Alexandersmap

    Category: Personal Growth

    • Time Is Our Treasure

      If I could make days last forever
      If words could make wishes come true
      I’d save every day like a treasure and then
      Again, I would spend them with you
      — Jim Croce, Time in a Bottle

      When I was younger, I felt that time flew by. Now my kids talk about how quickly time flies. One day maybe I’ll have grandchildren making the observation. Humans have been making this observation since our brains developed to discern such things as time and our place in it. Tempus fugit.

      We’re told to treasure each day, for each is the most valuable thing we can spend. Time is our treasure. Some spend frivolously, some frugally. We ourselves work to maximize our days, but still see too much of our time slip away. We aren’t meant to have it all, maybe just enough. All we can do is the best we can with it.

      Awareness seems to be the magic ingredient for savoring. We develop a taste for living when we view it all as buried treasure in the sands of time. What lies hidden from us is revealed day-by-day, captured in photographs and memories. Our treasure is as substantial as we make it.

    • The Experience-Collecting Years

      “We all have at least the potential to make more money in the future, we can never go back and recapture time that is now gone. So it makes no sense to let opportunities pass us by for fear of squandering our money. Squandering our lives should be a much greater worry.” ― Bill Perkins, Die with Zero

      I saw an old friend at the local hardware store and caught up with him while juggling my handful of fasteners and domestic life enhancers. ’tis the season for stumbling upon old friends, as every errand seems to offer a harvest of good conversations with acquaintances from different parts of my life. When people get out of their homes more often serendipity offers opportunities we don’t get when holed up behind locked doors. Life is best experienced together, don’t you think?

      My friend in the hardware store asked me where I was traveling to next, thinking of me as a world traveller. In fact, most every friend I see asks me this question. Perhaps I overshare on social media, or perhaps they don’t travel much themselves. Who knows? I feel I don’t travel nearly enough, and that’s a driving force for more travel still. I view myself as a collector of experiences more than passport stamps, but the two tend to go hand-in-hand, mostly because if you want to experience something like climbing the Tower of Pisa or to navigate the labyrinth of the four quarters of the Old City in Jerusalem, you’ve got to travel to them.

      According to the Pew Research Center, only 11% of Americans have traveled to ten or more countries. I’m fortunate to be well past ten, and have a bucket list of countries I’d like to add to the list in my healthy, experience-collecting years. Once we’ve acquired just enough money and time to collect experiences (and it’s often a matter of prioritization), the only other currency to consider is our health. And friend, we aren’t getting any younger. With many experiences, it’s now or never. A Canadian friend, who travels far more than me, has a strategy to go to the farthest, most challenging places now, because when he’s older he won’t be able to do it. That seems pretty logical to me.

      We all have some idea of what a full life means for us. I admire people who are happy staying within the community they were born in, living a full and meaningful life within those borders, but for some of us that’s not quite enough. For we are nomads and adventurers, ambassadors and explorers. The experiences we seek aren’t meant to be for bragging rights at cocktail parties and local hardware stores, the experiences fill some void we feel within us, making us more whole.

      Our handful of experiences offers a return on investment in memories and perspective that is invaluable as we navigate the rest of our lives. In ten years what will the world look like? Will we even be able to cross certain borders? If we defer, will we be able to walk on ancient cobblestone roads or hike up icy trails in that evasive “someday, when”? There’s an opportunity cost to saying no to travel, just as there’s a financial cost to saying yes. I’m not advocating being irresponsible with financial currency, just don’t be too frugal with those health and time currencies. The best experience-collecting time is usually now.

    • Survival Skills

      “That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

      “A ship in a harbor is safe but that is not what ships are built for” — John A. Shedd

      I met with several old work friends for lunch yesterday. We haven’t worked together in years, because I left their industry to try something completely different and never looked back. As with old friends we picked up right where we left off, caught each other up on other people, and stepped back into our present lives as we separated. I remember the uncertainty of leaving the industry I was in with those folks, and the climb that lay ahead of me in the industry I stepped into from there. Life offers us plenty of opportunities for growth, we just have to be bold enough to step into the unknown.

      As it turned out, later that evening I went to a holiday party with my current coworkers (I’ve been there a month now). One veteran asked me how it was going and was confused when I said I was still drinking from the firehose. It never occurred to him that my move to this new company would be full of massive change for me, because he’d been comfortably doing the same thing for years. He’s reached a level of expertise in a company that he wants to be in until he retires, and kudos to him for reaching it. I’m inclined to leap back into the unknown now and then. Call me a risk taker or reckless, but for me life is best experienced just out of my comfort zone. As soon as I get comfortable I get bored.

      That doesn’t mean that leaps should be haphazard or foolhardy. We must acquire and then leverage the survival skills we’ve developed in our lives or we’ll sink into the abyss after our leap. Organizations don’t hire people without the skills they need to fill a gap, but they take a chance on people who may have a gap in their experience but otherwise have the skills. Too often it’s us who lack the imagination to see that a gap isn’t a chasm. We may grow into the next version of ourselves simply by leaning into it. The people who stumble are usually looking backwards too much.

      Our lives up to this point have been an accumulation of survival skills that allow us to function and thrive in the complex environment we choose to live in. Where can we sail our ship next? Writing and travel are my personal call of the wild, and the small steps I’ve taken with each are merely an accumulation of skills. You might have a different call of the wild and other skills begging to be tested. The thing is, we’ve heard the call, and we’re often we’re more ready to answer it than we give ourselves credit for. Is that safe harbor really enough? Asking the question usually reveals the answer that was awaiting our attention.

    • A Path to Better

      “Don’t surrender your agency and revert to the numbing day-to-day grind of compliance. You can make things better.” — Seth Godin, This Is Strategy

      If you’ve ever been to the American Southwest you may have been warned about flash floods. It might be beautiful right where you are, but a downpour elsewhere upstream takes all that water that can’t seep gently into the hardened earth into a flow to the low. That in turn creates a rush of water into stream beds and rivers, which turn the clear water muddy and confused. And then the water begins to rapidly rise, sweeping anything or anyone caught in it into the confusion. The only thing to do in such an event is to climb up as high as possible and hold on to something solid.

      There are different kinds of grind. The positive grind is working hard at our craft with a healthy dose of hustle and focus. We know what needs to be done and we get after it. Writing this blog post is one expression of getting after it for me, hopefully the first of a string of positive expressions towards making the most of the day.

      The negative grind is often felt on Sunday night when you know you’ve got to go to a job you hate the next morning. We go through the motions, follow the rules and generally become conditioned to stop caring. The negative grind is a complete surrender of agency. There are millions of people suffering through their days right now—we must not let it be our fate.

      It’s not easy to tear ourselves away from a negative grind when we don’t have a clear path to something positive. The trick is to scramble out of it to something better. This isn’t always easy when we have bills to pay and a routine that locks us into place, but we’ll be swept away with all the rest if we don’t climb immediately. Grab a lifeline and hold on until we find our footing, then take another step and another until we reach higher ground.

      That lifeline is found in positive anchors like writing, taking a class and exercise. It’s a lifeline to agency, which leads to that foothold to higher ground. When the grind begins to feel less clear, when the stream begins to get muddy and confused, we must feel the urgency to take control of our own situation. Ignore the apathy of the compliant and find a path to better. Knowing that we must keep climbing or be swept into the abyss.

    • A World Full of Curiosities

      “Blessed are the curious for they shall have adventures.” – Lovelle Drachman

      I’m at the tail end of a good book, the kind you can’t put down for the progress you might make reading just one more page. The kind you mourn the finish of as much as you celebrate it. The feeling that passes over me when I finish a great book is similar to how I feel the night before a long vacation comes to an end. You’ve loved the time spent on something worthwhile and expansive, but feel a bit melancholy that it’s over too soon. I suppose life gives us that lesson over and over again.

      Awaiting the finish is a stack of books all vying for my attention. Shall it be more fiction, or back to history, philosophy or science? It’s like going to the buffet line with a tiny plate—there’s only so much time and so much to read. And competing with reading are the holidays, a few movies and series I’ve meant to get to, and the ever-present call of the wild beckoning me to do something altogether bolder with my time.

      Being curious, and not judgmental is more than just a clever way to chat up a darts opponent (Ted Lasso), it’s a way to navigate life in a more enthralling way. Who doesn’t want to be enthralled by life? We ought to put the boring chapters aside more often in favor of the page-turners. Our time goes by either way, shouldn’t it be delightful?

      That brings us to this particular chapter of our lives, which may be fraught with as much boredom or enthrallment as we can handle as any of our previous chapters. Life is what we make of it, as we so often hear. We know that this world is full of curiosities that are simply awaiting our engagement with them. Who are we to ignore all of that by plodding along with blinders on?

    • A Dusting of Adventure

      If the goal is to heed Henry David Thoreau’s call to rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventures, then we must remember to embrace the adventures when we come across them. It’s snowing as I write this, and the walk outside with the pup was a thrill for her, and a departure from the norm for me too. We haven’t had a snowy morning in a long time, and even if it doesn’t amount to much, it’s a dusting of adventure to start the day. The paw tracks are already accumulating.

      Snow changes the landscape immediately, and our expectations with it, by changing the rules of the game. Things like traction and cleanup and commute time come into play. These temper the thrill of the snow globe this morning, but what if instead we simply enjoyed the spark of different the dusting brings to the day? Oh, the delight that offers.

      Henry looked at every day as an adventure, he most definitely delighted in each encounter the universe presented to him, and depending on what you feel a productive day looks like, he was either wildly successful or underachieved in his lifetime. I think he got out of life what he wanted from it, achieved a level of infamy with his work and did it all the way his way. Isn’t that success?

      I’m not sure what the rest of the day will bring, but I do what I can to make the first few hours shine. We can’t very well expect every hour of our days to be magical, but we ought to influence the course of events that unfold as best we can with a proper setting. How can we possibly top a delightful start to the day? Isn’t it a thrill to try? In this way we are leaning forward into life, and making adventure more than just a dusting.

      The Morning Paws

    • Adding More

      “If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.” — Fred Devito

      These are challenging times, to be sure, but there’s opportunity on the other side of those challenges. We may either face them and continue to grow or cower at the sight of them and shrink back into what might have been. We are what we put into our days, and really nothing more than that but a bit of dumb luck and random chance. Luck and chance will only take us so far—I like the odds of growing into our potential instead.

      Challenges can be thrust upon us, like losing a job or getting a diagnosis we weren’t expecting, or it can be incremental, like increasing the intensity of a workout each time we do it. Each challenge offers an opportunity for the mind and body. Is this my limit, or can I go further? We have a choice in how to react, as Viktor Frankl pointed out, to any challenge. The freedom of that choice is profoundly ours alone.

      We can choose to add more challenge to our days, with a goal of growth and change. Adding more changes us profoundly: Reading and writing more, more intense workouts, more challenging work, more focused conversations with people of consequence. The word infers increase; let that increase bring us in the direction in which we want to go.

      Remember the old expression, pay me now or pay me later? There’s a price to be paid either way, but whether good or bad those choices compound over time. There will come a time for less. Today is not that day. There’s just so much to do in a lifetime and we only have now to work with. We may choose to accept the challenges as they come at us. Let this serve as a cattle prod to complacency. Decide what to be and go be it.

    • 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?