Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • Keeping On

      I don’t want to wait anymore I’m tired of looking for answers
      Take me some place where there’s music and there’s laughter
      I don’t know if I’m scared of dying but I’m scared of living too fast, too slow
      Regret, remorse, hold on, oh no I’ve got to go
      There’s no starting over, no new beginnings, time races on
      And you’ve just gotta keep on keeping on
      — First Aid Kit, My Silver Lining

      At a work event this week I looked around the room at the characters in the play. I’ve known them all so long, and yet only know a few of them very well. Some of the older characters talk of retirement and moving on, some of the younger characters openly plot their next move. I don’t play either of those parts, yet I’m still in the game.

      Building something tangible in our lives is really nothing more than showing up every day and being an active player. Life is humbling and teaches us we can’t have it all, and some will have more than perhaps they deserve. There are things we simply can’t control in this world, yet so much we can influence when we apply energy and focus on what matters most.

      We know when we’re running hard. When we’re pushing ourselves into new places. And we know when we ease off more than we should. Life is this balance, lived on the tightrope of commitments and aspiration while the winds of change swirl around us. Putting one foot in front of the other is really the only way forward. Still, we must ask ourselves, are we moving in the right direction? When should we follow another line?

    • Optimizing the Interval

      “Several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal.” — Jean-Paul Sartre, The Wall

      “Those who are truly decrepit, living corpses, so to speak, are the middle-aged, middle-class men and women who are stuck in their comfortable grooves and imagine that the status quo will last forever or else are so frightened it won’t that they have retreated into their mental bomb shelters to wait it out.” — Henry Miller

      On the face of it, this pair of quotes might feel morbid and dark, but they’re simply pointing out the obvious. Memento mori: we all must die, so what will we do with the time left to us? We ought to make it something worthwhile. And so it is that at some point in our lives we truly recognize that someday our time will end. That moment of realization until the last moment of our lives is our interval. We owe it to our fragile selves to optimize that interval.

      Given the outcome, shouldn’t we stack as many healthy, fully vibrant and alive days into that interval as possible? Lean in to consistent exercise and good nutrition, that we might not one day surprisingly soon erode into a shell of ourselves. Read the great books now, that we might build our foundation stronger, and sit at the table of the greatest minds awaiting our arrival. Contribute something tangible in this world, not to be remembered, but to sustain the positive momentum the best of humanity offers. These are worthy goals for an interval as shockingly brief as this.

      Several hours or several years are just the same, friends, we must seize what flees.

    • The Courage for Course Corrections

      “Many people feel they are powerless to do anything effective with their lives. It takes courage to break out of the settled mold, but most find conformity more comfortable. This is why the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it’s conformity.” — Rollo May (via Poetic Outlaws)

      Some of us have an internal wrestling match battling in our heads between what we could be doing and what we’re currently doing. Which tendency dominates, the call of the wild or the call to conformity? Surely, we can’t have it all, but we can find ways to lean into that which stirs our soul.

      Teaching ourselves that all is not lost by breaking free from expectations offers an off-ramp from the conformity highway. Micro-adventures demonstrate that we can do things we previously thought out of reach. You don’t sail around the world by buying a boat today and leaving tomorrow. There’s learning and work and sacrifice that go into that process, as friends on Fayaway have documented. Each day offers a lesson in what not to do, but it also highlights what is possible simply by changing our course a degree or two on the compass heading.

      A friend recently posted a picture of a group photo taken a long time ago, when we were all much younger versions of ourselves. One of those people in the photograph had never really hiked before, and every step was new for her. She flipped the script on that and is now one of the most consistently active hikers in New England. That reinvention happened slowly in those early days, but now there’s no stopping her.

      We hear stories of people like JK Rowling writing in cafe’s in Edinburgh, or Mark Dawson writing on the train while commuting back and forth from his previous day job. There’s nothing to this but setting out to do what we say we want to do. How much time do we waste in excuses? We’re simply a course correction away from living towards that dream. The very act of changing course and sticking with it takes courage, but habit soon takes over.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”
      ― James Clear, Atomic Habits

      When we see the evidence all around us of personal transformation, shouldn’t it provoke courageous action in ourselves? Perhaps. But it’s easy to see that which we aspire to be and view the gap as too far. We forget that each transformation was once a small course correction on the compass, acted upon one day at a time, until identity and routine took over.

      It’s easy to declare what we’re going to do in our lifetime. It takes courage to actively choose the alternative path from that those we’re closest to expect us to take. It takes even more courage to teach ourselves to take that new path and to keep going on it until we find ourselves. But what are we here for but to find our why and to do something with that?

    • My Earth Day Reckoning

      And we died of the future,
      of calling and mission only we could keep,
      leaping into every favorite season;
      sinking into roots, dreams, and books.
      — Li-Young Lee, First World

      “I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news” — John Muir

      Looking back, it seems quite natural to be locked into this routine of daily obligations—of work and chores and driving from here to there. Things fall apart and must be fixed. We must be fixed too. We are what we repeatedly do, as I repeatedly remind myself. So when is there time for nature and hiking? When is there time for long walks in the woods?

      There is no other time than now. We must go, and see, and take something of it with us for eternity. Not a rock or a leaf or even a flower, but a memory of who we were when we found the truth. Earth is far bigger and more beautiful than we’ll ever fully realize, no matter the frequent flyer miles accumulated. Earth is fragile yet resilient, and will wait an eternity to shrug herself of humanity. It may take a million years, but Earth will fix itself in time. We’re the ones who suffer for our neglect.

      Yet we are a small ripple in this big pond. Whether I recycle or not makes little difference, not when we see the crisis of leadership in the bigger things happening in the world. Nonetheless, we all make a small difference. We might pile on or opt in to the mission of making the planet a better place for our children’s children. Our small daily actions aren’t meant for others to see, they affirm who we tell ourselves we want to be in this world. We’re part of a larger chorus, and our accumulation of voices make a difference even when we can’t see it. A forest is made up of thousands of trees and millions of leaves. There is power in numbers.

      “I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves—we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other’s destiny.”
      — Mary Oliver, Winter Hours

      Earth Day is a reckoning, a day when we take stock of what we’re doing to the Earth, but also a day when we take stock of what we’re doing with our own brief time on this planet. There are things we say yes to in this world, which means we say no to many other things. In the end, we must choose, what dreams will die with us? What will we stand for? What will we stand up against?

      We all see the changes in the world, but forget we have some agency in the matter. Is this a year of incremental improvement or reckless abandonment of what we believe we ought to be. These are questions for society, surely, but also for each of us in our daily lives. The question is always the same: who are we becoming?

    • Analog and Delightful

      Change is good, but it can also be a pain in the ass. This is exemplified by the forced version upgrades Apple puts us through before we can resume our regularly scheduled activity. Microsoft has their own version of upgrade hell, and I’ve recently undergone the process of re-learning everything I thought I knew about Microsoft Office when I was issued a new laptop PC for work. There’s something to be said for pen and paper in this constantly changing world of technology.

      If I sound like an old dog, well, forgive me. I pride myself on keeping up, I just prefer choosing the time and place for when my world is turned upside down. Tech doesn’t work that way. Critical updates and staying a step ahead of the bad guys is paramount, and [sorry, but] f**k your feelings, friend. It’s not about us with tech, it’s about the greater good versus the underlying bad. Here we are, buttercup; embrace the suck. Amor fati.

      The thing we must accept is that the people building all these tech tools love to fiddle around with this Pandora’s box. The rest of us, simply wanting efficiency in our lives, are along for the ride. Once we’re on the ride, we’re on. Buckle up and mind your hands. No loose items allowed. Carpe diem.

      I’ve been telling myself that the blog site needs an upgrade for a long time now. While acknowledging that fact, I nonetheless avoid doing anything about it because there is pain associated with that change. Ah, yes, the excuses: I’ll have to learn new things and I don’t have time to learn right now. Re-designing the blog will be disruptive and inherently full of risk. All I really care about is writing and sharing that writing every day, what’s the point of a forklift upgrade on the web site?

      Sooner or later, we have to rip off the bandaid. Technology will continue to evolve to torture us, er, to make our lives easier. We must learn to keep pace. We aren’t old dogs, friends, we’re surfers riding the bleeding edge of technology wherever it takes us. As with most tech, it will end up in the recycling center, dusty and forgotten, soon enough. Memento mori. But that’s then, this is now. Just do it. Just remember to change your password to something impossible to remember, er, hack.

      One of the small joys I have each day is taking out my bullet journal and tracking my progress on tasks, streaks and long-term goals. It’s all so very analog and delightful. I like to think of myself as technologically savvy, but I’m just fooling myself. All this technology is a means to an end, the rest is just a game played by someone else’s rules. Give me simplicity. For deep down, I just want to be analog and delightful too.

    • What Can We Live Without?

      Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      Now and then I dabble in intermittent fasting. I can’t always control where I am and whether I can exercise, but I can control what I eat and drink. Fasts range from 13 hours up to 24 in general, but mostly I seem to do two or three per week of either 16 or 18 hours. My longest fast ever was about 48 hours. I’ve heard of some people doing seven days. You won’t find me pushing that kind of limit. Simply put, I like to eat, and skipping a meal or two is a good way to remind myself to ease off on the eating thing a bit. There are health benefits to intermittent fasting, ranging from healthy weight loss to long term resistance to degenerative diseases (I’m told). But mostly, I do it to control the conversation in my own head about when and what to eat.

      The question to ask of ourselves is, what can we live without? We soften ourselves with abundance: food, entertainment, friends of convenience, information… the list goes on. Removing most of this noise offers an opportunity to find that which is most essential to us in our lives. Food becomes fuel and not filler. Entertainment elevates to a highlight moment instead of background noise. True friends are true sounding boards and not frivolous back-slapping small-talkers. Information leads to a deeper understanding, not a sound bite with no substance. You get the idea.

      If there’s an irony to Thoreau, it’s his tendency to jamb a hundred words into a sentence just to get everything out of his head and on paper. For a man that preaches simplicity, we sometimes have to wade through a lot of word soup to get to the key message. But Thoreau lived a short life, and there was so very much to put out there in the world before he left us. We all ought to feel that urgency.

      A bit of temperance is good for us. A bit of solitude with our thoughts brings the truth to the surface. Life in the din isn’t all its cracked up to be, for we rapidly run out of time to find out who we really are. With a little less input, what might we put out there in the world? The more we say no to some things, the more we amplify our yes to other things. Choose wisely.

    • Serving Joy

      “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” — Rabindranath Tagore

      As spring usually goes this time of year in recent years, we seemingly went right from winter to summer, fooling the daffodils and hyacinth into blooming quickly, lest they miss their moment with the sun. There’s something to be said for rising to meet the fragile moment. Flowers know this instinctively. What of us?

      Traveling all week, I almost missed the fragrant offering altogether. This was a long week full of work and follow-up and more than one’s fair share of absence from those one loves. We each have our dues to pay in this transactional lifetime, but there ought to be joy in the work too. What are we here for but to serve our compelling why? Life is service to others, or it is nothing at all.

      We know it when we find our joyful service. It’s work that matters a great deal to us. It’s stirring words together just so, words that stir something deep inside of us, words better shared than jealously sheltered. And it’s doing the quiet daily offering that mundane chores represent, moving us forward in our progression through life.

      Talking quietly in the early evening hours, shedding myself of road weariness, talk moved to the garden and work still to be done. There’s always work to be done in a garden, isn’t there? What mattered wasn’t the weariness of the work week, or the prospect of more chores ahead. What mattered was the why: growing something more, together. Serving our fragile moment with joy.

    • Greek Coffee

      Greek coffee is a lot like Cuban or Turkish coffee. Strong and bitter and best mixed with a bit of sweetness. They warn you when you receive it not to drink it to the last drop, for you’ll find the grounds there. There’s none of that filtering nonsense with Greek coffee, friend. Americans drink to the last drop, the Greeks leave a bit behind. Call it an offering to the gods if you will, or simple prudence.

      You might anticipate the effect of a strong Greek coffee after dinner on my sleep pattern. Timing is everything with new experiences. In fact, I could use another one of those coffees as a reset for the day ahead. The caffeine will be welcome, but it surely won’t be as interesting as that first taste of something similar, but entirely different.

      We’re blessed with so much in this modern world, isn’t it a tragedy to order the same things on the menu every day? Our best life is full of new and enriching moments, grounded by the people and experiences that carried us to this moment. That openness to new experiences rewards us with a richness far beyond our bank accounts. Visit the uncommon places, order something you can’t pronounce now and then, opt for the local coffee instead of the Americano. Live! We are better for having gone there.

    • The Gestures With Which We Honor

      the path to heaven doesn’t lie down in flat miles.
      It’s in the imagination
      with which you perceive
      this world, and the gestures
      with which you honor it
      — Mary Oliver, The Swan

      Heaven is right here, friends. Whatever comes later is unknown to all of us, no matter how much faith we hold. The trick is to be here, now, and love what we have (Amor fati). What comes next has never been in our control, but how we react in this moment is all ours. Not impetuous, not cynical, but earnestly open to all that comes to us in this lifetime.

      I’m excited about the day ahead. Are you? So full of potential, so ready to be experienced. Full of challenges and tests of our will to be sure, but also full of wonder and fresh perspective. That wonder is all around us, a spark of insight into the universe instantly recognized when we pay attention. Pay attention, for it’s there we find delight.

      Don’t wait for heaven. We must find what we can of it today. Tomorrow will take care of itself. It always does.

    • Routines

      “You need to create a routine. Motivation only gets someone going for a little while, a routine lasts forever. Write down three things you’ll do each day. Start small. Walk, only eat real food, stretch. Mark them off every day, no matter what. After a month, make the goals bigger.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger

      I’m a morning person, and do my best work early. For this reason I try to jamb as much as possible into the first couple of hours of my day. The rest of the day usually takes care of itself at that point, but the important but not urgent stuff is already checked off. For me, that means writing, reading in earnest, some form of exercise and a review of my priorities for the day and week.

      Some days are upside down, and all the important things you wanted to start with are nagging at you to finish with. It’s very easy to let things slip until tomorrow when you’re tired and ready to turn your brain off for the evening. This is where maintaining streaks becomes the savior. Some things simply cannot slip. Like writing and reading and a nod at fitness and picking up a word or two of French. We are what we repeatedly do, and all that that represents.

      There’s nothing more satisfying than following through on the things you promised yourself you’d follow through on. Every day offers us an opportunity to improve or slide backwards. As we reach the evening hours feeling a bit tired and worn, we get to tell that backwards slide, “not today”.