Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • Make the Ordinary Come Alive

      Do not ask your children
      to strive for extraordinary lives.
      Such striving may seem admirable,
      but it is the way of foolishness.
      Help them instead to find the wonder
      and the marvel of an ordinary life.
      Show them the joy of tasting
      tomatoes, apples and pears.
      Show them how to cry
      when pets and people die.
      Show them the infinite pleasure
      in the touch of a hand.
      And make the ordinary come alive for them.
      The extraordinary will take care of itself.
      William Martin, Do not ask your children to strive

      Sleet and freezing rain tap against the windows. It’s not a day to be outside in the elements, and yet I consider the consequences of a walk. We take the world as it comes to us, make of it what we can, celebrate the ordinary and find the magic where we may.

      Celebrating ordinary isn’t what the world highlights. Everyone is hyper-focused on placing themselves in the most extraordinary places, doing the most extraordinary things, living their “best life” (whatever that means when you stop to think about it). Perhaps our focus should be on the moment at hand, wherever we might be.

      I celebrate waking up this morning, hearing that tap, tap, tap of the rain and sleet and the roof over my head that makes it all seem so far away. I celebrate the conversations I’ve had with those I love, listening to how their day went, and celebrating with them the moments that made their ordinary more alive. I celebrate the quiet in an often chaotic world, removing myself from the noise but listening for the voice of those in need.

      Life is infinite pleasure when you focus on the small joys. Life is more realized when we wrestle with our pain and loss and setbacks. Each moment informs, when we are taught to see. Learning to savor our ordinary vitality is the path to a magical life. A life worthy of our short dose of days.

    • Strategic, Interested Experiencing

      “When people stop believing in an afterlife, everything depends on making the most of this life. And when people start believing in progress—in the idea that history is headed toward an ever more perfect future—they feel far more acutely the pain of their own little lifespan, which condemns them to missing out on almost all of that future. And so they try to quell their anxieties by cramming their lives with experience.” — Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

      Burkeman’s statement isn’t something you just fly by without contemplation. I have people in my life who would be indignant about the very idea of there being no afterlife. You might say I’m more open to the concept. But no matter what your belief about what happens next, most would agree in the concept of the infinite unknown. It was here before we were conceived and began our march through borrowed time, and it will envelope us again sooner than we’re comfortable with thinking about. Really, it’s all around us, we’re just stubbornly alive beings bumping up against infinity every day until we rejoin it. Giddy-Up.

      We get busy in life, marching through our days and obligations. I was just thinking to myself that I’m a bit short on micro-adventures lately. Blame it on my day job running parallel to this blog. I have a few friends that question my sanity for trading so many of my four thousand weeks for a career. But life is more than chasing waterfalls and sunsets. You’ve got to make something of your time, don’t you? Or do you need to do something in your time? Can you do both? Can we really have it all?

      Burkeman recommends “strategic underachievement”, which is simply “nominating in advance whole areas of life in which you won’t expect excellence of yourself” to mitigate the underlying stress of living for both commitments and experience. Focus on what you want to excel in, and gently put the rest aside on the priority list—placing the not-so-important stuff into tomorrow is a gentle way of punting what doesn’t really matter in this brash act of living life on our own terms.

      “Tomorrow is for the lazy mind, the sluggish mind, the mind that is not interested” — Jiddu Krishnamurti

      The answer, I believe, is to focus on the things that make you feel most alive, things that put you right in the mix of a fulfilling, satisfying life. That might be a sunset in the tropics or washing the dishes with your favorite song playing louder than it should. Embracing the mundane and the remarkable as it comes, but prioritizing that which places you squarely where you might maximize these experiences. We ought to decide what we want to savor most, and what to let fall away.

      Let’s face it, passively waiting for life experiences to come your way leads to a whole lot of waiting. Strategic underachievement in one area of your life means you’ve got to proactively work to strategically overachieve in other areas. Be interested in this business of living! Get up off your passive expectations about living and go out and meet the things you most want to achieve, be and do in this short life. Not so much “cramming experience”, but rather, strategic, and interested, experiencing. Wherever we might be.

    • Finding Balance in a Hot Tub in a Blizzard

      The forecast called for a blizzard, and officially it met the requirements to be called one in some places. Not so much where I call home. But a significant storm nonetheless. A storm you take seriously. A storm you hunker down in. A storm in which an adventurous spirit might look out at the hot tub and think to oneself, “I’m going in, now”. And fancying myself so, I changed into a bathing suit, slipped on my adidas slides, a cap and the warmest shirt I own and headed out into the swirl.

      Taking a broom with me, I swept a path through the 4 inches of light accumulation to the tub, swept off the cover, opened the tub and took a deep breath. Off came the warm shirt and the tickle of snow landing on my back greeted me immediately. Stepping out of the slides into the 39 degree Celsius/103 degree Fahrenheit water, I felt the sting of fast-frozen toes meeting heat. I quickly brought my other foot in for the party and dropped down to chin level to warm myself.

      Immersing yourself in hot tubs (or hot springs) is supposed to improve your health in several ways. First, it puts you in a state of weightlessness, easing stress on your joints and relaxing muscles. But it also improves cardiovascular health and helps lower your blood pressure. The jets in a hot tub offer some massage for those sore muscles. But mostly a hot tub draws the stress out of you and plunges you into a relaxed state.

      That state change is most obvious when you’re sitting in hot swirling water in a snowstorm, with the steam rising up to meet the snow as it swirled down to reunite with the water. That’s some extreme swirling, to be sure, and with your head places squarely on the line between chaos and order, Yin and Yang, you have a front row seat for the dance. Too much in either direction and you’ll freeze or drown. Choices. It was life, amplified, in the splurgy decadence of a hot tub in a blizzard.

      The fine snow accumulated all around me, coating all cool surfaces. I felt it landing on my exposed skin, sliding down to greet the hot water or melting in surrender to the warmth of my body. But the snowy assault kept on relentlessly. My knit cap, my eyelashes and nose collected snow. The line between chaos and order is very thin in such conditions, and I delighted in the opportunity to be right there. Nothing else mattered in that moment.

      But all good things must end, and at some point you’ve got to brace yourself for the retreat from the hot tub through the swirling snow to the warm house. This is best done with purpose, and I reached up and shook off a towel, quickly stood and wrapped my shoulders and reached for my wool shirt, shook that off too and replaced the towel with the cold shirt as I got up. I offered the adidas a dip in hot water to clean off the snow and slipped them on.

      It was all a choreographed dance on the edge of chaos, and I loved it without lingering. Buttoning up the hot tub and walking through the accumulation was my penance paid for the indulgence. Still radiating heat, I shuffled back to reality while scheming a return.

    • Be Yourself

      To be nobody but
      yourself in a world
      which is doing its best day and night to make you like
      everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
      which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
      ― e e cummings

      “Whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.”
      ― e e cummings

      Delighting in a blizzard, I forgo the endless news telling you what’s right in front of you and instead read poetry and sip espresso. Were the snow deeper I might slip on the snowshoes and fly. Give it time, I think, and it will catch up to where my dreams are. Who doesn’t become a child again when hunkered down in a snowstorm?

      There’s a spirit in a blizzard that calls me outside. Swirling snow globe bliss, shaken again and again until it spins madly about. The landscape is cloaked and the familiar appears foreign. I suppose it’s the adventure of being immersed in a storm that draws me outside, or maybe it’s the thought of doing what most people would tell me not to do. A blizzard is a rebellion against the norm. It turns our expectations upside down and does its own thing, and I find it reassuring and a bit thrilling.

      “The snow doesn’t give a soft white damn whom it touches.” — e e cummings

      The ego is the enemy, the Stoics and Ryan Holiday would suggest, and this week my ego experienced a generous portion of highs and a healthy dose of lows. I put it all aside and focus on who I’d like to be instead. There’s no use living your life for the approval of others, for they only see the world through their own filter. You’ve got to be yourself, and find out who you are with every new experience, every new thrill and setback and odd twist of fate.

      The wind picks up, and billions of snowflakes surf the breeze to beach themselves where they may, transforming the landscape in their huddled masses. Packed in together in swirling madness, most land where the wind takes them. But the funny part of a blizzard is that where the snow lands isn’t always where it might stay. The wind can easily lift snow up again, to land in an entirely different place.

      The world is similarly mad. The masses land where they’re carried by the wind currents of place and expectation and obligation. Yet we might still surf the breeze and find our own landing place. Should we choose to get out there and fly.

    • Living Like Sidney Poitier

      I had no way of knowing that there was madness in what I was trying to do.” — Sidney Poitier

      That quote was from an interview that Sidney Poitier did with Lesley Stahl in 2013 that was broadcast a day or so after his passing last week. He reveals the bold, you might say reckless, leap into acting for a man with a strong Bahamian accent who couldn’t read at the time. It would telegraph the boldness and courage with which he would live his life and manage his career.

      I didn’t want to let too much time pass between the passing of Sidney Poitier and my writing about him. He was a favorite actor, not because I’ve seen every movie that he’s done (I’ve only seen three) or because I was star struck by his screen presence, but because of the elegant, dignified way that he lived his life. There’s a lesson there for all of us.

      “I did not go into the film business to be symbolized as someone else’s vision of me. If the screen does not make room for me in the structure of their screenplay, I’d step back. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it… I live by a certain code. I have to have a certain amount of decency in my behavior or pattern. I have to have that.”

      At the end of the interview, Lesley Stahl was asking Poitier about a book he’d just written. His words were equally revealing about how he identified himself. As someone who chips away at this writing thing, I found his words compelling and relatable:

      Poitier: “I was not intending to make an impression. I was finding release for myself within myself. I was looking for who I am at this point in my life.”
      Stahl: “Did you find out?”
      Poitier: “Somewhat, yeah.”
      Stahl: “Who are you?“
      Poitier: “I’m a good person”

      During this interview he reminded me, in his quietly elegant way, of my favorite Navy pilot, my step-father who passed away last year. Maybe that’s why I found him such a compelling guy. I think it was more a passing similarity based on the interview. More to the point, it came down to his decision to live his life by a code of honor, similar to what a Navy pilot might have, and the way that he exemplified it to the end.

      Shouldn’t we all aspire to live our lives in this way?

    • Our Sum of Moments

      “We are the sum of all the moments in our lives – all that is ours is in them: we cannot escape it or conceal it.” — Thomas Wolfe

      The interesting thing about seeing is that you can’t go back to being oblivious to the world around you. More to the point, you learn to see yourself as you are. And then you spend the rest of your days figuring out what to do about it.

      Figuring out how we got the way we are is a different story, and there are plenty of people who make it their profession to steer you down the path towards enlightenment on this particular question. Personally, I like to leave the past where it lies and focus on the bits I can control now. But there’s no getting around the fact that the sum of our lives brought us to this point. How that fuels the fire in our heart and soul determines where we go from here.

      I went to the wake of a kind soul yesterday, a man who always smiled when I saw him, and built a collection of family and friends who honored him at his passing. I reviewed the obligatory poster boards and digital display on the monitors full of his life memories. This wasn’t the sum of his life, but it was a good sample pack of the highlights. His hopes and dreams passed with him, but the momentum of his life was on display for all to see.

      Seeing ourselves as the sum of our moments, we recognize we’re still collecting. Still changing the story of our lives one memory at a time. Like stamps in a passport that shows where we’ve been, pictures and stories flesh out our past. Each face looking back at you is a part of the whole, and part of your whole, whether the ripple was large or barely perceptible. Each reminds us to move through this life with elegance and intent. To collect our own sum in our time. And share it with the world.

    • Relegating Social Media to the Shelf

      I’ve been actively using a strategy of keeping the things that draw my attention the most just out of reach. I first started doing this with Facebook, or Meta, or whatever they fancy themselves as now. I deleted the app off my phone and only have it on an old iPad that sits quietly amongst some old notebooks on a shelf. I don’t take it with me anywhere, it just sits there like a book on the shelf that I refer to now and then. And two months later I find I don’t think about that platform very often at all.

      Surely I’m missing some posts, some clever banter and the addictive content they recommend to you to keep you on their platform as long as possible. But I don’t have a fear of missing out. Instead I have a quiet mind that can focus on other things. When I do think about it, I’ll pop on, wish people a belated happy birthday, like a few posts and get out of Dodge as quickly as possible. Living with social media in such a way seems to work well.

      It’s worked so well, in fact, that I’ve just done it with Twitter as well. Now, this one was tougher for me. I use Twitter as a news feed, as a source of information I find valuable, and to pick up quotes and poems I might not have seen otherwise from great minds who collect such things. But I found it all too easy to just pick up my phone and scroll. When you find yourself in such a time suck death spiral, your only choice is to pull yourself out or crash to the ground. So Twitter is now relegated to the shelf with Facemeta.

      I know the pushback — these platforms connect us to the world, they bring us joy, they inform… and I’ve bought into each just as quickly as I buy into the belief that having a dram of scotch is okay after a long day of business travel. Life is hard enough as it is, why subtract some harmless joy?

      The answer is that I’m not subtracting it, I’m putting it in it’s place. On the shelf, in a place of honor amongst the books and notebooks I refer to on occasion. Here, it remains valuable as a source of entertainment, information and connection. But it’s not in my hand as I stand in line for a coffee or at the market. Instead I use that boredom time to look around at everyone else staring at their phones, or noticing the people who choose not to succumb to it. People like me.

      Since nature abhors a void, that scrolling time gets filled with other things. More deep reading, more thinking, but mostly more observation and listening to the world around me. Like a plane flying through cloud cover into the brilliant sky above, you don’t know what you’re missing until you break free. And all that other stuff? It’ll be there on the shelf waiting for you when you return.

    • Layers

      You might say that winter brings simplicity, laying bare and naked the world outside. Living things have two choices in winter; to fatten up and sleep it off or to hunt for food to keep the furnace burning. Hibernate or keep moving. Survival, simplified.

      In warmer climates, or warmer seasons, you might get away with a single layer or even less. When it gets cold you add layers until you reach a level of comfort. Proper layering is an acquired skill, and there’s a special joy that comes with getting out of a warm bed or sleeping bag and scurrying to add enough layers to reach comfort before the lingering warmth dissipates. You essentially trade one cocoon for another.

      Hikers know the layering dance all too well. Start slightly overdressed and begin to shed layers as your core warms. Reach colder, windier summits and the layers come back on again. The layers ebb and flow like the surf as you cool and warm with motion and micro climates. And in this ritual an underlying celebration for each layer as it comes and goes.

      We celebrate the complexity of layers in other ways. A story is always more interesting if there are layers of complexity built into it. Conversation that is simplistic is boring. The most interesting people we meet have many interests, can hang with you on many topics, and raise the bar to a level you seek to clear yourself. You think back on conversations like this and marvel at where they took you.

      Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a warm day with the sun on my skin as much as anyone. But I’m not sure I could live that way all the time. Give me the chill of early morning, or when the sun drops down below the horizon. Give me frosty window panes and seeing your breath in the crisp air. The simplicity of winter is deceptive. There’s more going on than meets the eye. The beauty of the season lies in its layers. It will kill you just as easily as it will awe you with its stark beauty.

      So it goes with life. We go deeper for meaning in our lives, for lives at the surface are shallow and inconsequential. When we wrap ourselves in layers of interests we might thrive in even the coldest of days. A layered life is a resilient life. We’ve all learned the value of that, haven’t we?

    • Snow Storms and Omicron

      “It snowed. It snowed all yesterday and never emptied the sky, although the clouds looked so low and heavy they might drop all at once with a thud.” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      And then the snows came. If yesterday’s post was about the distinct lack of snow in the region, this morning brings the heavy accumulation of snow. Expected, hoped for, and now here. The timing could be better (it can usually be better), but the blanketing of snow is a blessing for those of us who embrace winter.

      During those first winter storms, people who know a thing or two about snow are hyper-focused on preparation, stocking food, filling gasoline tanks and cannisters, and changing plans to adjust for the new reality of a storm on the way. As winter progresses, and one storm leads to another, we tend to get hardened. It’s just snow, just like the last storm and the one before that. They all blend together and winter fatigue sets in. Around here there’s nothing worse than an April snowstorm, just when everyone is sick and tired of snow.

      In this place and time in the pandemic, every conversation I hear is related to COVID. We’re all sick and tired of it, but, like an April snowstorm, everyone is dealing with it yet again. What do we do about it? Prepare as best you can, shelter when you ought to, and venture back out when it’s safe to do so. And that, friends, sounds a lot like a snowstorm during the morning commute. We recognize the logic in taking measures to stay safe, or we don’t. This pandemic once again feels like it might drop down on all of us with a thud.

      Here we go again. We all want normal, whatever that means now. Just remember that spring will come. For better or worse, these are days you’ll remember.

    • Starting Over

      “Think of yourself as dead, you have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”
      — Marcus Aurelius

      It’s time to spread our wings and fly
      Don’t let another day go by my love
      It’ll be just like starting over
      –John Lennon, (Just Like) Starting Over

      Tim Urban posted a clever image on Twitter that illustrates the concept of today being the first day of the rest of your life. Everything that you’ve done to now is in the past, every decision you made that got you to this place, wherever that might be for you, is in the past. And all that’s left is what’s in front of you:

      Source: @waitbutwhy

      New Year’s Day represents that for a lot of people: New Year, new me! But really, it’s every heartbeat. We decide moment-to-moment what we’ll steer ourselves towards in the next. Making decisions and actions, step-by-step into the uncertain future.

      What doesn’t help is regretting the choices you didn’t make along the way. What’s done is done, what’s to be is to be, dependent on the choices you make in this moment. All the past did is place is right here, at this point on the line of human progression on this day. And while that does dictate what our options for the next step might be, it doesn’t dictate the thousands of steps that follow.

      This moment is just like starting over. How fun is that? Be bold.