Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • A Sequence of Everything Wanted

      “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” ― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

      Slow down you’re doing fine
      You can’t be everything you want to be before your time
      — Billy Joel, Vienna

      In a dizzying turn of events, last night capped a sequence of things wanted for some time delightfully happening one after the other, from Rome to Athens to Sicily to Florence to… New Hampshire. Life is sometimes simply great timing, realized. To visit the Colosseum and the Sistine Chapel and the Acropolis and Mount Etna, to see Michelangelo’s La Pietà and David to bookend an epic trip and then return home to find the elusive Aurora Borealis dancing in my own backyard hours later is a sequence I’ll be processing for some time, thank you. This isn’t meant to be a brag about how lucky the last couple of weeks have been, rather a realization that patiently working towards something combined with a bit of good luck goes a long way in a lifetime. Amor fati.

      The thing is, I wear my impatience on my sleeve (and blog about it more often than I ought to). Some of us simply want to get right to everything as quickly as possible, knowing that time flies and we aren’t getting any younger. Sure, tempus fugit, but slow down—you’re doing fine… Vienna waits for you. Simply plot the steps, do the work, follow through and hope fortune smiles on you.

      Hope is a tricky word, and that’s where impatience comes in. Perhaps the better word is trust. We must trust the process when we build our systems. Work, marriage, fitness level, artistic contribution, social interactions, and yes, bucket list items are all lifestyle choices built on faith that doing this will lead to that. When it doesn’t arrive promptly we restless types get a bit impatient, so a reminder of all that’s come to pass helps now and then. Gratitude goes a long way.

      Life lessons are all around us, if we simply stop rushing about so much and focus on the journey. The biggest lesson is that the journey continues, and each milestone is simply a marker for where we’ve been and what we’ve seen and who we were at the time. What’s next matters too, doesn’t it? Our past is our foundation for the growth to come. We shall get there some day. For haven’t we thus far?

      Aurora Borealis, New Hampshire 10 May 2024
      Aurora Borealis, New Hampshire 10 May 2024
      Aurora Borealis, New Hampshire 10 May 2024
      Michelangelo’s La Madonna della Pietà
      Michelangelo’s David

    • The Traveler Resets

      We shouldn’t simply travel to places to keep up with the Joneses or to gather likes on our Instagram feed, but to reach a more informed and enlightened place, from which we may cross the chasm into the next unknown. It’s readily apparent in going to the bucket list places that there are plenty of tourists already. We must be the traveler instead.

      The traveler is the ambassador, the diplomat, the pilgrim, the student. The traveler is forever curious and wondering what’s around the next corner. It’s in learning the proper inflection to “thank you” in a language that isn’t yours but is most definitely theirs. To travel is to learn to see what we might not have imagined. It’s rare to be surprised by anything in this fully-connected world, but life is more than an Instagram photo or Google street view. The traveler uses all senses and tries to see around the corner from those famous pictures everyone else is taking. I was as impressed with the strikingly sad face of a gypsy beggar working the line to see David as I was with Michelangelo’s masterpiece itself. Both were masterful; the expectations of the encounter set the lasting impression. We know mastery when we see it.

      The challenge with taking a trip full of bucket list experiences is figuring out what to do with ourself when we return. Sure, the laundry and a good sleep in one’s own bed are quite necessary. A general assessment of the home and garden situation upon return reassures. Those work emails must mean something quite essential too (or what are we there for?) if only to see who ignored the out of office message. This is all the reset in action.

      We know we’ve had a great holiday when we face a large reset: time zones, empty refrigerator, thirsty plants and remembering passwords we thought we’d memorized (do get the app for those). When we travel enough we learn to master the reset. It’s not our first rodeo, it’s just the next bend in the road to some higher plain. I’ve experienced far more than I can summarize in a few paragraphs. Silence may be the best measure of an experience.

      Ah, but what of the blog? It’s shockingly obvious that the content the last two weeks has been a bit rushed, a bit unedited, and published at odd times of the day for those used to a certain routine. Travel writing is fun. The trick is to carve out the time to write as you’re maximizing your days. But done well, isn’t that how it’s supposed to be anyway? We aren’t here solely to document our experiences in the world, but to fully live in the time we have, wherever that may be. The best writing isn’t done on the trip itself, it’s after we’ve reflected on all that we’ve experienced in our time. In the end, it’s perspective on the entire journey that resonates.

    • The Slopes of Vesuvious

      “For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!” — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

      Living dangerously isn’t so much about reckless acts of defiance against Darwinism. To live dangerously is to risk who we once were for who we might become. Once you’ve experienced the world you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, we expand into something more. Travel opens the mind to new possibilities, just as reading Nietzsche does.

      Visiting places for the first time that you’ve heard about all of your life is an education. The problem with those places is everyone else is joining you there to complete something in themselves too. I’d like to think that we all visit a place with the same objectives, but you know some just want to check a box while the enlightened few try to bring context and meaning to the visit. But let’s face it, we’re all a combination of both, it’s simply the ratio that separates the Instagram model from the student of history.

      The thing is, one person’s fruitfulness is another’s waste of time. We’re all on our own path through this lifetime. The trick is to get more comfortable with risk, for the fruit is often out on a limb awaiting the courageous.

      Pompeii with Mount Vesuvius looming large

    • Sensory Miracles

      “Slow down and taste and smell and hear, and let your senses come alive. If you want a royal road to mysticism, sit down quietly and listen to all the sounds around you. You do not focus on any one sound; you try to hear them all. Oh, you’ll see the miracles that happen to you when your senses come unclogged.” — Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      I had the opportunity to walk around Mykonos as a guide for a blind man. His wife was eager to shop with mine, so we set them free to go be. We went for a nice walk through the miracles of sensory experience that are the streets of Mykonos. Doing this on my own surely would have been joyful (if you can’t find joy in Mykonos you are truly lost), but my joy was amplified by awareness of things I take for granted—things like variations in terrain, people walking towards me, and the many curbs, shelves and flowering vines protruding from buildings that make Mykonos such a beautiful place to wander about.

      The first thing you notice as a guide is pace. Everything slows down as you guide another person with their hand on your shoulder and your focus expands beyond yourself to what is coming up that may trip them up or bump at them from above. Once pace is established, next comes heightened awareness, that you may describe all that surrounds you both in ways that are hopefully interesting to your blind counterpart. Flowering vines, the grout between paving stones underfoot, the white painted stucco and narrow streets providing naturally cool places to move about, and the miniature cars and trucks navigating those tight streets, often prompting a retreat to doorways and up steps.

      The thing is, I will always remember Mykonos differently for having guided him through its streets in this way for a couple of hours. Having been the one seeing a place both for the first time and in this way for the first time, I can’t help but have a stronger affinity for Mykonos through that experience than if I’d simply wandered about on my own. Perhaps my senses finally unclogged as I was taught to see for the first time. We should all be blessed with such an opportunity.

    • Greek Character

      “Character is a Greek word, but it did not mean to the Greeks what it means to us. To them it stood first for the mark stamped upon the coin, and then for the impress of this or that quality upon a man, as Euripides speaks of the stamp—character—of valor upon Hercules, man the coin, valor the mark imprinted on him. To us a man’s character is that which is peculiarly his own; it distinguishes each one from the rest. To the Greeks it was a man’s share in qualities all men partake of; it united each one to the rest. We are interested in people’s special characteristics, the things in this or that person which are different from the general. The Greeks, on the contrary, thought what was important in a man were precisely the qualities he shared with all mankind. The distinction is a vital one. Our way is to consider each separate thing alone by itself; the Greeks always saw things as parts of a whole, and this habit of mind is stamped upon everything they did.” — Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

      Greece is a place of rugged beauty, to be sure, but also of rugged character shaped by a sense of timelessness that we simply don’t have in my own country. To walk around a structure built in 444 B.C. is to taste eternity. We are humans of course, and eternity isn’t ours to embrace just yet. But we may reach for the eternal in the form of development of our character.

      Poseidon was one of the Olympians for the Greeks, presiding over such volatile things as the weather. For a Greek sailing off to fish or fight, Poseidon was a big deal, and someone to cater favor with. He also influenced the temperament of horses, and was known as the “earth shaker” for his power to control earthquakes. So building a temple devoted to Poseidon made a lot of sense, and where better for it than on a prominent cliff overlooking the Aegean Sea on Cape Sounion?

      It’s one thing to read history, quite another to stand on the edge of a cliff between the Aegean Sea and a temple erected 2500 years ago as a tribute to the god who controlled both that sea and the ground we stood on. Best to embrace the spirit of the ancients in such moments, rather than incurring the wrath of Poseidon. And that’s the thing about Greece: you feel that you’re trying to measure up instead of trying to stand out. It’s a subtle difference, but it matters a great deal. It’s not that we aren’t special (our mother’s would insist that we are), it’s that we may be integral to something far beyond our time and place. That’s the Greek character.

      The Temple of Poseidon, 444 BC

    • Happy Endings

      “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” — Orson Welles

      Not every story has a happy ending. Some might say that every single one of our stories will end badly. I say life is a series of beginnings and endings, and we may strive to be happy for most of our story. To pursue happy is folly—there’s no depth to it. Depth is found in the lows as much as the highs. We must wade through it all, accepting our story as it unfolds—amor fati. We ought to begin with the end in mind, but focus on making this particular chapter compelling, such that it is.

      Having an impromptu dinner with friends last night, talk went to the number of trips around the sun we’re on. That cast of characters clearly read too many of my blog posts, for they’ve written this one for me. A trip around the sun on this planet is 365 days and change. This is a leap year, which accounts for that loose change. It’s all just numbers and science and passing our days on planet Earth in the best possible way we can muster given the circumstances. Cheers.

      This blog will end one day, just as surely as the soul writing it will. The end is assured. What matters isn’t that it’s a happy ending, simply that we wring the most out of each day. Some fall flat, some resonate, and some are downright terrible, but on the whole, a happy life is attainable when we are fully aware and engaged with a supporting cast of amazing people. We know the story: we are the average of the people we surround ourselves with. So build it and they will come. There’s your happy ending.

    • Breaking Up with Temporality

      “You give yourself to life by leaving temporality behind. Desire for mortal gains and fear of loss hold you back from giving yourself to life.” — Joseph Campbell

      Admittedly, I’ve had a complicated relationship with time. I spent too much of it rushing from one commitment to another, always striving to be early so as not to waste someone else’s time should the universe align itself to create delays. I write this very blog post in a coffee shop having arrived early for a meeting just down the street. Temporality is deeply engrained within me. It’s a hard relationship to break with.

      That doesn’t make it a healthy or enabling relationship. In fact, much of the stress I’ve felt in my lifetime is related to my relationship with time. Productivity calculations in a quarter, splits on a screen as I try to beat some preconceived expectation of how quickly I can complete some workout, or the pressure I put on myself to read or write a certain amount in the time I have available for such things. Time isn’t a great measure of our worth, unless you’re an Olympic athlete or attempting to solve a Rubik’s Cube or some such thing. Tempus fugit, indeed.

      So I’ve promised myself I’d break up with temporality, once and for all. Maybe not today, mind you (for I do have these commitments lined up), surely not tomorrow (I have a flight to catch, after all), but very—very— soon. How soon? Well, maybe time wIll tell? But know this: I’m serious this, uh, time.

    • On Home and Garden

      Ah, yet, ere I descend to the grave
      May I a small house and large garden have;
      And a few friends, and many books, both true,
      Both wise, and both delightful too!
      And since love ne’er will from me flee,
      A Mistress moderately fair,
      And good as guardian angels are,
      Only beloved and loving me.
      ― Abraham Cowley, The Wish

      I keen observer recently challenged me on how much I telegraph desired change in my writing. The perils of writing to an audience that includes people I interact with regularly… We write what we write and things fall out as they may. So forgive the repetition, it’s not dissatisfaction with the current state, it’s a strong focus on becoming better. Sometimes that means habit change, sometimes it means habitat change, but there’s no rush to move to a place faraway. I do kind of like it here.

      Here, of course, is far more interesting when the garden grows and stick season gives way to budding trees soon to leaf out. The garden changes everything. We might pay lip service to the hardscape of winter, but it’s the dance of annuals with perennials in that hardscape that makes the life of a gardener joyful.

      Cowley poetically sums up the simple joys of a good life. I seem to revisit this poem every couple of years just as the season changes. A few good friends, a few great books, a roof over one’s head, a garden to roam about in and someone to cherish it all with. Change will happen, some chosen and some a much a surprise to me as it will be to you. That’s the game we’re all in. But isn’t it more lovely with a bit of sun and color?

    • The Places We Will Be From

      Closing time, you don’t have to go home
      But you can’t stay here
      — Semisonic, Closing Time

      There’s something comfortable about staying in place. Things feel more natural and familiar, after all, and this is where all our friends are. But life is change, and we too must embrace it. Even the farmer, seemingly always in the same place, changes with the seasons. Most of us aren’t farmers, but we ought to listen to the wind and watch the level of the sun and know our place in this world will not be what it once was. We must be change agents for progress to happen.

      Closing time, time for you to go out
      To the places you will be from

      It’s easy to think back about who we were then. It’s harder to imagine who we’ll be in the future, let alone to map the path from here to there very accurately. Surely, there will be unexpected twists and turns along the way. The future is not ours, any more than the past is us today. But we do have the present, such that it is, to do with it what we will. Someday this will be who we used to be too. So we ought to make it a great story.

      Closing time, every new beginning
      Comes from some other beginning’s end

      When one door closes, another is said to open. How many doors have closed already? No matter—not really. What matters is the door opening in front of us, and our willingness to step across the threshold to what’s next. Life is about reinvention, rebirth, renewal. It’s closing time on some older version of ourselves, isn’t it? We can’t stay here forever. But as with any great adventurer, we should develop a strong sense of what’s next.

    • The Precious Few

      “Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” ― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

      The older I get, the less I care about the accumulation of things like accolades and titles and possessions. Sure, it’s nice to have that crystal bowl gifted to my bride and I when we got married, but we’ve never touched it, save to dust it off and place it back on the shelf again. So why do we hold on to it anymore? So the shelf won’t be empty?

      The thing is, it’s easier to just leave things in place as we move on to other things. But then we have all these things we don’t really need or want accumulating all around us. What’s the point of it all? It all amounts to nothing but an anchor. We all need an anchor now and then, but it doesn’t need to be so big that we can’t haul it up when we want to move on to the next beautiful place in our lives.

      Lately I’ve been looking at the roles I play in my life, and deciding which to dust off and keep and which to eliminate from my life. The person I once was is nice, but if I’m not that person anymore, why keep doing the same old things I did then? We ought to eliminate the non-essential from our lives that we might linger with the essential that much more.

      When we think of elimination, we ought to consider too the very habits that define who we are now. Is writing this blog every day bringing me to the person I want to become in the future, or is it holding me back from doing something else that would carry me there? You, dear reader, may be asking the same question about visiting this blog regularly, and isn’t it appropriate to do so? All is fair when we decide who we ought to be.

      And that’s the point. We should question everything that holds us to here. Do we have too much anchor to simply haul up and go when we hear the call of that faraway place? It’s fair to ask ourselves such things, but harder to act upon the answers that we arrive at. The one thing that is essential is to find and focus on the precious few, wherever it takes us.