Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • That Beautiful Moment in Time

      “As soon as a milestone is passed, it’s significance fades, and the focus is shifted to some other marker further down the road. No matter what you do or how satisfying it is in that beautiful moment in time, immediately you want more. You have to, if you want to find out how good you can be.” — Glenn Pendlay

      Watching Olympic athletes perform at the highest levels is inspiring, but it also gives one pause when we consider our own personal best in any comparable activity. The Olympic rowers managed a stroke rate and speed over 2000 meters that I couldn’t imagine in my most fit days, let alone now. The Olympic cyclists just rode 173 kilometers in twice the average speed that I ride 35 kilometers. But comparison is the death of joy, as the saying goes. All that matters is that we are actively improving our own lot and appreciating the work that goes into being elite at any activity.

      Wanting more is natural when we seek to maximize our potential. We must always remember that we’re competing against ourselves, always. What do we wish to excel in? Do we have the physical and mental ability to thrive in that environment? And the most important question of all: What are we willing to sacrifice in our lives to achieve it?

      As Bill Perkins pointed out in his book Die With Zero, we are all given time, health and financial capital in our lifetime. We rarely have the optimal amount of all three at any given time. The key to a great life is to optimize the currency we have in any stage of life. When we’re young we have time and health but usually not much money. When we’re in the middle of our careers we don’t seem to have much time even as we begin to accumulate more money. And of course when we’re old we have time and hopefully enough money to enjoy the time but may not have the health and fitness we had when we were younger. We ought to consider those three currencies we’re all given in our lifetime when weighing when and what to focus on.

      So what are the milestones we’ve reached in our lives? What is the next milestone, given our base level of fitness, time and financial freedom to go after those goals? Don’t we wonder as we clear one milestone after another just how good can we be? If achieving each milestone offers us our unique beautiful moment in time, doesn’t the pursuit of personal excellence—arete—become every more compelling as we climb?

    • Savor the Salad

      “I was so busy making music that before I knew it the summer was gone.” — Aesop, The Ants & the Grasshopper

      I went into the garden to pick the first ripe tomato and found the bottom half was gone, a sign that a groundhog has tagged my garden as its buffet. I resented the pilferage (who doesn’t love the first tomato of summer?) and picked the next tomato that wasn’t quite ripe yet, that I may at least have that one. I’ve learned to tolerate and even coexist with the critters, but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up the entire crop to them.

      The thing to do in such moments is head to the local farm stand. I grow three tomato plants, they tell me they grow five thousand. And they’re having a good year for tomatoes this year, with plenty of heat and without the relentless rain we had last year. When the local farmers are happy with the weather, we celebrate with Caprese salad. The basil is my own, the tomatoes from the farm stand, the rest of the ingredients from a global supply chain. It takes a village to make a great salad.

      Early August in New Hampshire and it feels like summer will never end even as the days grow shorter and the Halloween candy is on the store shelves. Why? Because retail is always looking 3-6 months ahead of the rest of us. In summer I avoid box stores at all costs, that I may live in the moment. Our summers, like life itself, are so very short. Why be forever looking ahead when we may enjoy the harvest this day brings?

      We all must prepare for the future, as the ants in Aesop’s fable do, but we must also balance this forever preparing with the awareness and insight of carpe diem. We must seize the day for all it offers for us before it’s gone forever. Life is a balance of living in the present with all the lessons of the past to guide us and a hopeful eye towards a bountiful future.

      I don’t begrudge the groundhog for pilfering the first tomato of summer, but I made a point of getting the second before it too was gone. Summer harvests are fragile, fleeting things indeed. So savor the salad.

    • Combinations

      “I’m not the best writer, but it is a strength. I might be a 90th percentile writer.
      And I’m not the best marketer, but it is a strength. Again, maybe 90th percentile? I’m better than most, but if you pass 100 people on the street it won’t be hard to find some people better than me.
      What I have gradually learned is that it is not your strengths, but your combination of strengths that sets you apart. It is the fact that writing and marketing are mutually reinforcing—and that I enjoy both—that leads to great results.
      How can you combine your strength? That’s something I would encourage everyone to think about. You will find talented people in every area of life. It’s the combinations that are rare.”
      — James Clear, 3-2-1 Newsletter, 4 July 2024

      We thrive when our unique set of developed skills and natural talents come together at the right place and time for us to leverage them fully. And the rest of the time we’re simply figuring things out. We know when our timing is right, because it all seems to fall into place for us as if by magic. Everything else in our life is incremental growth or gradual decline. It’s up to us to choose daily routines that move us in the right direction even when the timing isn’t right for our unique combinations to thrive in a maddening world.

      I remind my daughter (and myself) to write every day because muscle memory matters. Writing every day helps us find combinations of ideas and words that we otherwise might not have found. We never know when the timing is going to be just right for our combinations, only that we must be ready to seize the moment when it arrives. When you’re young if feels like you can push off the writing for tomorrow when the muse isn’t whispering in your ear today, but it doesn’t work like that. The cruelest twist in our creative life is that it’s got a timer. We must therefore use the time we have as best we can.

      “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” — Chinese Proverb

      Most of us will go through our lives doing work that is good enough to get by but never really takes off. Perhaps the answer isn’t in the work but that we’ve put the puzzle together incorrectly. Most jigsaw puzzles have pieces that seem to fit in one place but on further review aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Once we finally see that and move those pieces to where they belong we may finally solve the puzzle. And so it is with our own combinations of skills and talents. We know when they’re not being used in the right place. Still, we must use them until we find the right combination.

      The way to unlock the puzzle is to take stock of our strengths and begin to try new combinations, that we may find the ones that work. To be forever locked up in our untapped potential is no way to go through life. Like that jigsaw puzzle, stubbornly holding on to things that clearly aren’t working will leave us with an unfinished project or worse, an unfulfilled life.

      The thing to remember about puzzles is that they’re meant to be solved. Unlike jigsaw puzzles, we humans are forever making new pieces of our identity that may be just the right combination we were looking for. So it is that we must continue to develop new experiences and skills that may be applied to our life’s work. There’s a time and place for everything. Just keep working on those combinations.

    • The Audacious Turn

      “There’s no glory in climbing a mountain if all you want to do is to get to the top. It’s experiencing the climb itself – in all its moments of revelation, heartbreak, and fatigue – that has to be the goal.” — Karyn Kusama

      This week has been filled with moments of revelation, heartbreak and fatigue. Sure, the Olympics has been jammed with such moments, but really, I’m talking about my own unique combination of work week, exercise regime and writing. Anything that represents the climb for us is bound to be full of highs and lows. The trick is to learn to accept it all and keep climbing.

      What makes life more interesting—the view at the top or the obstacles we navigate along the way? Perhaps a better way to ask that question is, which makes the better story? Life isn’t simply that Instagram post capturing the sunset, pretty as it may be, it’s the hike up to earn it and the careful descent down the rock scramble afterwards that we’ll talk about in the days that follow. The thing about climbing is that even while we’re constantly facing challenges, we grow more and more prepared to tackle such things. We grow more fit, more resilient, more determined to do just a little bit more tomorrow. And live to tell the tale.

      This summer has been a reacquaintance with cycling. There are rides I’ve done recently that I wouldn’t have done a month ago. I’ve noticed that the more I ride the less I go to the rail trails. Sure, we can ride them every day and avoid most climbs and vehicle traffic, but what have we experienced? The steep hills I opted out of climbing before are worth tackling now because I’m less intimidated by the climb and because flat gets boring. We do the work that we may climb, and so it follows that we must climb when we’ve done the work.

      That nagging voice is reminding me that there are other hills that I keep riding past in my life in favor of easier rides. There are chapters to write that haven’t been written, awaiting a bolder version of me. We can go an entire lifetime saying we’ll do the tough work tomorrow and never make the audacious turn up that hill. Then again, we can simply be bold today and see how it plays out. We are here to experience it all, aren’t we? So what perceived limitations will we test in our life today?

    • Never Coming Back Again

      “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in an office or mowing the lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” — Jack Kerouac

      Our mountain is experience. There’s no getting around it. We must get out there and do the things that call to us. We know the stakes. Whatever we do with this day, we ought to make it meaningful for all the right reasons.

      I texted with an avid hiker friend who’s birthday is today. She always takes the day off to celebrate it, which I think is a wonderful way to mark the occasion. Hopefully there are mountains on her schedule today, or at the very least time with people who matter a great deal.

      It happens that today is also the day a woman who works for me returns from maternity leave. When she texted me that she was back I reminded her that she was to punt anything and everything that felt overwhelming over the fence to the team that’s been supporting her while she’s been away. Work is not life, merely a part of life. When we treat it like our life we limit our potential as human beings.

      It’s not my birthday today, and I don’t have a newborn at home drawing my attention, but I do have the same 24 hours to work with. What will we remember most about this day at the end of our days? We ought to do more of that. Make it special, for it’s never coming back again.

    • Too Present to Imagine

      Age saw two quiet children
      Go loving by at twilight,
      He knew not whether homeward,
      Or outward from the village,
      Or (chimes were ringing) churchward,
      He waited, (they were strangers)
      Till they were out of hearing
      To bid them both be happy.
      “Be happy, happy, happy,
      And seize the day of pleasure.”
      The age-long theme is Age’s.
      ‘Twas Age imposed on poems
      Their gather-roses burden
      To warn against the danger
      That overtaken lovers
      From being overflooded
      With happiness should have it.
      And yet not know they have it.
      But bid life seize the present?
      It lives less in the present
      Than in the future always,
      And less in both together
      Than in the past. The present
      Is too much for the senses,
      Too crowding, too confusing-
      Too present to imagine.
      —Robert Frost, Carpe Diem

      Nothing brings you to the present like taking a leap. You’ve left your familiar, solid footing behind, are airborne for an instant and sure to land somewhere new any moment now. We don’t have to imagine the landing in such moments of leaping, we need only prepare ourselves for its inevitability.

      I begin most mornings with a leap into the pool to shake off the cobwebs, and the sensation of leaping never gets old. I recognize the privilege of having a pool in the first place, for it’s a relic of the past that lingers like old soccer balls and scooters. The difference is that it still brings joyful moments even as the life it was built for has changed. Empty nests make for still water most all of the time. Still, I leap.

      We can’t mourn the past that has left us, simply acknowledge that it is a part of who we are now. It’s like the library of books read and placed on the shelf to be referred to now and then. We are the sum of all of our experience, yet forever leaping into the future. In these moments I come back to seizing the present. Carpe diem is that airborne moment we scarcely think of in the midst of leaping, but it’s everything too present to imagine.

      We must remember we’re standing on the bridge to our future, but not obsess over it to the point of being seized by it. Happiness is bliss in the leap with optimism for the landing. The joei de vivre we fold into the present is one more book on tomorrow’s shelf. We are building a meaningful life as our library grows by the day. Each a present to reflect on, even as we leap for the next.

    • Ought To’s and Got To’s

      “Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.” — Simone de Beauvoir

      We ought to act with more urgency in our days. Ought to’s aren’t the same as got to’s though, are they? We know we ought to work out more, eat and drink less empty calories, read more, make the call we’ve been meaning to make and do that other thing that’s been nagging at us for some time now. What did we actually get to yesterday? That’s the stuff of consequence that moved the chains in our march through time. Got to’s are palpable because we feel the change that comes with them.

      There are few things more fulfilling than a solid day in which we do the things we’d promised ourselves that we’d do. It sets the table for a bolder tomorrow, clears the deck of yesterday’s commitments and confirms for us that we got to do the things we knew we ought to do. Excuses fall by the wayside as accomplishments stack up behind us.

      We know that there’s always another ought to rising up to meet us. That’s life. But that next ought to is easier to face when we’ve gotten to the things that came up before. Each lifts us to a higher place; a staircase of accomplishments rising to a higher identity. The view is distinctly better the higher we climb. Certainly better than down there treading water under the weight of all those ought to’s.

      The thing is, we read an inspiring quote like Beauvoir’s and feel the lift of her words. Do we act on it in the moment? Changing our lives seems pretty big when we think about it, but really it’s just the next thing we’ve got to do completed, and the one after that. So by all means, we must act now, and leave today’s ought to’s in the past where they belong.

    • Solitude and Service

      “He who delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

      I recently spent some time on an island, and fancied what it might be like to live there. A boat could bring me back to civilization as needed for provisions and conversation. The rest of the time? Blessed solitude. Libraries of books being read and re-read. Volumes of prose written. Time to meditate on the meaning of life. Processing elbow room for the mind and soul. Wonderful, sacred solitude.

      It’s nice to ponder, but I suspect I wouldn’t be truly fulfilled in a life of solitude. I feel another gravitational force pulling me in the other direction. My attention always comes back to a familiar world of contribution to and appreciation for the circle of people who make up my identity beyond the self. For most of us, service to others is our primary purpose.

      Blame it on growing up in a big family or participating in a team sport instead of individual pursuits, but I just seem to be built for social interaction. That doesn’t make my time in solitude any less valuable, but does make it obvious that it’s a now and then thing not an all the time existence. But is it enough?

      The most interesting islands are full of connection to others. Fellow inhabitants, bridges and ferries to connect you to the mainland, Internet and cellular telephone service. Each brings connection for those times when solitude is just too much. We don’t have to live on an island to find solitude any more than we need to be off the island to find connection.

      As with everything, life is about balance. Balance is something we feel, and perhaps the best thing we can do for ourselves is to build a life where we feel our balance between solitude and service are mostly in blessed equilibrium. Surely it’s something to aspire to in our creative, engaged and productive lives. Wherever we may find it.

      Solitude

    • What Feeds Your Head

      “I would urge you to be as imprudent as you dare. BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BE BOLD. Keep on reading. (Poetry. And novels from 1700 to 1940.) Lay off the television. And, remember when you hear yourself saying one day that you don’t have time any more to read- or listen to music, or look at [a] painting, or go to the movies, or do whatever feeds you head now- then you’re getting old. That means they got to you, after all.” — Susan Sontag, from the 1983 Wellesley College commencement speech

      I’m far from the most productive productivity zealot out there, and I’ve always positioned myself as the late bloomer figuring things out as I go. One thing I figured out a long time ago was that I need to have a head start to keep up with that which I aspire to finish today. It’s no secret that I try to jamb as much as possible into the morning hours, that I may be ahead of the game as the world washes it’s nonsense over me. This morning? 11 mile ride, feed the pets, water the plants, read two chapters, responded to essential work emails and now writing this blog in hopes of publishing before 8 AM. Will my hours be as productive as the day progresses? Likely not, but at least I’ve done what I’d hoped to do when I woke up.

      We can’t run on empty forever. We’ve got to fuel the engine that keeps us running down the hours. Hydration and nutrition are a given, but we can’t forget to refill the mind’s battery. A good night’s sleep to keep the brain fog at bay, then seek to fill up with as much nutrient-rich experience as we can find. What feeds our head? We ought to be more creative and attentive to our choices. Garbage in, garbage out and all that.

      I’m pressing for more travel, more music, more art, more face time with interesting people, and more diverse experience than I’ve accumulated thus far. How much is enough? We’ll know it when we get there, and I’m a long way from there now. Sontag’s speech to young graduates was likely well received, but it’s their parents and grandparents who really knew the score. Life will constantly get in the way of feeding our mind and soul. We must carve out the time and jealously guard it, lest it disappear forever.

      So be bold today. It’s not the first time I’ve asked, and won’t be the last. I’m asking it of you and also of me. Today’s the day. Nice starts are great, but sprint to the finish this day. There’s just so much to see and do and only now to work with.

    • Attention is Vitality

      “Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.” ― Susan Sontag

      Many things compete for our attention. The pup wants very much for me to pay full attention to playing frisbee with her for the entire morning. There’s a part of me that would rather do that than shift attention to other work. But there are things we must do in our lives that call to us. What we pay attention to determines where we go after all.

      Perhaps I love my return to cycling because of the state change it brought to me, or perhaps it’s because I’m very focused on the act of staying upright and making miles when I’m doing it. There’s no texting or doom scrolling on my part, and hopefully not on the part of the drivers nearby. There’s just full attention to the joyful act of flying inches over the pavement, with the occasional hill to punch up the heart rate.

      During this morning’s frisbee session I listened to the world around me. The sound of a horse whinnying at the farm beyond the woods, a crow having a conversation with another crow that preferred silence (thank you very much!), the hum of distant morning drivers on country roads, the sun shining brightly upon grateful oak leaves, the still wet footprints from an early morning plunge in the pool, a bit of coolness in the air. Paying attention offers a wealth of information from which to become engaged with the universe. Alternatively, we may focus our rapt attention on one thing until it’s done. I’m particularly good at the former, and force myself towards the latter. Some tasks are easier than others.

      There’s just so much to pay attention to in this world, screaming as it is for ours. The trick is to filter it all out and listen to the call of the wild within us. What excites us? Why aren’t we doing more of that to see where it leads us? Life is a meandering path of engagement and diversion with an undefined destination set against a clock ticking relentlessly in the background, reminding us that we’re running out of time. Do stuff! While we still have the currency of attention, health and vitality to stuff those minutes full of experience.