Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • May This Day

      After so many changes made and joys repeated,
      Our first bewildered, transcending recognition
      Is pure acceptance. We can’t tell our life
      From our wish. Really I began the day
      Not with a man’s wish: “May this day be different,”
      But with the birds’ wish: “May this day
      Be the same day, the day of my life.”
      — Randall Jarrell, A Man Meets a Woman in the Street

      The walks are colder now. Brisk. As in, I wish I’d put on a pair of gloves kind of brisk. But I welcome the change, even as I mourn for the things that will be missed as the earth tilts away from the sun yet again. Life is change, after all. Don’t blink: it will all change again soon enough.

      We each settle into a routine that becomes our life. We normalize the commute, the chores, the favorite game show we watch when we return home. What is all of this but the same day, repeated, to the end of our days? And so we look for different, while there’s still time, maybe with a little magic mixed in, just to feel like we found some wonder in our day.

      What do we wish for? It usually comes down to something different from the routine. But what is different quickly becomes the same too, when repeated. And so we chase different again and again. And there are times when different is the right answer. But not always. Sometimes the answer lies in gratitude for the rhythm of a beautiful life, built on the foundation of a routine that fits us like our favorite sweater. Just what would you wish for? May this day be savored for all that it brings.

    • The Precious Hour

      “To fill the hour—that is happiness; to fill the hour, and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

      To win the hour is to advance. To waste it is the proverbial two steps back. We grow forward or we recede backwards into a lesser version of ourselves. Stack enough wins together and we have the makings of a great day—and a great life.

      As time goes, nothing is worth more to me than the first hour of the day. If I don’t use it properly, the rest of the morning feels rushed or incomplete. What is proper? Using the mind before the day steals my attention. Writing and reading something worthy of the precious hour.

      My bride is still asleep when that first precious hour ends. Her productive time is later, when my energy begins to wain. And she’s still going strong well after I’m ready to call it a night. We all have our time when we feel most effective. We all know our limitations, even if we won’t always admit them to ourselves.

      We’ve heard it many times: we each have the same 24 hours to work with. Making good life choices for each may create an amazing day. Making really bad choices can certainly ruin it. We are the sum of our decisions and the discipline we bring to each hour. It will all fly past us if we aren’t more deliberate with how we use the time. Tempus fugit. Carpe diem.

      For me the 13th hour is when I begin to stumble into the questionable. I may eat nutritious food, exercise, do focused and meaningful work and be a good companion to my fellow travelers on this ship of fools we call the present. But then I get mentally lazy, snack on junk food, maybe wash it down with a drink, scroll social media and allow that to stir feelings of anger or envy. All of it wastes that hour, and may leave a lasting impression on the other 23.

      The trick is not just to make the most of our best hour, but to raise the standard for our worst. One good hour won’t make or break a lifetime, but it can certainly put us on the right path. There are 8,760 hours in a year (leaving those leap years aside). That’s way too many to focus on, but we don’t get to skip ahead anyway. It’s fair to ask more of ourselves in each hour to come if we wish to reach a higher level of personal excellence than we reached previously. Raising our average begins with expecting more of ourselves in our best and worst hours. And of course, that begins with this one. Make it precious.

    • A Strange Vocation

      Poetry, my starstruck patrimony.
      It was necessary
      to go on discovering, hungry, with no one to guide me,
      your earthy endowment,
      light of the moon and the secret wheat.

      Between solitude and crowds, the key
      kept getting lost in streets and in the woods,
      under stones, in trains.

      The first sign is a state of darkness
      deep rapture in a glass of water,
      body stuffed without having eaten,
      heart of beggar in its pride.

      Many things more that books don’t mention,
      stuffed as they are with joyless splendor:
      to go on chipping at a weary stone,
      to go on dissolving the iron in the soul
      until you become the person who is reading,
      until the water finds a voice through your mouth.

      And that is easier than tomorrow being Thursday
      and yet more difficult than to go on being born—
      a strange vocation that seeks you out,
      and which goes into hiding when we seek it out,
      a shadow with a broken roof
      and stars shining through its holes.
      — Pablo Neruda, Bread-Poetry

      I’ve gone and shared the entire poem. I’d meant to be more precise with a line or two about the stars shining through or rapture in a glass, but neither tells the story. Perhaps the english translation doesn’t tell the entire story either, but here we are. The point is, in the sharing there is a story. And naturally, we are the stories we decide to tell the world.

      Do you wonder when to begin a new chapter? Or are you too busy finding rhymes for this poem to worry about something that may never be? I think that’s the thing for most of us, isn’t it? We’re too busy living to focus on what’s next. If now is all that matters, why dwell on the tomorrows? Because it’s coming for us, ready or not? The grasshopper learned too late that the ant had it right, but in the end it was the grasshopper who made music. The real lesson is to find time to build a life and to thoroughly live it too.

      How much is enough to share? Each word published is released, never to be mine again. Perhaps that’s for the best; these words were only looking to fly free from me that they may dance in the light. I’ll click publish and go about my day, looking for as much meaning in the grind as I found in a few moments of creative output. Which work will live beyond me? It isn’t for us to decide, but to offer the best of ourselves in whatever we give our lives to.

    • Wealth in Health

      “The greatest wealth is health.” — Virgil

      On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t get out for a ride on the bike. It’s been leaning against the wall mocking me for weeks, waiting for my excuses to run out. Busy should never be our excuse for not exercising, not when the true answer is that we chose to prioritize something else with our precious time. So I got out there, and quickly surprised myself with the gains I’d made.

      If we remember our three currencies in life—health, wealth and time—we ought to consider both our accumulation and spend rate of each. Will I be riding a bike up steep hills when I’m 85? Probably not, but I can do it today. And in doing it today I’m increasing the probability of doing it one day when I’m 85. So I ought to do the work today that makes me healthier tomorrow.

      But it’s hard for us to work hard to accumulate for some imagined version of ourselves in a few decades. Perhaps the better thing to do is focus on more immediate gains in health and vitality and let the compound interest of a lifetime of fitness do the rest. The trick is not just to be active, but to do the activities that are enjoyable so that we keep on doing them for the rest of our days.

      I’ve come to enjoy weight circuits because they’re relatively enjoyable to do (and I get to play my favorite music loudly). Those weight circuits have made me stronger and leaner, making those hill climbs on the bike easier, which in turn makes riding the bike even more fun than it already was. After not being on a bike for a month, I set four PR’s on four measured segments of the route, making for one exhilarating ride yesterday. It wasn’t like I set out to do a time trial, it just happened because I was more fit than the last time I rode.

      I know that each workout is going to help me as I grow older, but the payoff can’t be some far off tomorrow if I hope to be inspired enough to make it a lifetime habit. But thankfully, today’s reward is an immediate increase in energy, vitality, athletic performance and in the way we feel about ourselves as we see gains. It all builds on itself, allowing us to reap the rewards of an active life now while building a stronger foundation of fitness for our latter years. And that, friends, is a win-win.

    • The Dog and the Frog

      “A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.” — Albert Einstein

      Every morning I let the puppy out to relieve herself. Inevitably, she ignores her full bladder and makes a beeline for the pool to see who is swimming there today. Most mornings this time of year there’s a frog bobbing around with the acorns believing it’s found paradise on earth. And so the standoff begins. The pup will circle for hours if I let her, chasing something that she’ll never catch. The only way to break the spell is to take the net and rescue the frog from the pool, relocating it over the fence. Tomorrow it will likely be right back in there again, awaiting the pup. This would go on each morning until the end of time if the season wasn’t drawing to a close.

      Are we any better than the dog following the frog? We also run around in circles relentlessly pursuing some concept of happiness or success, as if either are tangible. Reach for either and we find it’s bobbing somewhere other than the place we just dove for it. Each are nothing but ideas of what we think we ought to be.

      The aim of life is growth. A tadpole or a mighty oak measures it’s time alive in growth, and so should we. We ought to break the spell of chasing happiness or success, whatever the heck those mean to us and focus instead on purposeful gain. What might our net gain be today with a change in focus? Knowledge or strength? Enlightenment? A deeper understanding of ourselves and our place in this world?

      Forget about running in circles with nothing to show for it but a wet nose. Break the spell of the chase and focus on incremental growth instead. Whatever moves the needle forward in a meaningful way towards personal excellence and growth are the true wins for the day. Stack enough of these wins together and we may realize a state of happiness and success.

    • Always Mine Time

      “When I paint a picture, the time it takes will always be mine, or I get something out of it; time doesn’t end because it has passed. I feel sick when I think about the days that are passing—interminably. And I don’t have anything, or I can’t get at it. It’s torture; I can get so furious that I have to pace the floor and sing something idiotic so that I won’t start crying with rage, and then I almost go crazy when I stop again and realize that meanwhile time has been passing, and is passing while I’m thinking, and keeps on passing and passing. There is nothing so wretched as being an artist.” — Jens Peter Jacobsen, Niels Lyhne

      When we stumble across that which captures our move through time, traps it in amber as Vonnegut put it, we realize the infinite—that which is timeless. Timelessness is itself an illusion, as is time, we simply capture our passage through it with something that will outlast us.

      Do you doubt this? Look at an old photograph from a moment in the past and feel what stirs within. Read an old letter, when people still wrote those, and see what is captured in amber. I write this blog post, as with all the rest of them, knowing that once I hit publish it becomes always mine time—this moment of thought and emotion and intellectual momentum (or perhaps inertia) are now captured. I move on to the next thing in my day, and the next; passing and passing. What of the rest is captured? Precious little, but these words remain.

      What artist hasn’t felt swept up in the moment of creation? What artist hasn’t felt the emptiness of uncreative moments? We must be productive in our time, or watch it drift away like so many empty days. The only answer to the coldness of time is to do work that matters, and to strive towards mastery in it. Personal excellence (arete) may be forever out of reach, but to reach for it is to make something more out of… time.

    • Stoke the Fire

      “Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” — Anonymous (often attributed to Socrates)

      We often feel the least satisfaction with our busiest days. We learn that there is always something else pressing upon us—our best is never enough. And this is the time when we must step away from the grindstone before we ourselves are ground to dust.

      The older we get, the more the fallacy of busy becomes apparent. All those getting ahead stories were told to stoke the fire. Did we ever realize that we were the coal? That fire was someone else’s. Hustle and sacrifice are noble traits, but we must be very clear about what is being hustled and sacrificed, and who we’re doing it for. Hustle is time, applied with energy and vigor to some endeavor. Sacrifice is what we would be doing otherwise, given the clarity of choice.

      There is no time to sacrifice our very best years to the factory furnace. The answer is to slow down and see what stokes our own fire. Do the essential, move deliberately away from all the rest. While there is still time to realize the dream.

    • The Schooner Ardelle on a Celtic Sunset Cruise

      These summer clouds she sets for sail,
      The sun is her masthead light,
      She tows the moon like a pinnace frail
      Where her phosphor wake churns bright.
      Now hid, now looming clear,
      On the face of the dangerous blue
      The star fleets tack and wheel and veer,
      But on, but on does the old earth steer
      As if her port she knew.
      — William Vaughn Moody, Gloucester Moors

      We know when we are in the midst of something extraordinary. Anticipation creeps up on us as the minutes pass by, awaiting our participation. Awareness floods in as the magic unfolds. Joy and gratitude edge in, provoking other emotions. There comes a time when we must simply put away the camera, stop searching for just the right word or phrase, and simply be a part of all that is happening around us.

      Gloucester, Massachusetts has a long history with the sea. Its famous harbor has long welcomed home fisherman and sailors from passages as far and wide as the ocean’s reach. One feels the history sailing in this harbor, and you play some small part in the play for having been here at all. The fleets of old are mostly all gone now, ghosts of what once was. But there are a few holdouts, and newcomers built in the traditional way, to offer some hint of what it was like long ago.

      Harold Burnham has built several schooners in the traditional fashion. For a couple of centuries the Burnham’s have built ships in Essex, Massachusetts. Two of his schooners are harbored in nearby Gloucester, and Harold himself captains sunset cruises. You simply have to put yourself in the way of beauty and sign up to participate. And if you’re especially fortunate, you may join on a night of Celtic music to offer a proper soundtrack for a September night when the clouds are just so to harness a bit of heavenly magic.

      Maritime Heritage Charters offers many opportunities to learn and experience a few hours on a schooner sailing in Gloucester Harbor. One not to miss is the Celtic Music Sunset Sail with Michael O’Leary & Friends cruise, when traditional music and song fill the heart and soul as you slip past history and witness the divine dance of fading light. The experience is one that will stay with you forever.

      The Schooner Ardelle, Gloucester, Massachusetts

    • Framing the Day

      Come, read to me some poem,
      Some simple and heartfelt lay,
      That shall soothe this restless feeling,
      And banish the thoughts of day.
      — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day is Done

      This blog may ultimately stand for something, or perhaps it will simply be a lifetime of favorite poetry, lyrics and prose quoted as prompts for the words that follow. We all write for our own reasons. To share it at all is the audacious act. The words, cherished while embraced, are simply allowed to float away into infinity, where we will one day join them.

      I’ve grown weary of debate. It doesn’t matter a lick when each side is dug in and unwilling to consider common ground. To reach across the aisle is considered weak. So we learn to ignore each other’s radical ideas. And we are collectively the lesser for closing the door on each other’s most passionate pleas. Instead we get bland exchanges about the weather. How lonely is a life devoid of meaningful engagement with the larger world?

      I may have it all backwards. I begin my day with hopefulness and close it with resignation that the work didn’t change much of anything. That’s no way to end the day. We must bookend our days with aspiration and hope. The trivial thoughts of the day will not be remembered—they will dissolve as all the rest have before them. It is only the way we frame our days that will have the structural resilience to hold together the story of a lifetime. Choosing the right material for that frame thus becomes a critical affair.

      And so I build my frame of poetry and song. I glue it together with philosophy. I make it rigid through engagement with the world, beginning in the garden and venturing outward as far as the travel budget allows. All of this living means something, I’ve come to understand, mostly to me. But that doesn’t make the frame any less solid. Or any less a part of someone else’s frame for having shared at all.

    • Where We Have to Be

      “Your comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.” — Jen Alvares

      Do hard things. It’s the only way to grow beyond the comfortable place we find ourselves in now. Sure, but why move on from comfortable places? For the same reason that we get out of a cozy bed in the morning—because as nice as comfort feels in the moment, it isn’t bringing us to where we have to be.

      And there it is: where we have to be. Something beyond where we presently are is calling, and we must go to it. Every hero’s journey, every odyssey, every bold leap, lies beyond this comfortable place we’ve grown to love.

      “Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.” — Henry David Thoreau

      Comfort has its own momentum. We get swept up in our routine, find ourselves doing the same things over and over again, habitual and familiar: “I’ll have the usual.” “Already have it poured, friend.”

      The thing is, doing hard things also develops its own momentum. Exchanging comfort for harder is a daily negotiation with identity. We are where we are, lovely as it is, but we wish to do and be more than this, and that, friend, is hard.

      Everything we truly want in life has a cost. Comfort has a cost, and so does hard. Decide what to be and go be it. There’s no momentum in stasis: we must get up and get going, now, if we are ever going to get to that loftier place.