Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • Like Glowing Coals

      “You cannot quench understanding unless you put out the insights that compose it. But you can rekindle those at will, like glowing coals. I can control my thoughts as necessary, then how can I be troubled? What is outside my mind means nothing to it. Absorb that lesson and your feet stand firm.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      This week I found myself in a string of conversations about books. It began with a copy of The Devil in the White City sitting on the desk of a customer. Having read it and many other books by Erik Larson, we got into an enthusiastic conversation about what we were reading in historical non-fiction. When he and I finished our conversation, someone else jumped in, listing the fiction he reads, mostly Harlan Coben books. I’ve read a few, my bride has read them all, we compared recommendations and then it was on to the next conversation. The third one was most interesting of all.

      A co-worker whom I’d just met, technical and quiet, was tapping away on a keyboard programming a proof of concept sequence (the entire reason we were all there to begin with) and said he’d overhead the two other conversations about reading that had just taken place. He reads philosophy, had just finished Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and was beginning The Discourses by Epictetus. I opened my Kindle app and showed him Nietzshe’s The Gay Science, which I’ve been reading in between physical books (’tis far better to read a book standing in line at the supermarket than to doom scroll social media). And we ran through a list of recommendations as any fellow students of philosophy would do.

      If all of this sounds particularly geeky, well, so be it. Reading isn’t for everyone, though it ought to be. If you’re reading this blog post and have reached this point, you’re clearly an avid reader yourself and understand. We are all self-taught beyond a K-12 education and the opportunities a university might offer. I say might because plenty go through the motions there too. We know the game and we choose how to play it. A lifetime education begins outside the structure of a classroom—it begins within the mind.

      Each book read, each conversation with a fellow reader that points us towards some new insight, is a step along the path to personal excellence (arete). What we consume stokes our inner fire and shines brightly in the eyes of an avid student of living. And living is the whole point, even as so many continue to go through the motions. But that’s not us! So what are you reading right now? I hope it’s compelling and insightful. If it is I’d love to hear about it. We are all climbing to greater heights, one great book at a time.

    • Stop Fluttering About

      Never regret thy fall
      O Icarus of the fearless flight,
      For the greatest tragedy of them all,
      Is never to feel the burning light.
      — Oscar Wilde, Icarus

      Some days we soar, and on some we stumble. The trick is to keep getting up and trying to win the next day. The alternative is to sink into the abyss, and what kind of life is that?

      Life is unfair and challenging. Life is beautiful and ripe with potential. Where is the truth but in the eye of the beholder? We may experience the life we manifest, but we can acknowledge that there is an element of luck too. Most of us reading this were born at the right time and right place. Some were dealt a lousy hand. We may celebrate or blame the circumstances that brought us to where we are, but we ought to recognize that here and now is only the beginning of this odyssey. The next step is up to us.

      This idea of having agency in our life is revelatory or ridiculous if we aren’t conditioned to take matters into our own hands. We may choose to learn and grow, to rise early and stay with something until we’ve reached mastery. Or simply concede that we never really wanted to soar anyway and simply give up our agency to someone with loftier goals. The choice was always ours to make.

      The thing is, this is nothing but words until we take action. We all have dreams that will go to our graves with us. But we also have our daily rituals and habits that are leading us to realize something tangible in our lives. Just where are our habits taking us? Maybe we ought to up our game, and soar just a little higher than where we’ve been fluttering about. While there’s still time.

    • Creating Temporal Landmarks

      “Temporal landmarks could help assuage that terrible feeling of time speeding up as you age. In what researchers call the ‘calendar effect’, we use milestones to form and retain memories – so university students, say, have much better recall of events near the start or end of term, even when you allow for the emotional highs and lows of freshers’ week or graduation. The more landmarks, the less risk of suddenly realising you’ve no idea where last year went.” — Oliver Burkeman, “This Column Will Change Your Life: The Importance of Temporal Landmarks, The Guardian

      As this is published, it’s a Tuesday. What does Tuesday represent? Taco Tuesday, trash and recycling day on my particular street, the second day of the work week, weight circuit day in my fitness schedule, and really not much else that would differentiate it from Wednesday or Thursday this week. And this Tuesday is a lot like last Tuesday and the one before that. They all blend together, don’t they? That’s why life feels routine; because we’ve built a routine for our life.

      If time seems to fly by faster as we get older, maybe it’s because we have fewer temporal landmarks to frame the days into memorable sequences. We slip into a career, work Monday through Friday week after week, and entire years blend together into one block of our lives. I recently spent seven years working for one company, and the only thing about the job that made one year any different from the next were the big work trips and what happened outside of work that impacted the routine. New product releases, version upgrades, company meetings and even trade shows all blended together into a memory of what I did then versus what I do now. Where did the time go?

      The thing is, in that same time period, I took memorable trips of a lifetime to faraway places, had significant milestone moments with family graduations and the passing of loved ones, and of course we all collectively had the pandemic, national elections, wars and a host of other memorable moments that locked time into amber. We don’t remember each day, we remember moments—and these moments are our temporal landmarks. Some are far more significant and far-reaching than others.

      Where were you when the world stopped turnin’
      That September day?
      — Alan Jackson, Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)

      A day like 9/11 is locked into memory, while the world turning in routine on the days leading up to it fade away. We’ll always remember where we were in that moment, just as we do other similar temporal landmarks. We tend to forget the flow of days around those landmarks. And while none of us wish for those kind of 9/11 landmarks to land in our lives ever again, we may use the theory to create more positive temporal landmarks for ourselves.

      So how will today be remembered? What will stand out about this month in five years? How about next year—what temporal landmarks will we schedule into the next year of our lives to make the time really stand out as memorable? The time will flow into our past one way or the other. It’s up to us to make it something more than routine. A temporal landmark is something we’ll remember this time by. Maybe make it something more special than just taco Tuesday.

    • Improving the View

      Do not stay in the field!
      Nor climb out of sight.
      The best view of the world
      Is from a medium height
      — Friedrich Nietzsche, “Worldly Wisdom“, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

      I find myself returning to Nietzsche’s Prelude in Rhymes again, because it was so remarkable of an encounter initially. What a delight to discover his poetic tendencies hidden in plain sight. Surely he would be on my list of people I’d try to meet with a time machine, were such an invention possible. But isn’t that what reading is? A time machine that brings us directly to the mind of the writer, wherever and whenever they put thought to paper. Isn’t that what a blog is, sans paper? A time machine to the future, well beyond this character we are as we click publish.

      We write about the things we experience, with the level of knowledge and understanding we’ve reached to this point in our development. I’d like to believe that I’ve climbed beyond the field to medium height, with a nod upwards towards the climb ahead. The view is fine right here, but incomplete—as incomplete as we are in this moment. The thing to do is learn and grow and climb some more just to see where it takes us. Readers of this blog know that the goal is arete, or personal excellence. That lies far beyond this climber’s lifetime.

      The thing to do is to improve the view. One blessed day at a time, with all its thoughts and ideas either captured or evading me. We must be ready for each lesson in a lifetime in order to understand where we are and what we’ve reached. We are forever growing into the type of person who might understand the place we’ve arrived at, but for an open mind and a bit of a reach. So how’s the view? Ready for the next step? For time flies and we have so far to go.

    • Surfacing

      “You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.” — Paulo Coelho, Manual of the Warrior of Light

      It’s easy to get submerged in our routines. Buried in our work. Wrapped up in our frantic days. The obvious question is, when do we come up for air? The less obvious questions might be, what have we immersed ourselves in and should we get out immediately?

      “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys, how’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?”
      — David Foster Wallace, This is Water (Kenyon College commencement speech, 2005

      If each day is structured by belief and ritual, when is it appropriate to question what those beliefs and rituals are? I should think, always. But then life gets a little messy, doesn’t it? When we’re always questioning what we’re doing with our days, we’re not moving through life smoothly. We’re bumping into truth at every turn, switching direction, bumping into something else, and it feels like we’re being constantly jostled. If you loved riding on the bumper cars as a kid, then question everything. If you prefer to charge through life picking up as many experiences as possible until the ride ends, it’s best not to slow down and linger with questions at all. Maybe a roller coaster was your ride. Simply buckle up, put away those loose items and don’t eat the chili dog beforehand.

      The thing is, we need to settle into some form of ritual and routine in our lives, that we may gain a sense of place and time—that we may actually do something while we’re in this place and time. For it will all float away soon enough like all the rest. What the hell is water? It’s all this stuff floating around us friend. Whether we dove into it headfirst or quietly sank in doesn’t matter so much as what we choose to do now. Remember if you lose your bearings that bubbles float up (so exhale a bit now and then). Immersion has its benefits, but surfacing offers perspective and maybe even survival.

    • Things That Got Away

      “Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.” — James Joyce, Ulysses

      Back in 2018, when this blog was a young pup and its writer was blessedly naive about all that would happen in the next seven years, we stepped into the every day. We can all agree that a lot can happen in seven years. Good Lord, can a lot happen. We’ve all been on this ride together, in so many ways. Yet each of us rides through life in their own way. Some with eyes wide open, some with blinders on, and so many simply staring at a screen for an entirely different user experience. The only thing we all may agree on is that time flies. Tempus fugit.

      I happened upon a blog post I’d written back then about the ten books I meant to read that year. I read eight of those books, and one of them, Meditations, I’ve read three times since. But one in particular still eludes me. Ulysses. I’ve begun it many times over the years, and many times I’ve moved on to other books. Perhaps I’ll tackle the yellowing pages of this classic next, or perhaps it will forever be the one that got away. Time will tell, as it always does.

      If I’ve learned anything in these last seven years, let alone all that preceded them, I’ve learned to talk less about what I’m going to do and more about what I’ve done. We are either dreamers or doers in this world. Less talk and more action, thank you. If that inspires a laugh when I refer to reading a book, well, I shrug in your general direction. I may believe myself to be well-read, while noting how incomplete it feels when some notables evade me for years. When I think about all the YouTube videos or tweets I’ve read in the last seven years, not having read a classic novel feels wasteful of the opportunity.

      We all must choose what we say yes to in this brief go at living. Where do we want to go? Who do we want to be? Just what is that verse we’re writing going to say anyway? We all have agency over what we do in the now. As the future plunges into the past, how will we take stock of the time spent? Some part of us will feel incomplete for having used that time elsewhere. What matters most now? Choose accordingly. We may celebrate all that we’ve done while acknowledging the things that got away from us.

    • Unbroken Links

      “That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.” ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

      I meant to call a few people in my life this week, to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving, to check in on them, to get their perspective on the world and our place in it. I’m someone who calls other people. Not text people or drop them an email or write them a letter—worthy as those may be—but call. The written word may last forever (our version of forever anyway), but to actually speak with someone is a gift of presence.

      How will we be remembered? I suspect I’ll be remembered for being proactively present. Or reliably present. Or perhaps annoyingly so. Maybe there will be relief one day when the calls stop coming in, just for the peace and quiet. Who knows? The only thing I’m certain of is that links corrode and break for lack of attention. Looking back, we tend to have far more people with whom we lose touch with than those we continue to reach out to or hear from. Conversation is a two-way street, or we’d call it a lecture.

      What binds us together? When did this long chain of connection begin? How does it continue, even after all this time? Forming a link is immediate, but maintaining it requires consistent action. Now seems as good a time to touch base as any, whatever the method. We may be a beacon in the darkness, heard from at just the right time.

    • Thanksgiving: Our Day of Days

      “You sanctify whatever you are grateful for.” — Anthony de Mello

      Last night, amidst the clamor and turmoil of Thanksgiving preparations, I took the pup for her evening walk. It’s been bitingly cold this week, but a warm front had moved in, making the evening mild enough that I took off my wool hat to cool off. On our return down the street, the pup noticed something I’d seen on our walk up the street and started growling—the neighbors had placed their collection of plastic reindeer out on the lawn, ready to flip a switch and begin the Christmas season.

      The growl was for the appearance of stoic creatures standing the high ground. The pup doesn’t like changes on the street, and her protective concern was reflected in turning back and growling again and again as we completed our walk back to the house. I may accept the efficiency of the act while noting that my favorite holiday of the American year is forever pushed aside in the rush for Christmas. With respect to retailers everywhere, don’t you dare discount Thanksgiving. Nobody puts Baby in the corner.

      The thing is, we don’t all have families to gather with. Or with whom we wish to gather with. We are the average of the people we surround ourselves with, and for some that average isn’t all that worthy of gratitude. They would just as soon skip over it and focus on the lights and music and gifts of that season that follows Thanksgiving. I would suggest that forever looking ahead for some salvation in the future makes for an unfulfilling present. What makes today worthy of lingering with? That’s where gratitude will be.

      If Thanksgiving were mythically created to celebrate the abundant harvest, or pulled together Native Americans with the settlers who would eventually displace them at one table, then it would be just another conditional holiday dependent on buying in to the story. What makes Thanksgiving special is the tradition of putting aside work and political beliefs and the desperate search for meaning in an indifferent world and gathering in appreciation of that which binds us. For we are here once again this sacred day, together, despite all that would pull us apart. So many have left us already. So few are the days when we may gather as one. Be grateful for this day of days when we may acknowledge that which brings us together. Happy Thanksgiving.

    • Blame It On the Poets

      Man with wooden leg escapes prison. He’s caught.
      They take his wooden leg away from him. Each day
      he must cross a large hill and swim a wide river
      to get to the field where he must work all day on
      one leg. This goes on for a year. At the Christmas
      Party they give him back his leg. Now he doesn’t
      want it. His escape is all planned. It requires
      only one leg.
      — James Tate, Man with Wooden Leg Escapes Prison

      I hope you laughed when you read that poem. I know I did. It reads like a standup routine, like many James Tate poems, I suppose. Maybe that’s why I’ve strayed into his work a little, just because a smile is better than a frown, and certainly better than a scowl. We all scowl too much nowadays.

      I was reading the news just this morning. I make a point of not reading the news before I write (because of that scowl thing), but I found myself awake thinking about to-do list items. Instead of getting up to do these things, instead of rolling over and reaching for some REM, instead of doing a workout or brushing my teeth or attempting to steal the covers back from my bride—instead of anything really, I opened up the BBC app to see what was happening in the world. And of course I scowled.

      When one starts one’s day in such a way, one ought to quickly find a way out of it. Social media is nothing but random clickbait video clips now. I surely could have gone there for hours of screen time. But I sought out the council of a poet to set me straight. And that road less travelled has made all the difference.

      This ritual of writing before any other thing continues to serve me well. The world can go to hell in a mindless spiral of dancing stars, home renovation transformations and fantasy football trades, but I may ignore it all and simply write what comes to me. This clunky, impossible to navigate blog, my running collection of deep thoughts and discoveries, goes on for at least one more day. Blame it on the poets if you like. More likely it was me all along.

    • Acutely Aware

      “Remember, remember,
      this is now,
      and now,
      and now.
      Live it, feel it, cling to it.
      I want to become
      acutely aware
      of all I’ve taken
      for granted.”
      ― Sylvia Plath

      The urgency of now is amplified by the awareness of time going by. We ought to do the things we believe we ought to do now, while time is ripe and dreams are unfaded by the rapid flow of the days to follow. Tempus fugit, friend: Time flies.

      Plath died young, taking her own life after putting her children to bed. Knowing that, read the poem again and feel how it changes. There is more desperation, more immediacy to the words when life hangs in the balance. A few more minutes, a few more years—it’s all the same. Memento mori.

      Now that we’ve got that out of the way, we ought to go out and live with this bonus time we’ve been given. Seneca reminded us to seize what flees. Carpe diem. Why would we dare to waste our time so carelessly? Accept the fragility of the moment and do something with it.

      A cold water plunge shocks the body into immediacy (I wonder sometimes why nobody follows me in). The body is jolted into sudden awareness of the moment. There is no distraction in cold water, it’s sink or swim. So what will do for your soul? But enough of intellectual discourse; what will jolt us into awareness that this is it? That there is only now? Live it, feel it, cling to it.