Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • Saluting the Ghost Ship

      “I’ll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.” ― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

      I sometimes dwell in the things that haven’t carried me. Places I might have gone, or lived in, surrounded by people I might have known, as the person I might have become. There’s nothing productive in what-might-have-been’s, unless we use them to set our current sail. This life is just fine, thank you, but the world will always whisper: “Vienna waits for you”, whatever your personal Vienna happens to be.

      Strayed puts this beautifully—these are but ghost ships that didn’t carry us. Sister lives we didn’t live. I know that I’ll never hike the Appalachian Trail or live on a sailboat in some remote fiord in Norway in winter, but that ghost of a me that will never be still drift into my mind in quiet moments now and then. Except they aren’t always quiet. Sometimes I’ll jokingly state that we’re selling everything and buying a boat, or a camper van, or just jetting off to the Vienna that haunts me that day. The people in my life know my ghost ships and roll their eyes, carrying on maintaining the ship we’re on in the real world. And so do I.

      I blame the artist in me. Creative types create alternative worlds all the time. Not Walter Mitty dreams, for we aren’t daydreamers in that way, but whispers of what may be just over the horizon of our current world, or an idealized version of ourselves as the protagonist. I ought to write more fiction, just to release these would-be characters into the world they crave to be in.

      Watching the crescent moon dance with Venus and Regulus in the early morning sky stirred up the ghost ship once again. Looking westward, Jupiter was dipping towards the west. It was magic time, when the universe whispers to the few cherished souls who awaken to be part of it that life is full of possibility. We may choose and love the ship we’re on for this passage while admiring the ones that slip away to the horizon. Some things will never be in this lifetime, but ’tis a beautiful life we’ve built for ourselves nonetheless, don’t you think?

    • Do What You Need to Do

      See the moon roll across the stars
      See the seasons turn like a heart
      Your father’s days are lost to you
      This is your time here to do what you will do
      Your life is now, your life is now, your life is now
      In this undiscovered moment
      Lift your head up above the crowd
      We could shake this world
      If you would only show us how
      Your life is now
      — John Mellencamp, Your Life Is Now

      I’m currently read a book set in Provence, and it’s having the expected effect of making me crave a trip there. YouTube videos of the place don’t help, as they only affirm just how beautiful it is there. I’ve had similar dalliances with beautiful places around the world. The world is out there, awaiting the adventurous and the bold. The rest may only dream.

      I do snap out of these moments and reset myself to the now. “Your father’s days are lost to you”, as Mellencamp sang; “This is your time to do what you will do”. It’s October in New Hampshire, with peak foliage and crisp air reminding us that we too live in a beautiful place. It’s high time to be present right here. We are human and sometimes want what we don’t have in our lives. We must consistently remind ourselves to skate our own lane.

      “Death may be close at hand; death may be far off. Transcend death with no-thought, no-idea. Do what you need to do, with no regret.” — Awa Kenzo, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow

      It’s easy to say we ought to transcend and do what we need to do, it’s harder to do it in a world that demands attention. I interrupted my writing flow state on this very blog to correct some puppy behavior and give the dog something else to chew on. Does this mean I’m not fully present in my work, or that I’m fully aware of the larger world around me? Puppies are great reminders that we aren’t fully in control of anything, but we can still fit our own work in. A mountain stream is constantly interrupted by obstacles in its flow, yet it still finds its way to the sea.

      The thing is, none of us is here forever, and all of us are faced with the will of the larger world around us. We may yet shake this world nonetheless if we dream big and persist with our purpose. But we must also remind ourselves to look up from it now and again and see just how beautiful this life actually is. If a puppy or autumn foliage or the mirror remind us of anything, it’s that now will soon be then. As Seneca once said, we must seize what flees: Feel the urgency to do what we need to do, and to do it with no regret.

    • Stable Centers

      “Continue to progress, do not stagnate. Consider a spinning top. It moves around a stable center. It spins and spins until it finally falls over, exhausted” — Awa Kenzo, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow

      In this blog I refer a lot to Stephen Covey’s concept of pushing the flywheel, and having momentum in our lives through rigid positive habits. The thing about momentum we sometimes forget is that it’s not about the spinning, though surely action is essential, but about the stable center. We may spin like a whirling dervish, but without a stable center we quickly spiral out of control. Like centrifugal force, positive momentum abhors instability.

      We see this in people, companies and political parties that have lost the thing that made them stable. Sports teams may peak at the level of their superstars, but unravel over the course of a season without strong leadership from the role players that are the true foundation of a team. We call them the glue that holds a team together, or lifts it up when things go poorly. It’s those people in an organization who exemplify how things ought to be done and lead by example.

      That stable center in an individual is our morality and sense of purpose. It’s our why, to borrow from Simon Sinek. When we have this in our lives, we do the work that must be done, we don’t skip over the little things that mean a lot, we are proactive in our days, and we have agency over our lives. Why do we get up every day to start anew? It’s often the people in our lives we hold most dear, isn’t it? Family and friends offer community and a sense of place. Teams, congregations and great company cultures do this as well. We need something bigger than ourselves to make our lives larger and more meaningful. When we have it we feel complete, when we don’t we crave it and desperately seek it out.

      Stable centers are usually obvious to us when we have them in our lives. We know what centers us, because our life revolves around these why’s. We are capable of spinning ourselves into greater and greater orbits when our footing is solid. Finding stable centers thus becomes as essential to our growth as establishing good habits and surrounding ourselves with the right people. In fact, when we do these things, we find that we ourselves become a stable center for others. And isn’t that a magical feeling?

    • Morning Coffee

      The line for coffee in a hotel Starbucks is informative. We learn about the lives of others in cross line chatter between coworkers, learn who slept well and who was having a rough morning and we learn who in line has never ordered a Starbucks coffee before. The barista, seeing the confused looks, explains automatically that a Tall is a small and a Venti is a large, and I watch their eyes glaze over in confused despair. I think to myself that I’ve been ordering Starbucks for three centuries and I’ve never seen so many novices in one line before. It’s the arrogance of the familiar. I shift to helpfulness to expedite the ordering process that I may get a coffee before lunch.

      I write this next to a brand new Keurig machine in my hotel room, still with packing tape on it and never once plugged in. The hotel staff had stocked it with decaf coffee pods, which explains why it has never been used. If you’re going to use an in-room coffee-making system at all, make it matter. Some of us take our morning cuppa very seriously.

      It’s not about the coffee, really, but the ritual. It marks the beginning of the day, and importantly for this coffee snob, the start of the writing process. I’ve had to write without it before, but it’s nothing to celebrate. To reveal the extent of my love for coffee, I’m meeting people for breakfast at a local diner, where I’ll surely have more coffee. But it’s not stopping me from having this one first.

      We all have our routines and rituals. Those people in line used to pouring a cup of the hotel courtesy coffee had their morning routine turned upside down. I can understand the feeling of exasperation they were feeling as they ran into the strange world of Starbucks. We are, each of us, dealing with some challenging circumstances. Some are Tall, some Grande, and some are Venti. We’re all in this together friends.

    • All or Nothing at All

      All or nothing at all
      If it’s love, there ain’t no in between
      Why begin then cry for something that might have been?
      No, I’d rather, rather have nothing at all
      — Frank Sinatra, All or Nothing at All

      We get busy, don’t we? We pour ourselves into our work, into our passions, and forget that there are other things that are important for us to do, to accomplish, to experience. Life is a series of tradeoffs and compromises, with a few things dominating our lives in the uncompromising way that identity shades the lenses through which we see the world.

      A month ago I finished a fairly intense burst of high-mileage walking, and then simply stopped. I’ve done this before, with rowing a million meters, with rowing itself, and with other passions that mattered a great deal to complete in the season that they were essential and then became yesterday’s news. It’s either a symptom of being focused on accomplishing what the day at hand demands (generous), or a mind that prefers to stick with one big thing at a time (more likely). It’s an all or nothing at all way of walking through the world.

      “You have feet, and if you don’t make use of them it’s a loss and a waste. Someone is telling you now so that in the future you cannot say: “No one told me that it was important to enjoy using my feet.” — Thích Nhất Hạnh, How to Walk (Mindfulness Essentials, #4)

      The thing is, that walking was serving me quite well, but I just sort of got busy with other things. And suddenly a month flies by and as Thích Nhất Hạnh observed, it becomes a loss and a waste for having not continued to ride the momentum of the moment. And so it must begin again, instead of having simply continued. The lesson is to always lean into the positive momentum in your life.

      We must live our lives as if this time was all we had, for soon it will be nothing at all. Distractions be damned, enjoy the things that fill our days with joy and our future with an abundance of health and energy. We must step to it already.

    • The Only Life

      “You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.” — James Baldwin

      There our days to dance and dream and mix it up with the world. And there are days when we must bow to the will of the universe. We must never forget that our time in the light is so very brief, and have the agency and courage to go our own way while we are healthy enough to do so. We must never bow out before our time—not in years lived but in the life we put into our years.

      I heard today that Tim Wakefield passed away. You may not know who Wakefield was, but every Red Sox fan does. And everyone at the Jimmy Fund raising money to fight cancer does. Wakefield was by all accounts a class act and an advocate for those in need. The universe doesn’t spare such people from an early expiration date. In fact it seems the universe grabs some of the best well before their time simply to remind us that we all must die. Memento mori.

      “Only the good die young.” — Billy Joel

      We can’t control everything in our lives, but we can fill each day with direction and purpose and a little audacity. It’s bold to go for what we most want in our lives, because so very few people actually do it. We must look squarely at the briefness of life and choose to be more deliberate with our one and only. Be more bold. Today. For tomorrow is never guaranteed.

    • Celebrate and Savor

      “The thing about knowing you’re doing something for the last time is that it takes the joy right out of it.” ― Lynda Rutledge, West with Giraffes

      I walk through life with a reminder in my head: We may never pass this way again. Not the Seals & Crofts song, for that would leave me stuck in the 1970’s forever, but that phrase. And so it is that I bring more awareness to the things that I do, the conversations I have, the waterfalls and iconic artwork and scenic vistas I encounter. This may be the one and only time this living soul meets this person or encounters this spot, so try to make the most of it.

      It’s a very stoic thing to say to oneself; we may never pass this way again. Marcus Aurelius would nod his head at the phrase, and find it familiar. He famously wrote a few reminders to himself about the urgency of the moment, giving us the gift of Meditations, a book everyone should read and linger with in their lifetime:

      “Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly. What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      There’s truth in Rutledge’s statement, for we can suck the joy right out of the moment believing it to be the last dance. Or alternatively, we can simply dance. Memories linger in moments of deep meaning. This begins with awareness of the fragility of our time together. It’s not a cause for sadness but celebration. We are dancing in this moment together! We might go through life believing our best moments are slipping away from us or live in the moment believing we’ve hit the lottery. Haven’t we?

      We ought to go through life in this way, not mourning what will soon pass but appreciating what we are doing, where we are, who we are with, now. It’s a joyful moment when we celebrate and savor it.

    • My Love and I

      The water is wide, I can’t cross o’er
      And neither do I have wings to fly
      Give me a boat, carry two
      And both shall row
      My love and I
      — Pete Seeger, The Water is Wide

      There’s a marriage occurring in the family this weekend, and it got me thinking about my own. I’m approaching three decades together, which makes us uniquely qualified to talk about long-term relationships, I suppose. But then I look at my in-laws, married for 61 years and counting, through the epic highs and devastating lows that a couple of humans can experience together. It makes me wonder about the years to follow, having ridden that roller coaster along with them for almost half of their marriage. As my favorite Navy pilot used to say, “I’ve seen the future and I don’t like it”. But we can still make the most of it. Amor fati.

      Life’s challenges are best endured together. We are each distracted and busy, annoyed at times with the world and with each other, but we return to each other always. A marriage can be seen as a boat that rides out the storms and keeps a relationship alive. Or you can look at it as a contract between two able-bodied people who agree to stick it out together when one or both are not so able-bodied anymore. We generally meet our mate when we’re at our peak fitness level and full of potential. They see that potential and bet on us, as we do with them. Sometimes that bet works out really well, and sometimes it doesn’t. But the thing about humans is that we’re at our best when we invest ourselves in others. The load is heavy enough as it is. Better to carry it together.

      Now everyone dreams of love lasting and true
      Oh but you and I know what this world can do
      So let’s make our steps clear that the other may see
      And I’ll wait for you, and if I should fall behind wait for me
      — Bruce Springsteen, If I Should Fall Behind

      We forget sometimes, in our focus on meeting the moment, that we are life partners until the end. Life reminds us of our fragility, in body and in spirit. We lift each other up or drag each other down, and this becomes habituated. Simply put, the dynamic in a relationship becomes our normal. Best to have a partner that lifts with us, rather than drag us down constantly. I’m blessed with one of those. I hope you are or will be too.

      So how does a marriage endure? There’s no secret, really. It’s all the things you’d expect: patience and love, listening and lingering in moments together, appreciating the best and accepting the less-than-best about each other. But I think it’s mostly about feeling gratitude for having found someone willing to row that boat with you across the wide water. Someone who will wait for us to catch up to where we ought to be, as we will for them when they fall a step behind (knowing deep down it’s usually us falling behind). There are no secrets to long relationships, there’s only the commitment to seeing it through.

    • In September

      I saw you standing with the wind and the rain in your face
      And you were thinking ’bout the wisdom of the leaves and their grace
      When the leaves come falling down
      In September when the leaves, come falling down
      — Van Morrison, When the Leaves Come Falling Down

      The puppy is having her first autumn, and in New Hampshire no less. She’s entered a place of magic and grace, playing for a short time only, beginning with the last of the harvest and ending with the chill of Halloween. These are the days. She spends them chasing squirrels and the falling leaves. I spend them seeing the world with a new perspective once again.

      Life is change. Autumn offers change in abundance. We dance with it or go about our business as always, but we ignore it at our peril. Blink and you miss it, as they say. That goes equally well for the years flying by as it does for the foliage. The peak in most of New Hampshire is in early October, before things brown out and the leaves come falling down. The season is over before we know it, so don’t blink: step out into the world fully aware of the gift.

      Our own seasons are playing out as well. We must celebrate the days as they greet us, forever embracing our place in the world. Puppies awaken with a zest for life, and shouldn’t we too? The leaves whisper their advice as they return to the earth: dance with our season of magic. Carpe diem.

    • Inflexible Disciplines

      “I have always believed that exercise is not only a key to physical health but to peace of mind. Many times in the old days I unleashed my anger and frustration on a punching bag rather than taking it out on a comrade or even a policeman. Exercise dissipates tension, and tension is the enemy of serenity. I found that I worked better and thought more clearly when I was in good physical condition, and so training became one of the inflexible disciplines of my life. In prison, having an outlet for one’s frustrations was absolutely essential.” — Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

      Life spins along at a rapid clip. It’s easy when we’re busy to push some things to the side and realize one day that we haven’t done something essential for some inexplicably long time. Habits we’ve folded into our identity can slip away in a few weeks of inaction. If we are what we repeatedly do, we are also what we repeatedly don’t do. So we must zealously hold on to the things we want in our lives. I can’t help but think of Nelson Mandela as I write that. He had a rigid exercise routine throughout his life that began at 05:00 every day. This carried him through his worst days in prison through his best days as President of South Africa. Who am I to use excuses for not being more disciplined?

      This idea of inflexible discipline is the key. We all must have our line in the sand of what we will always do or not do. This is our core identity. For me it includes writing and publishing something every day, along with a key set of other habits I track daily. A fitness routine is woven into that essential habit list, but it comes and goes like the breeze. As with writing, it has to be a box that must be checked every day. And as with writing, it’s better to check that box early in the morning before life’s distractions stack up against us. Like Mandela and others in human history who represent a disciplined life of fulfillment and transcendence from the ordinary.

      Our actions determine who we are and will be. It seems that being inflexible with ourselves may be the difference between reaching a desired identity and forever punting it away. Decide what to be and go be it, as the Avett Brothers put it so well. Being it begins today and every day.