to Doris Day). Whatever method we choose to understand the message, we ought to learn to embrace it in our own lives. Sure, we have agency, but within the context of everything out of our control that life throws at us.

      We will all have our rainy days. If we are blessed, we will also have our share of sunny days full of warmth and comfort. We must build a life that mitigates the impact of our worst days while maximizing the potential derived from our best. Whatever will be, will be, but we may apply leverage as appropriate. There’s just no telling which plot line in our story leads to greatness.

      So Nietzsche, Vonnegut and Doris Day all met in a blog post… proving once again that anything is possible if we just let our creative selves run free now and then. We ought to have more agency in our lives, even as we accept that some things are out of our control. So long as we don’t sell ourselves short on what we can in fact control. Some paths are dead ends, some lead to the highest summit. And so it goes.

    • Bold Curiosity

      “With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.” ― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

      Restraint is a very adult thing to celebrate. We admire the restraint in others, for it indicates a level of maturity and sophistication with which a person might rise to roles of responsibility and importance. We must have control over our emotions if we are to do anything of significance in this world. Parents have restraint, and so do pilots and bankers and chess champions. Without restraint we might be reckless, and reckless people have a limited shelf life in any endeavor. One must learn to master ones own self before mastery in any other discipline is possible.

      But what of boldness? Without boldness we would never leap. Our visions would remain unfulfilled. Can you imagine the great explorers in history full of restraint but lacking boldness? Their ships would never leave the safe harbor! And so it is that we too much learn to leap beyond what we perceive as comfortable if we ever hope to gain ground beyond the level we’ve always been lingering on. With a measure of boldness properly applied we may surprise ourselves at how far we might go from where we started. Boldness isn’t recklessness—it’s applied audacity. It’s going for it and pushing through whatever resistance we encounter to break through somewhere only previously imagined.

      Between restraint and boldness there is a gap bridged by curiosity. When we are curious enough, we will ask questions that we might not have asked otherwise. We might cross the road just to see what’s on the other side. We might climb a mountain just because it’s there. And we might fill a passport with stamps simply to see what all the fuss is about on the other side of borders built to restrain less audacious people than the the boldly curious people we aspire to be.

      We must never concede our agency to timidity and restraint. A full life is built on a blend of discipline, audacity and wonder. We all have a ratio that feels right for us in the moment, and learn that it changes over time as we test our limitations. Each stage of life presents unique opportunities to explore our gaps. The trick is to be curious in each stage, that we may be bold when the opportunity becomes apparent. A life given only to restraint is not much of a life at all. We must explore that which we’re on the brink of discovering, for want of a bit of bold curiosity.

    • The Enemy is Excess

      Our enemy is excess, and we ignore that fact at our peril. We ought to simplify and practice discipline each of our days if we hope to string together a lifetime of personal excellence. There is no excellence in excessiveness: To overeat is to tax the body in ways that come due in disease, lethargy and joint pain. To overwork is to miss out on the fulfillment of a personal life. To overplay is to miss out on the potential of productive pursuits… I could go on but that would be, well, excessive.

      All things in moderation, as the saying goes, is the path to a happy, healthy life. And the maxim has deep roots. Ne quid nimis (nothing in excess) is said to have been inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. So we humans have been telling ourselves the same bloody thing for thousands of years.

      And as to be expected with our imperfect selves, we have yet to fully embrace the concept. It’s easy to slip into excess, eating too much, drinking too much, binge-watching too many programs, and doom-scrolling too much media on our 21st century masters—those pesky phones that have taken control of our lives. But we ought to try to moderate. If only so we wouldn’t have to carry so much of the weight of excess. Ultimately, don’t our lives depend on it?

    • The Right Side of Happy

      “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” — Oscar Wilde

      We may choose to be joyful and open to what the world has to offer us, or we may choose to be angry all of the time, resentful and guarded against that same world. Some folks in our lives are seemingly never happy and share their perceived misery with anyone who will listen. And some folks are forever positive lights, lifting our spirits whenever we encounter them. The question is, which are we? Are we on the right side of happy?

      We know that happiness itself isn’t an ideal pursuit. It’s a hollow existence of forever chasing that evasive feeling through the quick high of experiences, purchases and shallow relationships. Lasting happiness is a longer climb. It’s a feeling that surrounds you through the consistent pursuit of purpose and direction. Life will never be perfect, but it can be pretty amazing if we just focus on the things we’re blessed with already.

      Moving through life with gratitude is telegraphed to the world as joyfulness and an inner peace that people naturally want to be around. It’s something to aspire to, and it begins with appreciating the good fortune we’ve received already and focusing on what we can control as we look ahead. This is where true happiness lies—hiding in plain sight and awaiting our attention. Grab hold of what matters and let the rest drift away.

    • A Day Among Days

      “Yesterday nobody dreamed of to-day; nobody dreams of tomorrow. Hence the weather is ever the news. What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us thus, letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      I caught up with a neighbor yesterday. It seems that he quit his job a year ago to write and I never realized it. He simply did his outdoor chores, came and went and never talked about what he did the rest of the time. Now he’s going back to a job and debating whether to publish his writing or to

      remain anonymous. I encouraged him to publish even as I failed to mention in our conversation that I’ve published something every day for years. Who’s the anonymous one?

      The same day a business associate encouraged me to apply for a VP position in his company. I didn’t say no, but I definitely didn’t say yes either. Am I a creative person if I chase titles? Does my work suffer if I don’t explore all of my options? A day writing is similar to a day climbing the corporate ladder: what we produce determines the value we perceive in the time spent. Just what defines personal excellence for us anyway? There’s your value.

      Each day greets us with questions like these. And honestly, aren’t they really about what to do with our brief time? Whether we rise to meet the moment or let the opportunity slip away comes down to a combination of mindset and routine. Thus, our attitude, habits and grit determine the day. Stack enough together and we build a life. As we greet each new day with the tools we have at our disposal, we ought to remember to see this one like a tree in the forest: a day among all our days, but unique just the same.

    • Body and Soul

      “And here let me interrupt the conversation to remark upon the great mistake of teaching children that they have souls. The consequence is, that they think of their souls as of something which is not themselves. For what a man HAS cannot be himself. Hence, when they are told that their souls go to heaven, they think of their SELVES as lying in the grave. They ought to be taught that they have bodies; and that their bodies die; while they themselves live on. Then they will not think, as old Mrs Tomkins did, that THEY will be laid in the grave. It is making altogether too much of the body, and is indicative of an evil tendency to materialism, that we talk as if we POSSESSED souls, instead of BEING souls. We should teach our children to think no more of their bodies when dead than they do of their hair when it is cut off, or of their old clothes when they have done with them.”
      — George MacDonald, Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood

      Truth be told, I’m not a particularly religious person, I’m more a pragmatic realist with a mix of transcendentalist and stoic tendencies. But I do believe that we are all souls moving through this world in bodies that are merely vehicles for the ride we’re on. Some are blessed with better vehicles than others, but a good maintenance plan makes a big difference in how the ride goes. Likewise, the playlist we have between our ears makes this ride a pleasant journey or hell on earth.

      The quote above was falsely paraphrased as a C.S. Lewis quote: “You don’t have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body.” That’s certainly more concise and a better fit for the sound bite world we live in, but it’s simply irresponsible to blindly quote something without doing a little research to find the true source. Call me old-fashioned if you will, but the truth matters, especially in a world of MAGA nuts. We may tell ourselves anything we want in the moment, but eventually we pay the price that truth demands.

      So what is our mantra as we zip through this lifetime of ours? Just what kind of playlist do we have on anyway? We ought to consider changing it up now and then, if only to hear a different perspective and challenge our assumptions. We can always go back to what we were listening to again later, but will we ever hear it the same way? We must learn and grow and become whatever we were meant to be while we have the time. There is no putting off for another day what must be developed today.

      The older I get, the more I realize that health matters more than age. A healthy body is an extraordinary gift—a superpower, really, that enables us to move through space and time in ways that someone without a healthy body cannot. And the same can be said for a healthy mind. To neglect either is irresponsible. We’re all just building a foundation that will crumble in time. A foundation built on poor nutrition for the mind and body is nothing but a sandcastle waiting for the tide to wash it away. We may nurture by our choices a level of antifragility with which we may stand against the inevitable waves that will wash over all that we’ve built.

      So if the soul isn’t something we have but the sum of who we are, we ought to work on increasing that sum. We are all a work in progress moving through this world in bodies that will one day fail us. What remains in the end isn’t the body, but the soul. Identity, if you will (and a topic for another day, as this post is already growing long). So we are each a soul residing in this body, moving through life and making choices about what to do with this opportunity. Make the most of that realization.

    • Creating State Changes

      “On the day of judgment, surely, we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done; not how well we have spoken but how well we have lived.” ― Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

      Yesterday I saw a moose. Now mind you, I’ve seen moose before, but never from the kitchen. In this case, my mother’s kitchen, visiting with my siblings on Mother’s Day. The young bull was just passing by through the backyard and woods on his way to somewhere else. If you want to experience a state change, throw a moose into a family party and see what happens.

      I’m typing this as I undergo another state change: the pollen at the moment is creating a desperate need for tissues. If I was smart I’d run off to the desert or sail across the ocean this time of year, but instead I suffer through a few weeks of sniffles and sneezing. All for want of a few flowers and a sense of place.

      And the scale is telling me another state change has crept up on me, which prompts a counterstrike to my current state with more exercise and fewer empty carbs. We become what we repeatedly do, to borrow from Socrates, and doing fewer reps in favor of more chews is no way to build the body of an olympian. And so another pivot is in order, back to a daily routine that sustains desired health, fitness and well-being.

      The thing is, we know what we must do to change our state. The trick is in the doing. We must be action-oriented if we are to do anything in this world. All talk and no action is a life of self-deception, with the outcome a state of disrepair and dysfunction. Dis is of Latin origin, and means a reversal or place apart from the origin of the word. Dys is Greek and simply means bad. Thus finding repair and function have changed for the worse. Whether we use the Latin or the Greek, we’ll find ourselves up the creek without a paddle unless we create a state change.

      And that brings us to action. We must live our philosophy and do the things we say we must do. To do and be, not simply to sit this one out in our brief go with life. Living well is putting our money where our mouth is—it’s walking the talk. We live in a state of being we’ve helped to influence, and sure, we can’t control everything, but we can get off our butts and do something to change our current state when it needs changing. So don’t just say, but do.

    • If We Are To

      “Which was the braver, the one who left, or the one who stayed?”
      ― Margaret Craven, I Heard the Owl Call My Name

      Craven’s book was made into a movie that I think about sometimes. As an upperclassman I watched it in a class taught by a great professor who I wished I’d stayed in touch with. Now that I’m the age that some of those great professors were at then, I sometimes wish aging wasn’t a thing at all—that we might play by a different rule as humans where accumulation of experience might bring us together in the same place and time.

      Aging is a thing. And we do have an opportunity to come together with people of our own time, as those giants from our past grow more distant by the day. Or rather, we do. The person we remember is trapped in the amber of those moments. We simply catch up to where they were once. Who’s to say how far they have gone since? And who’s to say how far we may go ourselves? We know that answer is hiding in plain sight.

      We must move on from who we once were if we are to become something else. If we are to strive to meet our potential. If we are to dare to reach closer to personal excellence. There are a lot of “If we are to’s” in a lifetime. We learn that excellence isn’t static, it’s a carrot on a stick just out of reach but making us hungrier by the day. Sometimes we’re so busy reaching for the carrot we forget we’re satiated already. Sometimes we tell ourselves we’re satiated just to stifle the ache of hunger.

      We play by the rules made by someone else or we step off the trail and blaze our own. What makes the person who steps away any braver than the one who stays to keep it all together? The answer lies in the question itself: What is it that we keep together anyway? What is it that we step away from? Are we trapped in the amber of who we once aspired to be or still striving to reach another version of ourselves? Bravery is facing these questions squarely and having the agency to do something with the answers. Whether we stay or we go, we must dare to grow.

    • Todays

      I’m just hangin’ on while this old world keeps spinning
      And it’s good to know it’s out of my control
      If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from all this livin’
      Is that it wouldn’t change a thing if I let go
      — Jimmy Buffett, Trip Around the Sun

      Today is my mother’s birthday, which means almost as much to her offspring as our own birthdays. Without the one, there would be no other. And that’s the miracle, isn’t it? We’re all winners of the birth lottery as step one on our journey. From there we make a series of decisions that bring us somewhere. Make those steps interesting.

      Today is also the day friends of ours depart for faraway places. We’ll see them in a few weeks, then in a couple of months, and then who knows? Life is interesting and time marches on. All we can do is set the sails and try to hold to our heading. Life is measured in degrees. Where we are going isn’t always up to us, but sometimes we have more control over it than we let on.

      This series of todays is a blessing, and we’re adding another one today. How will we remember it? Let go of what cannot be controlled and celebrate the miracles. Each day is another step on this trip around the sun.

    • This Little Spark

      “You’ve got to be crazy. It’s too late to be sane. Too late. You’ve got to go full-tilt bozo. ‘Cause you’re only given a little spark of madness, and if you lose that, you’re nothing. Note, from me to you. Don’t ever lose that cause it keeps you alive” — Robin Williams, Come Inside My Mind

      What keeps us alive is more than air and water and food. What keeps us alive is adventure and mischief, discovery and creative output, deep thoughts and thrilling moments. Aliveness is captured energy in the moment before it moves on to the next vehicle. We’re all just batteries holding on to energy for some amount of time before we concede it to the next generation. We ought to use that little spark for exhilaration in our time.

      Batteries are drawn down in time, but they can also be recharged. I’m plunging into cold water again. Two days in a row, and for as many as I can string together until the water warms up enough that it’s no longer a cold water plunge. And my goodness, how I’ve missed the adrenaline high though all of this orange-tinted darkness of the world. To hell with the darkness. We must do the things that bring us energy, and hold the line for light and being.

      As Robin Williams once reminded us in a memorable character, carpe diem! Seize the day! We only have this one go at things. So go! We can all do our own version of full-tilt bozo, making memorable in this gift of a life. What’s the alternative? We’ll rest soon enough.