Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • Memorable

      If it’s easy it’s not memorable. Sure, we remember things that just come to us, but remembering isn’t memorable. Memorable must be earned with effort and iteration over time.

      If you’re a parent you’ll never forget when your children were born, or when you figured out a car seat for the first time, or that first epically challenging diaper. Like scoring an Olympic gymnast, it was memorable because of the level of difficulty involved.

      We all have our lifetime and then its gone. What will make it memorable? Challenges accepted and overcome. Worthwhile relationships stuck with through thick and thin. Hard lessons and leaps of faith. A bias towards action and the will to see it through.

      We should never take the easy route, for it doesn’t lead to memorable.

    • An Urgent Summons to a Larger Life

      “One of the virtues of mortality, if one wishes to look for such a virtue, is the reminder that choices really do matter and that the issue of permission to make those choices is now critical and necessary. It may well lead one to realize that a life managed by fear is a life unlived. In the cases where I attended those overtly dying, most came to conclude that the interim provided them an urgent summons to a larger life.” — James Hollis, Living an Examined Life

      “Your days are numbered. Will you pass them half awake and halfhearted or will you live with a sense of urgency?” — Robert Greene

      After a string of noteworthy experiences this year, mixed with a series of body blows to the soul, I look at the world differently than I did when it began. Perhaps you feel that too? There’s no doubt we’ve been through a lot the last few years, and the universe keeps piling on. But we have this opportunity to do something radical in our brief time—to answer the call that only we hear.

      Most of us are blessed with choices in this modern world, choices that billions of our ancestors would have cherished. But most live lives of deferment and low agency. The universe remains dispassionate to our individual quest for meaning and fulfillment in this world. It’s our job to make something of our time.

      We’re all being eaten alive by time. We can’t stop the clock but we can fill the moment. The answer always has been to awaken from our lethargy and take action. We all have our personal collection of fears and biases that hold us back from the urgent and important contribution we must make to feel our lives have meaning. What we do next is truly up to us.

    • Riding the Storm Out

      The town of Rockland, Maine is a popular summer destination for cruisers, wealthy yacht types, and vacationers from around the world. Many of these land-based guests stay at The Samoset Resort, a classic 1902 hotel resort on the waterfront. Near the Samoset is the historic Rockland Harbor Breakwater. The 1200 meter long, granite breakwater was built to help shelter ships in the harbor during the rougher weather that inevitably rolls in from Penobscot Bay. As you might imagine, putting a long granite breakwater 1200 meters out into the middle of the bay makes the breakwater itself a hazard, and a lighthouse was constructed at the end of it to help ships navigate into the harbor. Walking to the end of the breakwater is a rite of passage for visitors to the region and offers spectacular views.

      A couple of us joined Fayaway for a weekend of cruising around the Penobscot Bay islands. Rockland was our expected destination all along, but the weather forecast brought us there earlier than originally planned. A thick fog greeted us as we rounded Vinalhaven and retraced our route from a few days earlier. The fog lifted and temperature grew noticeably warmer as we motored past the Rockland Harbor Breakwater Light into the mooring field. Well over a hundred people were walking the breakwater, proving that the weather was better on land than it had been on our journey there.

      But we all knew what was coming. Severe storm warnings made it clear for anyone paying attention, and when you’re on a boat you pay attention. We weren’t the only ones seeking safe harbor. Mega yachts began anchoring in a billion dollar conga line. Smaller boats filled the mooring field and local anchorages. The desire to shelter from a storm is universal. Nobody reviews your bank account when the wind starts blowing.

      A late lunch in town got us back to the mooring just as the first raindrops fell. Soon the light patter became a roar as the heavy rains came, and later sustained wind and the heavy gusts. Those gusts capped out close to 60 knots overnight, which might have made it adventurous on an anchorage but on a solid mooring more a curiosity.

      A solid boat like Fayaway and knowledgeable Captain like Chris goes a long way to eliminate potential stress, but you still tend to wonder about the state of other nearby boats on their moorings and anchorages. Each lift and slap of waves on the hull made an impression, making you run through your action plan should something happen like a boat dragging its anchor ramming into you. But as the night wore on and Fayaway shrugged off the wing gusts and wave action, I put aside things I can’t control and appreciated where I was. And with a stormy soundtrack playing in the background I dozed off content and confident. Life is a collection of experiences, and this was surely one to remember.

      Rockland Harbor Breakwater & Light

    • Greeted With Joy

      “If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal — that is your success.” — Henry David Thoreau

      I frequently tout the value of each day, going to great lengths to remind myself and anyone who’ll listen to seize it—Carpe diem!. Memento mori! It’s a system for being forever in the moment, maximizing each day as best you can as life throws its curveballs. And it immediately sorts obligations and opportunities into appropriate buckets.

      I’m not always sympathetic when others value perceived obligations over the opportunity to amplify living, but I’ve learned to accept that it isn’t my life but theirs. Still, the question remains, as we begin another day, what will we make of it? We ought to do our best to make it successful, whatever that means to you.

    • Finding Soulfulness in Inefficient Places

      “Everything that feels soulful in life is inefficient. All the vacations that we find very soulful are inefficient places. The food that we really, really like and find soulful are inefficient to cook… maybe soulfulness is a function of chaos and inefficiency... It is impossible to imagine scaling in life without standardizing. And standardizing is the enemy of soulfulness.” — Kunal Shah, Interviewed on The Knowledge Project

      Don’t you feel the weight of truth in Shah’s words? Don’t we feel the lack of soulfulness in a “corporate” vacation destination versus the times we march to our own beat? Who seeks out a national restaurant chain for soulfulness and individual expression by the chef? No, we go to places like Disney World and Applebees for the predictability—good product delivered as expected. No need for translation or a Google search, it’s. just. as. expected. <yawn>.

      We all seek predictable when we can. Heck, I stayed at a Hilton in Vienna instead of a boutique hotel because I could use points and I knew there would be an iron and ironing board in the closet—because there is always an iron and ironing board in the closet of every Hilton property I’ve ever stayed in anywhere in the world. Sometimes you don’t need soulfulness, you just need to iron a damned shirt yourself.

      Contrast this my hotel in Castelrotto, Italy, where our room didn’t have a window but a skylight, no air conditioning or fan, uneven floors and a reception desk in another building down the street. The bell in the tower right above our heads through that open skylight would begin ringing at 06:00 sharp. And you know what? I loved it. The building was older than the United States, that bell was ringing long before I entered this world and the breakfast was a lovely spread of soulful local expression I’d never have found in a hotel chain. There’s something to be said for inefficiency too.

      So how do we create soulfulness in our own work? We don’t do it by parroting whatever business book we just read in our next meeting with coworkers or customers. And we don’t do it by following the corporate handbook to the letter (but don’t you dare stray a step too far). No, we create soulfulness when we find our unique voice in the process of turning chaos into order and eliminating inefficiencies. Ironic, isn’t it? But meaningful work isn’t chaotic, it’s expressive yet contributive. We don’t add to the Great Conversation by shouting over the crowd, nor do we help a company meet its quarterly objectives without following an informed policy or two.

      Here’s the twist: we find soulfulness in our work through routine. This isn’t standardization, this is disciplined dues-paying to reach a place where we might transcend the average. We write a million average phrases to turn one clever, soulful phrase that resonates. We refine widgets over and over again until something perfect emerges. Soulfulness is developed through routine but released through individual, and thus inefficient, expression.

    • This Milky Sea of Mystery

      “Whether you show up as you in this brief transit we call life or are defined by history, or context, or shrill partisan urgencies substantially depends on you. No greater difficulty may be found than living this journey as mindfully, as accountably, as we can, but no greater task brings more dignity and purpose to our lives. Swimming in this milky sea of mystery, we long to make sense of things, figure out who we are, wither bound, and to what end, while the eons roll on in their mindless ways. It falls then to us to make sense of this journey.” — James Hollis, Living an Examined Life

      This business of living offers plenty of opportunities to fall in line, blend in, and simply do what’s expected of us. Far more interesting to go our own way. Somewhere along the way this blog transitioned from documenting who had the best fish and chips to more a trail of breadcrumbs documenting my wade through, as Hollis so eloquently describes it, this milky sea of mystery. That doesn’t mean you’ll never see me celebrate a great meal now and then, but we become what we focus on, as much as what we eat, and a blog on becoming will leave its breadcrumbs du jour.

      The question is, where do we go from here? What exactly are we wading into anyway? One way or another it seems to come up in conversation after publishing, and doesn’t that influence what’s written next? Surely fish and chips are less of a leap.

      Hollis reminds us that the task itself is noble. Trying to make sense of this journey is bound to lead us up the wrong trail now and then. Those breadcrumbs might come in handy should we ever need to double back. If all they do is indicate where we’ve been, well, that’s okay too. Just remember that by the time you read this I’m already thinking about where I’m going next.

      Wading in

    • Vividly Awake

      “Time to leave now, get out of this room, go somewhere, anywhere; sharpen this feeling of happiness and freedom, stretch your limbs, fill your eyes, be awake, wider awake, vividly awake in every sense and every pore.” — Stefan Zweig

      There were so many days during the pandemic when we told ourselves some version of Zweig’s quote. Now that the world is opening up again, we ought to stretch our limbs a bit and see what we’ve been missing while we were sheltering in place. The trick is that when we stir that vitality it’s impossible to revert back to the box we once existed in.

      Travel literally carries us to other places. Figuratively too, naturally, but always with an eye on our previous self and an underlying awareness of what comes next. We become aware of the changes we put ourselves through, as they say, even as we plot the next step.

      Joie de Vivre! We should embrace this freedom to experience the world and make the most our opportunity to squeeze joy out of the marrow of each day. For life is a gift, and so is our chance to fly. If we become what we repeatedly do, shouldn’t we choose to be vividly awake? And save the rest for eternity.

    • For a Little Bit More

      “You’re not lazy, you’re in the wrong job. Do what moves your soul.” — @master_nobody

      This tweet is admittedly a bit fluffy, but it poked at me all day after stumbling upon it in my feed. I suppose it’s because there are times when I scold myself for being lazy. For not doing the work necessary to make more progress in my profession or with my overall fitness. We all get like that sometimes, don’t we? Self-critical about our productivity. Maybe our labor is misdirected?

      There are plenty of times when I’ll forget I’m working at all. I’ll find myself moving six yards of loam after work and pushing past a point of exhaustion to get it done before nightfall so the coming rain doesn’t turn it into a mud pile. Or being teased about not ever relaxing on weekends or vacation, instead constantly working on the garden or doing an errand instead of sitting still with a book or a beer. Or methodically writing and re-writing a sentence in a blog post that may or may not resonate with anyone but me. These actions are not lazy, they’re stored up energy attracted to heat. There’s nothing hotter than clear purpose.

      Why do we waste the vitality we’re blessed with on anything but the pursuit of our individual greatness? It takes a few turns through the grinder of absolutely-wrong jobs to see the tragedy of misapplied energy. We do what we must to keep food on the table, but we ought to always be moving towards blissful work. Work that makes us laugh at the thought of ever retiring.

      Sure, we may just be able to relax someday, but I don’t know if that nagging feeling that we could have done more would ever disappear. Doesn’t it make sense to make a go of it with this, our one precious life? To do things that inspire and excite us, and make us want for a little bit more at the end of a long day. When we move to purpose laziness disappears.

    • The Very Best Day of All

      “Let us therefore set out whole-heartedly, leaving aside our many distractions and exert ourselves in this single purpose, before we realize too late the swift and unstoppable flight of time and are left behind. As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all, and make it your own possession. We must seize what flees.” — Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius

      It must be Spring, for I return again to Seneca’s urgent call: “Seize what flees”. And so it is our quest to live this day as if it were our very last. To meet this, our moment at hand, and do something with it.

      That’s a heavy ask. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to perform with statements like that. We all want to seize the day, but what if we’ve got bills to pay and a car that doesn’t drive itself to work quite yet? Who’s going to clean the dishes while we’re off seizing the day?

      Seneca had his own daily obligations and understood the recklessness of grabbing the moment. Does it carry more weight when you think of him as mere dust mixed in the timeless sands of Rome? He knew the stakes, but also knew we all have things to do. Just don’t make it your life’s purpose to fulfill the dreams of others. Make a stand for your own dreams today too.

      Welcome today as the very best day of all. It’s all we have, really. What would make it particularly remarkable given the chorus of requests for our time? Let’s carve out a little of our brief time to seize that. Deal?

    • Divided Attention

      “Divide the fire and you will sooner put it out.” — Publilius Syrus

      We become what we focus on. For everything else? We never fully realize the potential of what might have been.

      What is the fire? Where is our passion? If we know why do we divide it so? We split our focus into micro-bursts, smothering the creative fire within us. To give life to dreams requires fuel and room to breath.

      Better to stoke the fire than to watch it die out.

      It gives such a lovely glow.