“Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him—that is the best account of it that has been yet given. Squalor and tragedy can beckon to all that is great in us; and strengthen the wings of love.” ― E.M. Forster, Howards End
We are, each of us, on borrowed time. There’s no denying that, even as we prefer to focus on other things in our lives. The reminder, Memento mori, necessarily prods us to the urgency of action. It’s now or never.
We all, each of us, have greatness within us. There’s no denying the unique mix of billion year old carbon, energy and magic that came together to spit each of us out onto the dance for for our singular tango with life. We either draw upon that greatness or squander it in all the ways humans are great at squandering: procrastination, distraction, sloth, mis-directed prioritization, etc. We are the sum of what we put in to the time we have, divided by the forces that act upon us. We can’t control everything, but we can control some things.
I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I really have no idea how today will turn out, let alone the balance of my time on this planet. But I know I can influence certain outcomes with my full attention. Maybe that’s enough to tap into that evasive greatness. Surely I may get closer for having tried.
“It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?” — David Brooks, “The Moral Bucket List” The New York Times
Do you ever wonder, what people say about us when we pass? Isn’t it directly related to how much we lean into the right virtue? We might work hard all of our life, focused and disciplined, and successful by most any measure of that word, and still not live a life that is fulfilling and meaningful to others.
Is striving to be virtuous about resume building or character building? Are we building a list of career highlights and an office in the C-suite or are we building a moral foundation that others will point to as a model for living? Just what do we want to be remembered for anyway? A life of meaning and purpose is a life of service to others.
How is someone developed in such a way that they’re a contributor and builder instead of a corrosive sapper of joy and trust? It begins with flipping attention from ego to empathy. Easier said than done in a world where the self is so celebrated, but absolutely essential to growing into a person who is reliable, trustworthy and willing to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work.
There is a recipe for building a strong character. It begins with the way we’re raised and the social network around us. In the way others perceive the world and how they in turn influence how we perceive it. Stir in a proper informal education: being well-traveled and worldly, and well-read and articulate surely help build empathy and understanding. Developing strong listening skills and the inclination and moral courage to rise to the moment when nobody else will.
When someday we pass from this world, what do we want people to say about us? Will anyone remember the extra work we put in to finish that project, or will the memory be about being fully present for our children and significant other at the most important events in their lives? Will we be remembered as being a good friend or sibling, a great neighbor who looked out for others, or as that person who was never really there when it really mattered?
A life of service to others isn’t always easy, but it matters a great deal. These moments add up, and will create a ripple that will be felt by others. The person with the most toys in the end doesn’t win, they’ve simply gathered a bunch of stuff that will end up in an estate plan for someone else. Isn’t the real goal to have our lives resonate for those around us, that we’ll be deeply missed when our time comes to an end?
“Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.” — Arthur Miller
When someone lies to you, how do you react when the betrayal is revealed? Can we ever truly trust the person again? Do we run through the lies, making them forever a soundtrack in our memories? Or are we somehow grateful for the truth finally surfacing?
We usually know, deep down, when someone is untrustworthy. We’ve got a sense for the scoundrels amongst us. Yet each of us is framed by the lies someone has told us, sometimes never learning the truth, sometimes learning too late. Entire histories are built on slanted versions of the truth. We are, each of us, fooled by someone. That doesn’t make us fools, it makes us humans with faith in the best in others.
Ultimately we must reconcile the truth of the matter, however it’s presented to us. Rising above the hurt and betrayal to find a place of peace with ourselves and the people we once trusted. That doesn’t mean trusting them again, but finding some middle ground between truth and the consequences of what was once believed.
“Like silence after noise, or cool, clear water on a hot, stuffy day, Emptiness cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness.” ― Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh
I picked up a beautiful stone on a rocky beach the other day, as I often do in such places, to add it to a pot of stones I’ve got from around the world. I realized that most of the stones I’ve accumulated while doing this mean nothing more to me than curious novelties, yet I keep acquiring stones from places I’ve been just the same. It’s not logical, but it is my way of saving a piece of each beautiful place I’ve been. Better than a shot glass or a t-shirt, I suppose.
Lately I’ve been working to reconcile the fact that I’ve been adding more than subtracting. This is a natural activity for many people in the western world: more stuff, more experiences, more accomplishments, more, more, more… We pick up stuff as casually as we load food on at the buffet table. And it’s not just stuff, it’s responsibilities and commitments, work load, home improvement projects, and on and on. We pile on all of these things as we accumulate experience and live our lives.
When we fill our lives we leave little room for ourselves to emerge. We’re in there somewhere, under the pile of stuff we’ve heaped on our shoulders. A boat needs an anchor to hold it to solid ground, but if you add enough anchors the boat will sink. Do you ever get that sinking feeling? Let something go from your life and feel released.
Recently I added a puppy to my life. This can be seen as another added responsibility and maybe one anchor too many. Then again, maybe it was the anchor I needed. What’s clear in getting acquainted with her is that other anchors may need to be tossed aside that this ship may stay afloat. And this is how we grow in new directions in different seasons of our lives. We encounter new and different things that carry us to new places.
“Only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career.” — Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
A few days of sailing had the desired effect. The stress accumulated, overflowing and leaking out of my pores, revealed in comments and recent blog posts was finally released. That’s a symptom of too many active endeavors leading up to a boiling point, of sorts, without the necessary reprieve of time off. Why do we do this to ourselves? Because we’re seeking meaning in prestige, earning potential and perceived value others place on us. It’s nice to be wanted, and even needed, even as it sucks the very life out of us at times. So it goes.
We ought to lean into our vocation, and less so into pursuits less worthy of our brief dance with vitality. But ought to’s are tricky things. There are things we must do and things we might do, and things that fall in between. Life is this navigation and this dance.
To be a great navigator is to decide on a proper course based on the relevant data, while ignoring the frivolous tangential information. So do we question our active pursuits? Shouldn’t we? How else can we determine the essential from the tangential?
What we fill our days with ought to matter a great deal. Even as I write this, I’m weighing the high of a few days off from my primary work, an admittedly lighter lift on blog posts and time with exceptional people against a keen desire to open up the work computer to set the table for a productive week. If time off is so fulfilling, why are we so eager to roll up our sleeves and get back to business? What gives?
When we find meaningful ways to contribute, ways that offer value to others while speaking to something within us, we’ve reached a state of working bliss. This may sound ridiculous on the face of it, but there’s something to being productive in work that matters to us, even as there is also value in doing the essential things that aren’t that work. So if traveling to fascinating places, learning new languages and skills, sailing, hiking, reading great books and poetry and socializing with great friends makes a person more interesting, so too might dabbling in work that matters. The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
This isn’t a contradiction, it’s a personal audit of what matters most, which we all ought to do from time to time. Work that matters carries us to places of joy, purpose and yes, usefulness. This makes us more than interesting, it makes us contributors in the game of life, raising the stakes for the lot of us. This calling is ours alone. For what are we here for but to be useful in our own unique way?
“This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Anchored in a quiet cove, boat rolling steadily (and indicating why we were alone in this place), we stepped out into a brilliant sky to bear witness to a billion stars. The Milky Way so bright it reflected off the water. This was what we’d hoped for, yet almost missed fleeing mosquitoes earlier in the evening. We were not so alone after all.
The thing about sailing that is so attractive is your ability to place yourself in places like this, nudged up against a corner of Acadia National Park that few ever venture to. There are no buses or fifth wheel camp trailers on Isle au Haut. Those are fine people too, just more than I seek out when getting away from it all. Here you find the quiet bliss inferred in the very concept of a nature preserve.
Spending a bit of time on the main stretch (where the road is actually paved), we found the locals friendly and the ice cream sandwiches tasty, but I couldn’t buy a stamp for my postcard after 11 AM. Isle au Haut has what must be one of the nation’s smallest Post Offices. If you want counter service get there early. So it goes. The stamp will have to wait.
The hiking trails are mostly well-defined here, and in some boggy corners nature’s winning the battle to reclaim them. They say build it and they will come, and surely we do, but not so many that you ever feel you can’t get some solitude. We saw precious few fellow hikers, despite the delightful trail network. This naturally continued out at the anchorage. Precious few fellow sailboats. There is plenty of elbow room on Isle au Haut. May it always be this way.
Maine has 4000 islands, which means some names repeat, while other names stand out for their charming descriptiveness. Two Bush Island is one of those latter names. And coming across them inspires even more wanderlust. You simply want to explore a place like this.
We saved our wandering for Isle au Haut (surely a future blog post), But I was left wondering about the fanciful, perhaps practical name of this tiny island. As we sailed we tossed around all kinds of possibilities, being a lighthouse station and all, but the answer was as Maine Yankee practical as we originally thought. Here is the official version of where it got the name: “The island was named by local fisherman for two large pine trees which inhabited the island and served as navigational daymarkers before the station was built. Two Bush Island Light Station was established in 1897 to mark the southwestern entrance to Two Bush Channel in Penobscot Bay”.
That link above also offers a wonderful story of the lighthouse keeper’s dog being involved in a rescue. The dog’s name was “Smut”. One night he heard two men trying to row their dory to safety and Smut started barking at them, luring them towards the island and safety. Sure, smut can be the ruin of many a sailor, but this story clearly demonstrates that sometimes Smut can save the day.
Tenants Harbor, a village in the town of St. George, Maine, was once full of schooners in various stages of construction. It retains that working harbor feel today, but today it’s lobster boats that fuel the economy. This is very obvious at sunrise, as the boats ply the waters to haul up traps to harvest any lobsters unlucky enough to have taken the bait. The lobsters will be gobbled up all over the world, and especially in restaurants and seafood shacks throughout coastal Maine. So it goes.
Still, some of us seek a respite from work in places like this. I’ve gently placed my obligations and commitments to the side in favor of rest and relaxation for a few days. There are 4000 islands in Maine and they say 3,478 miles of tidal coastline. Along that coastline there are seals, dolphins, loons and whales. Other than writing a bit, this particular time bucket will lean into exploring some of that coastline.
Commitment is seeing things through despite all the obstacles, stress and BS thrown our way. Commitment is being fully present in the moment even when being elsewhere seems so damned appealing in the moment. It’s an unsaid line in the sand that you’ll do what you tell yourself you’re going to do.
Obligation isn’t commitment. It’s a feeling that you have to do something, either because you’re required to or honor-bound to get it done. We tend to take pride in our commitments and resent our obligations. That ought to tell us all we need to know about the differences between the two.
When commitment butts up against an obligation it can cause stress and consternation. We desire to serve our commitments but sometimes obligations get in the way. The trick is to minimize obligations while focusing on our commitments. Easier said than done, but so it must be. Life is complex, no doubt, but the recipe for happiness is leaning into the commitments we wish to serve while separating ourselves whenever possible from the obligations.
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living.” ― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
The days fly by, don’t they? We fill our hours with chaos and whim or reason and order, and so goes our life. Structure thus becomes a means to a more fulfilling lifespan. That doesn’t infer rigidly-defined productivity at the expense of joyful experience, but rather using our time strategically to make the most of the what’s available to us.
Just imagine: Imagine what we can do with our lives should we add a bit of informed structure to our driving purpose. Imagine the places we might see, the people we might influence. Imagine the ripple set across time with just a bit more focus on catching days. Imagine following through on that quiet commitment you made to yourself to do the work that speaks to you.
We know that focusing means saying no to the parade of other options that flood our senses. No to watching that amazing episode of The Office for the nth time, no to diving into that trendy new hobby that friends are doing, no to all kinds of potential fun that we may say yes to this other thing. But that’s the rub: to do anything well we must do most everything else less well, or not at all.
“Living life to the fullest requires settling. You must settle, in a relatively enduring way, upon something that will be the object of your striving, in order for that striving to count as striving.” — Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks
So are we striving for something or simply going through the motions? We choose how we react to the world as it’s presented to us, and in that reaction is our opportunity to fill our moments with something more meaningful than the other options on the table. In the heat of the moment life can feel frenzied and limited. We can’t possibly do everything.
When we think of life in terms of time buckets or seasons, it can help bring clarity to what is essential now, versus then, and allow us to prioritize accordingly. What is most essential right now? Life would be boring with blinders on the entire time—to live fully we must open ourselves up to the world around us—but that doesn’t let us off the hook. We must carve out time for what is essential lest the time slip away forever.
