Alexandersmap

    Category: Personal Growth

    • Letting Go

      To live in this world
      you must be able
      to do three things:
      to love what is mortal;
      to hold it
      against your bones knowing
      your own life depends on it;
      and, when the time comes to let it go,
      to let it go.
      — Mary Oliver, In Blackwater Woods

      This is the time of year when the leaves release from the trees and drift in the breeze in waves, becoming a force of nature in their return to the earth. It’s easy to see them as alive—characters in their freedom from the branches that once held them. The tree lets them go in their time, and releases their burden that they may survive another winter season.

      Humans hold on to their own things. Homes full of stuff, people who sap our vitality, positions of honor that sap our soul. Why do we hold so tightly to things that, deep down, we know must be released?

      Identity. We begin to believe that we are that person with that job, or the one who raises those children. For awhile we may be the soccer parent or the blogger, the hiker or sailor or the life of the party. Perhaps even that crazy uncle who says the most ridiculous things and prods nieces and nephews out of their shells. Identity is a tricky thing indeed. We are grounded in it, and let it drive our every decision.

      Human beings always cling to things.
      Practice begins when you stop clinging.
      — Awa Kenzo, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow

      Those trees offer a lesson, don’t they? The tree is rooted in place, reaching for the sky, making the most of whatever season it happens to be in. The leaves are not the tree, but a part of it, nurtured in one season and released in another. Everything has its time. No, the leaves aren’t the tree at all, simply a part of it. It’s the roots that matter far more for the tree to survive.

      What are we rooted in? What do we hold on to far longer than we should? What do we need to let go of to survive another winter and thrive when the season changes in our favor? When the time comes, let go.

    • Be the Lion

      “Let nothing bind you. Transcend right and wrong, good and bad. Move on like a solitary lion. Make heaven and earth your dwelling. Renew! Renew!” — Awa Kenzo, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow

      I say I don’t pay attention to news, but I’m nonetheless very aware of what’s happening in the world. These things tend to bog us down in anger and grief, frustration and dismay at the folly of others. Sometimes, the world is upside down and it feels like we can’t possibly control anything. When life is throwing hand grenades in one party after the other, we may feel this impossible weight. We must get up anyway. Remembering that darkness is always followed by light.

      When we don’t feel like doing much of anything, the best thing we can do is to just begin. The cobwebs eventually slip away and we find ourselves free again. This is how workout routines begin again, and it serves us equally well in creative work like writing. This is how the world keeps turning despite our best attempts to blow it up. Keep moving. Persevere. Don’t let the bastards drag you down.

      Be the lion.

    • Ten Thousand Things Are One

      “Be in the dojo wherever you are. It is your choice—live like a sage or exist like a fool. — Awa Kenzo, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow

      “Do your best at each and everything. That is the key to success. Learn one thing well and you will learn how to understand ten thousand things. Ten thousand things are one; this is the secret place of understanding you must find. Then everything is mysterious and wonderful.” — Awa Kenzo, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow

      We ought to try to master at least one thing in our lives. Most everything in the world is out of our control, beyond our capability, more than we can grasp. These things may weigh on us heavily, constricting our belief in what is possible. We forget sometimes that what is possible is simply one thing. With focus and effort we may just yet master this one thing, or perhaps we just get good enough at it to learn something about ourselves.

      I dabble in a lot of things, but really try to master very little. I’m a fair gardener, but no farmer. I’m a pretty good manager of people but I’m not exactly giving Ted talks on the role. I can hold my own in chess against most humans but have never beaten a computer set to destroy the ego. I can turn a phrase now and then but read a sentence from Hemingway or Didion and see the journey to better must continue. I can do my best at each of these things and still never be the best at any of them. And that’s okay.

      We all want to be good at whatever it is that we are doing at the time—who wants to fail? But mastery isn’t a game for dabblers and motion going-throughers. Mastery is about paying our penance and focusing on one thing above all other things to reach a level far beyond mere competency. It’s okay to aspire to mastery, but we ought to see that the journal to mastery is a cul du sac on top of a lonely hill. The view may be grand, but we don’t know the neighbors. Knowing our end game is an essential element of the game.

      The thing is, the game isn’t mastery so much as constant improvement and awareness of who we are choosing to become. It’s always been about the journey, not the score. The mile markers on our journey are the level of awareness and understanding we reach at each phase of our life. We know when we’re in the right place, and when we’ve fallen behind. The opportunity in our lifetime is to find the pace that works best for us.

    • Giving Oxygen

      It’s in the stars
      In the sun
      It’s everywhere
      In everyone
      And it will be every day
      From now on
      From now on
      We are one
      And it’s amazing
      — One eskimO, Amazing

      I began today with the horrific news du jour. Generally I avoid news altogether as the quagmire of miserable sensationalism it generally is, but I got caught in it first thing. Bad news always finds a way to us. Good news we have to seek out.

      This isn’t active avoidance, this is an act of preservation in a maddening world. We don’t have to like the ways things are, and we should continue doing our best to make things better, just don’t get swept away in the madness trying to save everyone. Like they say on the plane, put your own oxygen mask on first.

      I don’t know why we’ve become so angry and unfocused. I don’t know where a mindset of scarcity and bitterness takes over feelings of abundance and gratitude in the lives of so many who have so much. Blame it on media, blame it on political and religious leaders inclined to stir for power and influence. Whatever it is, we lose sight of our one-ness when we give oxygen to enflame. That’s not the best use of oxygen.

      So I sought the sunrise, and the gratitude of another day. If fate allows, perhaps I may catch a glimpse of sunset too. It’s all amazing, really, when we stop to see it.

    • Break Up the Habitual

      “We need habit to get through a day, to get to work, to feed our children. But habit is dangerous too. The act of seeing can quickly become unconscious and automatic. The eyes see something—gray-brown bark, say, fissured into broad, vertical plates—and the brain spits out tree trunk and the eye moves on. But did I really take the time to see the tree? I glimpse hazel hair, high cheekbones, a field of freckles and I think Shawna. But did I take the time to see my wife?
      ... The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes. This is true of chocolate and marriages and hometowns and narrative structures. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we’re not careful, pretty soon we’re gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack.
      … I open my journal and stare out at the trunk of the umbrella pine and do my best to fight off the atrophy that comes from seeing things too frequently. I try to shape a few sentences around this tiny corner of Rome; I try to force my eye to slow down. A good journal entry—like a good song, or sketch, or photograph—ought to break up the habitual and lift away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought to be a love letter to the world.
      Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.”
      — Anthony Doerr, Four Seasons in Rome

      A long quote, but honestly I could plug the entire chapter of this delightful book in here and call it a day. This is a song I know well. We are creatures of habit, and a good habit will save us as much as a bad habit may be our ruin, but this often puts us on autopilot with our senses. There’s a fine line between being fully aware and being overwhelmed. A bit of focus on the task at hand is just as essential as being aware of everything around us. Situation awareness can quite literally save the day for us, but awareness of every situation can make us completely useless.

      Still, so many of us miss the details for the routine. How much of a drive do we ever remember? What of the miracle of commercial flight? Most people simply resign themselves to the screen in front of them for the duration, never glancing out the window at the world of wonder just outside. What of home? Do we ever immerse ourselves in something we once gazed at lovingly, like that picture we once cherished and now barely see? How many marriages end in just such a way?

      We know the Latin phrase: “tempus fugit carpe diem” (time flies so seize the day). Seizing isn’t just an action statement to go out and do bold things, though surely that’s a big part of it. It also means being fully aware of the world around us while we’re living this day. Well before the Romans began creating such memorable phrases, that old Greek sage Seneca had his own take on this, saying “As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all, and make it your own possession. We must seize what flees.” Indeed we must.

      Doerr seized his day moving to Rome for a year, grabbing the opportunity of a lifetime just as he and his wife were navigating the challenge of raising newborn twins. That’s quite a one-two punch to anyone’s routine. His call to leave the familiar comes from his own experience in doing just so. But even under such extreme change in his and his wife’s lifestyle, he found routine he had to break through to find full awareness. What of us?

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

      At a party of the weekend I was introduced to someone as “a blogger” and was asked what I write about. I write about everything, I explained, but didn’t go much deeper out of… habit. We rise to meet our moments or we simply go through them. Writing is a form of heightened awareness of the moment. So is photography, for that matter. I tend to be the unofficial photographer at family events and during travel because I see opportunities either to capture or create the moment. In the end, moments are all we have.

      This blog is a call to arms for myself as much as it is a collection of observations and thoughts. Tempus fugit, sir, so carpe diem. Pay attention to the moment, friend, but do note the days gone by on this journey too. We waste so much of it, don’t we? We must be aware, and be productive with our days while we have them. Make each day new all over again.

    • The Magic of Following Through

      “I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through – then follow through.”— Eddie Rickenbacker

      The more time I spend on this planet, the more I feel the fulfillment of deliberate action. You build momentum in your life when you do what you say you’re going to do with enough people. There’s a tipping point where everyone in your life simply identifies you as someone they can count on. Following through is a beacon of hope and light in a world where so many quietly quit on others, and in doing so, on themselves as well.

      It wasn’t always so. I once mastered the art of excuses. Lazy and unfocused as a teenager, I would tell myself that it didn’t matter whether I did what I said I was going to do. It didn’t take long to realize the error of my ways. You hear a enough feedback from people in your life who you let down and you begin to feel the urgency to close the gap between who that person was and the person you aspire to be. Following through is the act of growing up and choosing to be the adult in the room.

      Much later in this lifetime, I tend to take on more than I ought to. Saying no becomes the challenge, not saying yes. But no is part of the commitment to yes. To follow through on anything meaningful, we have to subtract something else that might have been a yes. That might be people, or putting in extra time at work instead of being home with the family, or maybe it’s saying no to that donut with our morning coffee. We are what we repeatedly do, and we are also what we repeatedly choose not to do. Over time, many of us learn to choose wisely. Choice is a commitment to that one really essential thing over all other things.

      The unspoken rule here is that we must follow through on our promises to ourself as well. We must be the person we want to be. We must ship the work, as Seth Godin would say, when we say we’re going to ship it. Putting a blog post out in the world every day is just one of many small commitments I make to myself. Like those other small commitments, it pays dividends in profound and magical ways. For in following through over and over, you begin to believe in possibilities you might not have believed in otherwise. And others begin to believe in you for the consistency you’ve shown. We live the story we tell ourselves: this is evidence of who I am.

      There’s magic in following through on commitments we’ve made. We rise to a place of honor by doing what we said we’d do. This is our uncompromising vow to others, and to ourselves. We are showing respect for those whom we follow through with, and surely for ourselves. This leads directly to a better world for those we interact with, and a better night’s sleep for us. Who said we can’t be magicians? Follow through.

    • The Fullness of Time

      “The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect,
      So hard to earn so easily burned
      In the fullness of time,
      A garden to nurture and protect
      It’s a measure of a life
      The treasure of a life is a measure of love and respect,
      The way you live, the gifts that you give
      In the fullness of time,
      It’s the only return that you expect”
      ― Neil Peart

      I missed a few days in a row of my one line per day journal entry. What exactly did I do on Wednesday? Work from home? Take the dog for a walk? Write a blog and drink too much coffee? Yes to all of those things, but what was the essence of the day? That journal is my daily reckoning. When you go back to it after a few days to fill in what you’ve been up to you quickly realize that much of your days are pretty much the same, repeated over and over again.

      When I look at the year, it’s been full of wonder and adventure. Visits to stunningly beautiful places, big life events in the family, a new puppy. It would be hard to summarize the fullness of this year in a few short sentences. But what of the individual days? Individually, our days are feast or famine, with some jammed full of adventure and others rather bland by comparison. Every day can’t be a lifetime highlight. Some days are simply average.

      Sure, we ought to fill our time with more adventurous fare. Add more micro adventures and left turns to see what is out there in the world. We know intuitively that time is flying by, but what do we do to make each day uniquely special? If today was our last, will we make it an exclamation point or end it all with a simple period? I like to think I’ll go out with an ellipsis (…) just to make the world wonder what I was up to next.

      “The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking towards me, without hurrying.” — Jean Cocteau

      Cocteau reminds us of our impermanence. It’s a lovely vision of life and death coming closer by the day, until one day we meet the infinite once again. Our lives are a singular entry in the vastness of time: here today, gone tomorrow. Knowing this, we ought to raise the average in our average days, we ought to sprinkle in more adventure and mystery and love, we ought to “live like we were dying” as that song goes. Life shouldn’t be a nihilistic series of meaningless days, it ought to be a gift we give back when we’ve done something meaningful with it. We know that our days will pass, but will they be filled with substance? We each have the opportunity to answer in our own…

    • The Choice of Attention

      “If you cannot find it here, you won’t find it anywhere. Don’t chase after your thoughts as a shadow follows its object. Don’t run after your thoughts. Find joy and peace in this very moment. This is your own time. This spot where you sit is your own spot. It is on this very spot and in this very moment that you can become enlightened. You don’t have to sit beneath a special tree in a distant land.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

      I don’t dabble much in meditation in the classical sense, but lean deeply into awareness. So this very moment means a great deal to this particular time traveler. We dance in the now, or risk having the moment pass us by.

      Yet the time slips by so quickly anyway. This is as it should be, time being the creation of us frenzied humans. Wouldn’t it be better to think in terms of seasons or the natural cycle of a lifetime? Probably, but dinner reservations would be chaotic.

      Awareness of the moment is simply being present and engaged as best we can in this time and place that we live in. I’m quite aware that I have some things to do, and have a mosquito flying annoyingly nearby, and there’s a puppy underfoot restless in her desire to do anything but watch me type. I don’t have to look around to be aware of these things, I just have to be open to receiving them as they roll in like waves, one at a time, and wash across this broad beach of here and now.

      The trade-off, of course, is that awareness of everything around us makes us completely focused on none of them. There is a paradox here, in that we must be fully aware to be fully alive, yet raptly focused on our most important thing in the moment to ensure that thing gets done. We are constantly toeing the line between order and chaos within our brain.

      “Choice of attention—to pay attention to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.” — W. H. Auden

      Chaos is all around us, it’s up to us to make sense of it in our own minds. There’s something to the idea of meditation and quieting your mind to receive enlightenment, I’m just not particularly good at sitting still with my breath. Yet I can sit quietly for hours writing, and can walk or row completely focused on the task at hand, aware only of the next step or stroke. Awareness seems to be more essential than enlightenment. One could make a case that they’re one and the same.

      So another day greets us with the choice of where to place our attention. The difference between a meaningful and fulfilling life and a chaotic, empty life is quite literally in our own head. Awareness, applied focus and a sense of purpose or direction are the recipe for a successful life. We choose what to be and have the opportunity to go be it.

    • The Inner Necessity

      “We all have an essence, something inside of us that was uniquely assigned by the universe. This goes deeper than talent and skill. It’s a calling. An inner necessity.
      Your essence doesn’t care about power, promotions, or possessions. It only cares about one thing: expression.
      If essence is who you really are, then expression is how you show up in the world. Your essence is always calling for you—expression is how you take that call.
      There’s a saying in the Gospel of Thomas: If you bring forth what is within you, that thing will save you. If you don’t, it will destroy you. That’s the thing about your essence. It is an inner flame that either lights up the world around you or burns a hole inside of you.
      Each of us gets to choose between expression and emptiness. But no one escapes that choice.”
      — Suneel Gupta, Everyday Dharma

      I’ve been walking past this book, Everyday Dharma, since it arrived and set firmly on the kitchen counter, a gift from one of my bride’s company executives to the employees. It wasn’t meant to be my book to read, but I’d just finished one book and wasn’t feeling the vibes from three other books I’m in various stages of reading, so why not add one more? Sure, I generally try to finish what I start, and advocate for focusing on the task at hand, and yet when it comes to books I can’t seem to help myself. Everything in this world is timing.

      Lately I’ve seen the wheels fall of some people I know who were so focused on putting everything within themselves into their careers that they forgot to do the maintenance that keeps us all healthy. We all must choose how we express ourselves in this world. Sometimes the form of that expression rips us apart, either from outside forces eventually overwhelming us or from that inner flame burning a hole inside of us, saying more and more persistently, “this is not who I am”. We ought to listen more, but there’s just so much to do first.

      We’ve all asked ourselves the question, “What do I find most fulfilling?” as we navigate our lives. Rungs on the corporate ladder seem enticingly close, the pay a little better, the title a more soothing ego stroke, but when reached we find that it wasn’t the view we thought it would be. Our life’s purpose was never the next rung on the ladder, the degrees we acquire or the accolades of our biggest fans (thanks Mom). Our life’s purpose is that inner flame burning a hole inside of us, trying to find expression in the whirl of a busy life.

      The thing is, we generally know the answer already, we just push it off for another day in favor of what others want for us. As those people I know have learned as their wheels fall off, there are only so many other days. The question remains, as Mary Oliver asked so much more eloquently than I can in The Summer Day:

      “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?”

      May our expression be grounded in our essence, fulfilling and centered. We are each here for so short a stay. Yes, everything in the world is timing, and this is our time friends. So for me, I write, and read one too many books, I contribute what I can in productive and meaningful ways, I dabble in uncomfortable things and venture to unfamiliar places, and most of all, I savor. Yikes, that’s a lot of “I’s” in one paragraph. So how about you? We may all bring light to the world from our inner flame, and mustn’t we? Before it ends all too soon. What is it you plan to do?

    • Saluting the Ghost Ship

      “I’ll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.” ― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

      I sometimes dwell in the things that haven’t carried me. Places I might have gone, or lived in, surrounded by people I might have known, as the person I might have become. There’s nothing productive in what-might-have-been’s, unless we use them to set our current sail. This life is just fine, thank you, but the world will always whisper: “Vienna waits for you”, whatever your personal Vienna happens to be.

      Strayed puts this beautifully—these are but ghost ships that didn’t carry us. Sister lives we didn’t live. I know that I’ll never hike the Appalachian Trail or live on a sailboat in some remote fiord in Norway in winter, but that ghost of a me that will never be still drift into my mind in quiet moments now and then. Except they aren’t always quiet. Sometimes I’ll jokingly state that we’re selling everything and buying a boat, or a camper van, or just jetting off to the Vienna that haunts me that day. The people in my life know my ghost ships and roll their eyes, carrying on maintaining the ship we’re on in the real world. And so do I.

      I blame the artist in me. Creative types create alternative worlds all the time. Not Walter Mitty dreams, for we aren’t daydreamers in that way, but whispers of what may be just over the horizon of our current world, or an idealized version of ourselves as the protagonist. I ought to write more fiction, just to release these would-be characters into the world they crave to be in.

      Watching the crescent moon dance with Venus and Regulus in the early morning sky stirred up the ghost ship once again. Looking westward, Jupiter was dipping towards the west. It was magic time, when the universe whispers to the few cherished souls who awaken to be part of it that life is full of possibility. We may choose and love the ship we’re on for this passage while admiring the ones that slip away to the horizon. Some things will never be in this lifetime, but ’tis a beautiful life we’ve built for ourselves nonetheless, don’t you think?