Alexandersmap

    Category: Personal Growth

    • Living Towards

      “People think being alone makes you lonely, but I don’t think that’s true. Being surrounded by the wrong people is the loneliest thing in the world.”
      ― Kim Culbertson, The Liberation of Max McTrue

      I live in a small town with no traffic lights in New Hampshire that snugs up against Massachusetts. I’ve been here for three decades now and for the life of me I know I’ll never feel like a local despite knowing many of them, watching our children grow up together and watching some of those children begin to have children. How can one spend more than half their years in a town and still feel they’re an outsider?

      I’ve been plotting my escape from this town for years, but then I keep running into people with a shared history and find the conversation pleasant. I stood out in the semi-frozen front yard raking up acorns and wore out my arm waving to neighbors driving past on their way back from Sunday activities. I recognize the patterns of the season in this town, from how the stars align against the hillsides to where the deer go to hide from all the hunters. There’s a rhythm to familiarity that we may wear like a warm coat.

      Life is what we make of it. Where we live, what we do for work, and how much time we spend with people who don’t see the world the way we do is often up to us. We are the light in someone’s day when we encounter them, or we’re a reminder to them that they’ve got to get out of this place. The world largely reflects back what we project out to it. The last few years I’ve projected that I’d rather be somewhere else than this small town. Who can blame the town for feeling the same about me?

      The thing is, we ought to be building our lives towards something, not recoiling from something. It’s a subtle difference, but the latter has us on our heels, the former has us charging ahead. One is regression, one is progression. Don’t we all want to feel like we’re making progress in our lives? When the world seems to be shrinking from us, it’s usually a reflection of our own stance with it. We must lean into our future, wherever we want it to take us. Just be sure to give a wave and a smile to the neighbors, they look like they’re going through some things too.

    • The Bold Step

      “If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; It is lethal.” — Paulo Coelho

      Comfort is a quiet killer. It stalks us every day, pulling us from our pursuits with its promises. Comfort means well for us, and so we trust in it. And then it steals our life away.

      We must choose adventure when it calls to us. Take the risks that inspire but make us feel a little nervous inside. Inaction is the real risk. More of the same may feel prudent, but where is it taking us?

      A full life demands boldness. Boldness in turn is a step away from the routine. It won’t call for us forever. Sooner or later it will think us like all the rest and move on to another dance partner. When we change the routine in our lives, we change our life. So shake things up. Take the bold step.

    • By Whatever Name

      Every day I’m still looking for God
      and I’m still finding him everywhere,
      in the dust, in the flowerbeds.
      Certainly in the oceans,
      in the islands that lay in the distance
      continents of ice, countries of sand
      each with its own set of creatures
      and God, by whatever name.
      How perfect to be aboard a ship with
      maybe a hundred years still in my pocket.
      But it’s late, for all of us,
      and in truth the only ship there is
      is the ship we are all on
      burning the world as we go.
      — Mary Oliver, On Traveling to Beautiful Places

      It’s late for all us. We can see this when we pay attention to such things. We can see the world burning as we go, we see the games of distraction that keep the masses occupied while the power brokers pad their pockets, and apparently we can’t do all that much about it. As I’ve said before, all we can really do is build resiliency and beauty into our own lives. But maybe we can do a little more. Maybe we can help others, lost in the darkness, find their way to beauty too.

      To be aboard a ship with maybe a hundred years still in my pocket… Ah the places we’d go! We’ve only got this one go at things, and it’s late for all of us. Where shall we go today? The more I see, the more I come back to where I started. Our life’s work is ourselves, and as Michelangelo put it, seeing the angel in the marble and carving until we set him free. Yes, it’s getting late for all of us, but we may still keep carving to release the angels.

      I’m not particularly religious (when you see the power brokers for who they are you see them everywhere), but there’s an undercurrent of spirituality running through me that is best expressed in empathy and reverence. Perhaps you feel that too. What’s beautiful in this world is realizing the connection. We’re all in the same boat, spinning through the universe, infinitesimal yet infinite all at once. Isn’t that miraculous?

    • A Series of Projects

      If life is a series of projects in various stages of completion, then I’m in the midst of another stage of life. The problem with living in a home for a quarter century is that what was once new feels a bit dated. A series of projects ensue, the free moments fill up with tasks, and time seems to fly by in the seemingly never-ending pursuit of incremental improvement. Like Sisyphus with his rock, we finish one climb only to descend back to begin all over again.

      I thought we were done after the last project, but then the washing machine needed to be replaced and that started a series of observations from my bride about the things she hated about the laundry room. We’d modernized it during the pandemic, but had missed a few key things she wanted resolved. She knew just the person to talk to about it. You know the old expression, “Happy wife, happy life”? Some may view that with a negative connotation, but not me. If I can make my life partner happy by simply doing work I usually enjoy doing, then sign me up for the mission! Chasing happiness is folly, but it’s a dividend we find together on the journey to better.

      I know people who have never painted a room in their home, never mowed their own lawn or done fall cleanup, never done more than swap out a picture or two on the walls. I envy the free time they’ve carved out to pursue other things. Indeed, the tax on projects is time, and we all need to decide if that tax is worth paying. That time and the money used to complete every project could surely be going towards a trip or dinner out, couldn’t it?

      My response is that incremental improvement of the environment we spend all our time in makes our time in that environment incrementally better. Over time, project-by-project, we may create a place far beyond what we walked into on that day we first got the keys. The point of all these projects isn’t to get rid of the old, it’s continual transformation of dreams into reality. That is part of our overall pursuit of personal excellence (arete). That series of projects is a lifetime pursuit of our potential, expressed in the form of sawdust and paint.

    • A Bundle of Memories

      And the ghosts that we knew will flicker from view
      And we’ll live a long life
      — Mumford & Sons, Ghosts That We Knew

      My vehicle turned 100K yesterday, which in itself indicates nothing more than time and mileage together. The very point where it digitally flipped from 99,999 to 100,000 was a point on Interstate 495 known for being a choke point. Sure enough, I was in traffic barely moving when the odometer flipped, and took a picture for posterity in the relative safety of not really moving much at all. If I’d had my druthers, my truck and I would have done 100K on epically beautiful roadways while circumnavigating the continent, but alas, most of us simply drive from here to there again and again. The location was appropriate for the places in the northeast I’ve driven to. And just like with any other birthday or anniversary or milestone achieved, I simply kept on going.

      Earlier on this same trip, while taking the train from New York to Boston, I looked out at the Thames River in New London, Connecticut as we crossed the bridge there. Just upstream I saw the Coast Guard Bears Sailing Center at Jacob’s Rock, which back in the days when I rowed was roughly the finish line for the 2000 meter course. Sitting on that train looking upstream at that spot, the entire race came back to mind in a flash, with a different version of me sitting in the five seat. We ended up losing that race when we stopped just short of the finish line. Call it home field advantage or an oversight on our part, either way I never got a Coast Guard shirt.

      The thing is, we often cross paths with the ghosts of who we once were as we navigate the world. The train track itself has carried many versions of me to and from New York, the stairs that I walked down this morning have known a quarter century of me as I’ve known each step. Every day is a milestone, every familiar path carries some older version of us we may revisit. Life is change and familiar routines, all rolled up into a bundle of memories. We may hold on tight to them or let them drift away until some random glance brings them back into view. ’tis best to give our ghosts a nod and keep on living this life in the now. One day it will be today’s version of us that will be the ghost. Just what will we think of it then?

    • The Next Essential Thing

      I’m not going to lie to you, the last month has been a whirlwind of change, travel and starting all over again. We collectively face massive cultural changes in this new world that we’re all sorting sorting out in our own way. I’ve got plenty on my mind already, so the national election will have to be stacked in the corner to percolate for awhile.

      In medias res (“into the midst of things”) is the phrase that exemplifies the state I’m in. I’m jumping right into the next after a busy and productive month. For all that I’ve accomplished over the last month, I ought to pause and reflect, but there’s no time for it. I see the swirling current in front of me and I’m focused on staying afloat.

      And that’s the key word when we’re in the midst of things: focus. Focus on the essential next thing that will keep us from drowning in the current of change. Put one foot in front of the other, and keep moving across that floor. To get swept away in any emotion doesn’t serve us well, it pulls us under. The next essential thing is the only thing that matters right now. So let’s get to it.

    • The Great Affair

      “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

      Today’s blog post was written on a bus rolling through the Irish countryside between Dublin and Belfast. The timing of the trip was good, as it reminds us that the journey is really up to us to make. There’s time enough for work and scarcity-based bickering and all of that darkness. Today we defer reconciling ourselves with the worst of humanity’s traits in favor of the great affair with living boldly. So we move.

      We know we cannot defer everything. The world is full of problems that must be faced, and we’ll do our part, but the world will always have its problems, and we are but a moment’s sunlight fading in the grass. We have infinity for stillness. We must move now, while there’s still time. Ready?

    • Stuck In the Middle

      Clowns to the left of me
      Jokers to the right
      Here I am, stuck in the middle with you
      — Stealers Wheel, Stuck in the Middle With You

      For those of us stuck in the middle with the extremists on either side of the political spectrum, these are challenging times indeed. Those who aspire to personal excellence must reconcile that objective with the circle of people surrounding them. On the face of it that sounds arrogant and more than a little condescending, but I will stand by the belief that we are the average of the people we associate with the most, and lately popular opinion leaves a lot to be desired. When did this become a desired outcome?

      We must hold the line anyway and work to show others who would follow the path. Progress is never a straight line to the top. These are things I tell myself when the world lets me down a bit. The issue isn’t with the world, frustrating as it may be, but with my hope that the world will see the light and surpass my expectations. We must work on ourselves instead, for that’s all we may control anyway. Still, navigating to a better middle seems necessary too.

    • Source Material

      “Who are you? They called out, at the edge of the village. I am one of you, the poet called back. Though he was dressed like the wind, though he looked like a waterfall.” — Mary Oliver, Pen and Paper and a Breath of Air

      This morning there was a hard frost on the lawn, and a bit of sea smoke mingling with fog across the bay. The sky was pastel and postcard perfect. Why do we leave such places? Because life happens beyond the bliss of the comfortable moment. There’s so much more to discover and do, just over the bridge between here and what’s to come.

      Scanning the headlines it was evident that the doom cycle is in full gear. Wars, accidents, murder and a heated national election. It’s all a hot mess. No wonder so many people are irrational and afraid. No knock on responsible (and absolutely necessary) journalism, but there are those who seek profit in rapt attention. Shame on all of them, they who profit on dissent and tragedy and the misery of others, for they serve the darkest depths of human instincts. We may acknowledge the lessons without slowing down to have a good look. For all the madness that pastel sky indicated another perspective.

      It’s all source material for how we live our own lives, and for what we produce ourselves. Do we carry light or darkness with us in our oeuvre? To produce anything in this noisy world that may resonate with another is challenging, and leaning into formulaic and familiar may feel like a shortcut to acceptance in a fickle world, but aren’t we simply a part of the choir then? Where is our own voice? What differentiates us more than marching to our own beat? We may choose to be the source material for those who would follow. We may choose to be true to ourself.

    • Fears, Growth and Energy

      “If we do not have the depths, how do we have the heights? Yet you fear the depths, and do not want to confess that you are afraid of them. It is good, though, that you fear yourselves; say it out loud that you are afraid of yourselves. It is wisdom to fear oneself. Only the heroes say that they are fearless. But you know what happens to the hero.” — Carl Jung, The Red Book

      “Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.” — Steven Pressfield

      I’m not particularly afraid of the dark, but when I walk the dog at night I still bring a flashlight with me. Part of that is practical (try scooping up dog poop without light) and part of that is hedging my bets. I may not need the flashlight to see, but if a pack of coyotes decided to come out of the woods to face down my dog and me, seeing clearly slightly improves our odds.

      The thing is, we’re much more likely to encounter shit in our daily reconciliation with life than a pack of wild animals. But we must build resilience for those black swan events anyway. It’s only when we put ourselves in a fragile or vulnerable state that we are truly in peril.

      There are different kinds of fear we humans must face. Let’s start with the fear of the known and the fear of the unknown. Both are heavy hitters, aren’t they? If we know for sure that we’re going to have the crap kicked out of us, there’s an element of fear about the danger we clearly see approaching us, whether that crap-kicker is a person, animal or a storm, we know we’re in big trouble and it’s scary. All we can do in such moments is hope that we’re resilient, skilled or lucky enough to survive.

      Then there’s the fear of the unknown. Anyone who’s watched Jaws knows that the shark is much scarier before you really see it than it is afterwards. Likewise, fear of the dark is fear of what you don’t see. What we don’t know is far scarier than what we do know.

      We ought to condition ourselves to face our fears and do things anyway. I regularly begin most conversations with strangers rather than shrink back into myself, just to see where it takes us. I don’t mind speaking up at public events because I’ve conditioned myself to do it. Anyone can do that, if they really want to. Just do the scary thing, face the unknown and realize whatever the worst thing we imagined would happen wasn’t all that bad in reality. Then do it again.

      I currently have an underlying fear of the unknown with the United States Presidential election coming up Tuesday. I can’t control anything but my own vote, but I can fear for the future of democracy. Likewise I can fear the rising environmental crisis, the impact of artificial intelligence in everything from fake news to the proficiency of hackers to the ability of AI to take away the jobs of creative people. It’s all unknown and a little scary when you think about it.

      The thing is, everything I just mentioned are forces outside of my control. The only way to navigate these kinds of unknowns is one at a time. Bring the flashlight and phone when you walk in dark places. Live in a home situated above the 100 year flood zone. Buy insurance. Diversify investments. Exercise and eat well that we have a strong foundation for the inevitable health challenges that comes in time for all of us. Build layers of protection into our lives and we put ourselves in a position to survive and maybe even thrive. But still, vote like your country depends on it.

      Still with me? I know this is a long one, but fear is a deep topic. And we haven’t even gotten to the biggest fear of all: fear of failure. This is the ultimate unknown staring us down between the ears. Fear of failure makes a lot of sense if we’re walking a tight rope or doing a free solo rock climb high up on a cliff. The consequences aren’t nearly so high in most cases. Most failure bears out as embarrassment or setbacks—things we can learn from that lead to growth.

      So do ask the dumb question, ask out the person you want to be with, take the leap of faith on the job that is very different from the last one. We never know until we try. But in each case, do the work to be prepared for the moment. Informed “dumb” questions are better than ignorant dumb questions. Having the emotional intelligence to be with the person you’re asking out improves one’s odds of success when asking them out. Developing the skillset to handle the job we aspire to inevitably leads to better results than simply winging it when we walk in the door on day one.

      It all comes back to that invaluable Boy Scouts motto: Be prepared. When we’re prepared for the moment the moment becomes less scary. So prepare! And know what failure really means before taking the calculated risk. This is what gives us the best opportunity for success. When we’re prepared and know we’ve done the work, fear may still tingle the spine, but it’s transformed into productive energy.