Alexandersmap

    Category: Personal Growth

    • All is Well

      “I conclude that all is well,” says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.
      All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols… Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. — Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

      Fidelity has two meanings, of course, but in the case of Sisyphus, it’s verism—we humans must embrace the entirety of life, not just the beautiful but warts and all. That means the drudgery, the pain, the elation and the wonder. As with Sisyphus, this is our curse, but also our purpose. We’re here to do what we can with the circumstances life delivers to us. Amor fati.

      There are a lot of people who would rather dabble in distraction and conspiracy theories, rather than face the rock and push. The realist finds clarity in verity and derives purpose in the push. Some days grind us to dust. Some days fill us with joy. Each is a gift we may not fully realize. Sometimes the gift is surviving to fight another day. So it is. We have but to react to it in the moment and find that bit of hope that keeps us going to we push again. All is well, friends.

    • The Story Continues

      “Nothing in my past life fills me with the vain desire to repeat it. I have never been anything more than a mere vestige, a simulacrum of myself. My past is everything I never managed to become. Not even the feelings associated with past moments make me nostalgic; what one feels is of the moment; once that is past the page turns and the story continues, but not the text.” — Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

      I confess that reading Pessoa is a struggle for me. I am a different person than he was, trying to engage with the world and not just be a witness to it. Still, I press on with his book, off and on, working to finish it one of these days. James Joyce said that life is too short to read a bad book, and I generally subscribe to that theory. The thing is, I don’t believe that The Book of Disquiet is a bad book, it’s just not a book that resonates with me at this moment. Yet here I am, quoting it anyway, precisely because some of what he writes does indeed resonate with me. Perhaps that’s enough in the end.

      If you could, would you repeat a chapter of your life? When you think back on who you were at the time, would you do it again? In a life well-lived I should think you’d consider it for a beat or two. I might go back to a time of peak fitness and all the time in the world. But what is the trade-off? Would you do it all again the same way, or would you stray off the path into something different? It’s easy to remember the best of ourselves, but what of the worst?

      Give me today, thank you. Give me the next chapter of this story, not the earlier chapters that merely set the stage for who I’ve become. There’s nothing to the past but faded memories and the things that got away from us. We can only do something meaningful with today, building on the momentum that brought us here. Life is a progression, not a regression. Our best days may yet be ahead of us.

    • Accumulated Value

      “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” — George Bernard Shaw

      “Those were steps for me, and I have climbed up over them: to that end I had to pass over them. Yet they thought that I wanted to retire on them.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

      There are times when doing nothing seems better than stumbling along making one mistake after another. There are times when standing still seems far more attractive than sliding sideways off the cliff. We are progressing one step at a time, even as some of those steps feel like a plateau. What are we reaching for but some better version of ourselves?

      As we grow and acquire skills and knowledge we become more useful. Our usefulness to others is a trade-off of sorts, a curriculum vitae of accumulated value used to trade our time and applied energy to the greater good, or at least a paycheck and a place in the room where it happens. But that accumulated value also applies to our usefulness to ourselves. We reach our potential through the climb.

      I spoke with an old college friend recently. Conversations with people you haven’t seen in a long time turn into a gap analysis: What have you done in the time between then and now? Relationships, children, jobs, affiliations, beliefs and habits all fill the gap, determining who we become. Some people grow apart, some grow together. Life is a game of place and time, yet we still have a say in who we might be. The thing is, a conversation like that allows us to see the gap in ourselves too. Those steps passed over summarized as growth and setbacks, lessons learned or missed, all bringing us here.

      Do we like the view? We must remember that we’re simply passing over another step. It’s helpful to ask what value we’re accumulating in this present state, and how that might ease our ascent to the next. For the journey continues this day.

    • Only Action Satiates

      “Nothing comes merely by thinking about it.” — John Wanamaker

      When I was just starting out in my career I began collecting books that purported to show the way. We’re all trying to figure out the way, aren’t we? Bold titles like Unlimited Power, Maximum Achievement, The Magic of Thinking Big and Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive all promised the secrets to a bigger life. I still keep these books on a shelf as a reminder to myself that words in a book don’t carry you to your dreams, actually doing the work does.

      We live in a world that rewards decisive action. Fortune favors the bold, as the saying goes. But what we boldly act upon matters a great deal. Choose wisely. Plan the work and then work the plan… so much advice thrown at us in this lifetime.

      We know that purpose and productivity go hand-in-hand. Figuring out the former is essential to being effectively engaged in the latter. But all this thinking about it is detrimental to getting things done at all. We must begin. We must produce something and ship it, learn from that experience and begin again. Rinse and repeat. Having a bias towards action isn’t a call to run around in circles, it’s a call to stop planning to have a great life and get to it already. For there is no tomorrow.

      All this italicized word soup points to the script that runs in one’s head when you spend a career reading about how to be successful. There’s nothing wrong with a clever sound bite if it runs in your head as you do the work that leads to where you want to be. Most self-help books are formulaic, written by people trying to capture financial success for themselves by showing you the secrets only they seem to know. If you’ve read one you’ve read them all.

      Stop searching for the formula for success and develop and reinforce positive habits. Read great literature instead of formula books. Find a fitness routine that you can use for a lifetime. Be the person who brings people together instead of the person climbing over the dreams of others in a reach for the big prize. Write things down and track your progress, and learn to pivot when you see the course is wrong. And yes, take action every day towards the attainment of meaningful objectives at the expense of the trivial pursuits life dangles in front of you.

      Success isn’t a formula, it’s a meandering path of figuring things out one day at a time. We aren’t here to merely think about where we ought to go, we’re here to do something with our time. Success word soup isn’t very filling at all—only action satiates.

    • On Nature and Being… Courageous

      “The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.”

      “If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also, you will have betrayed your community in failing to make your contribution.” — Rollo May, The Courage to Create

      We are humans because we stray beyond nature to decide what to be, and, if we’re truly bold and courageous, perhaps we may even go be it. Just as a tree or a cat are influenced by their environment, determining to a great extent what they become, we too are influenced by the circle we’re rooted in. Yet we have free will and the opportunity to step out of that circle. This is the very nature of being human.

      We don’t always get to choose whether we can step out of our circle. Beliefs and courage alone only determine how we react to our environment, not what the outcome is. Persistence and luck have a say in the matter too. Viktor Frankl survived as much because he was lucky as because he courageously chose how to react to the stimulus he was presented with. The universe has a say in everything, but we have an opportunity to improve our odds by rising to meet the best version of ourselves under the circumstances.

      “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
      ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

      Thankfully, most of us will never face the horrors Frankl faced. Instead we face our own demons, relentlessly chipping away at our foundation, eroding confidence and commitment. This betraying of ourselves is the greatest crime of our lifetime, holding us in circles of our own making. Being bold in the pursuit of who we are isn’t an act of defiance, it’s a lifeline.

      The thing is, we all hear the call of what to be, even if we don’t always know what that looks like. If there’s one thing I’d tell anyone looking for answers, it’s that a “successful” person doesn’t have all the answers either, they only have momentum. We’re all just figuring things out as we go. We might have a direction, we might even have a plan, but nothing is realized without action and momentum. The lesson? Keep pushing the flywheel. Just make sure it’s the flywheel we want to be pushing, because momentum works for us and against us.

      Courage is the urgency of identity, acted upon. There’s nothing more tragic than a person questioning their identity and purpose and holding themselves back from a bold leap. We have an imperative to live as best we can, and contribute our verse. We must summon the courage to step into who we might become, however small a step that might be, and then step further still.

    • Love Is Touching Souls

      Oh, I am a lonely painter
      I live in a box of paints
      I’m frightened by the devil
      And I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid
      I remember that time you told me
      You said, “Love is touching souls”
      Surely you touched mine
      ‘Cause part of you pours out of me
      In these lines from time to time
      — Joni Mitchell, A Case of You

      Joni Mitchell, 79 as I write this, recently played live for three hours with Brandi Carlile and a host of other very talented people. I thought about doing a “Joni Mitchell in Five Songs” blog post as I’ve done with other artists, but this isn’t the time to summarize a career that’s once again active. I think I’ll leave it with this one brilliant lyric from A Case of You. Do you wonder who she’s writing about, or reflect instead on your own ghosts? She remains an inspiration for those of us who are forever stacking words together to find the meaning hidden deep inside of us.

      We are, each of us, influenced by ghosts who reveal themselves now and then in moments of clarity. Some are profoundly important souls who reverberate long after they’ve passed (I think of a certain Navy pilot as I write this), and some reveal themselves in a vision replayed from time to time. A gesture or something said that caught your attention in a conversation long ago, which rewards you now as a nod of approval for an evasive line you didn’t know you had in you. What carries these memories even now, after all this time?

      We are each in the business of touching souls, and making something of our time with others. It would be bold to say that we’ll ever be a highlight in someone else’s memory playlist, for being memorable was never the point at all. Too many focus on cleverness, when it’s bringing meaning to another life that ripples beyond our time.

      So what has meaning in our moments? Isn’t it feeling connection with another, for an instant or a lifetime built together? Touching souls begins with revealing our own to another, that they may feel liberated to rise beyond themselves. It’s a flicker of light in the darkness, fragile yet forever illuminating. Prompting reflections that shine beyond their genesis.

    • We Are All Potentially Free

      “To move forward clinging to the past is like dragging a ball and chain. The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over. We are all guilty of crime, the great crime of not living life to the full. But we are all potentially free. We can stop thinking of what we have failed to do and do whatever lies within our power.” — Henry Miller, Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I

      Cleaning out some old files recently, I came across an old letter I’d received from a woman I’d once dated. It was the last communication I’d ever had with her, and the only letter she’d ever written to me, stuck inside a funny greeting card. Reading it again for the first time in a few decades, I smiled at the memories and returned the letter to the box it was stored in. Perhaps I’ll stumble upon it again in a few decades more. It’s nothing more than a time stamp of who we both once were.

      I know another woman who married the man of her dreams. That groom decided that he hadn’t married the woman of his dreams and they separated. He moved on with his life, she never did, and clings to the illusion of who she once was. She never had children, never met another life partner, and is forever in limbo. Friends and family can’t shake her loose from the illusions of the past. She’s a lovely person who inadvertently became a cautionary tale for the rest of us.

      Do you wonder what memories of today will stumble back into your mind in a few decades time? What will we cling to, and what will fade away? Are we like farmers, perpetually working the same land, or hunter-gatherers, endlessly moving forward towards something new? We’re a bit of both, aren’t we? Perhaps the better analogy is a weight-lifter. Each lift breaks something down within us but may strengthen us over time. If we were to forever carry that weight we wouldn’t go very far at all.

      I mentioned before on this blog that I gave both of my adult children Some Lines a Day journals for Christmas, that they might have moments like the greeting card moment I had, but every day going forward. The trick is to regularly write down what was important in any given day. It forces you to observe, but also creates desire to do something worth writing down. The magic comes in subsequent years, when you can look back on what you did on that day and compare it to who you’ve become. May it be growth.

      We can’t live in the past, but we can surely use our days to build a strong foundation, that we may reach higher in our days to come. The people who come and go from our lives, the people we ourselves once were and never will be again, are all memories of a lifetime. They ought to be building blocks, not a ball and chain, and not nails in our coffin. Growth is nothing more than learning who to be next. We’re all just figuring this life out, aren’t we? It’s okay to hold on to memories, but shed the past and go be who’s next. I bet it will be quite a character.

    • Are We Growing?

      “Are we really growing towards a realization? Or are we, perhaps, just going in circles—we who think that at some point we shall escape the circle of existence?” — Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

      Good habits and bad alike offer ample opportunity to become trapped in a cycle of routine. Writing every morning is likely a good habit for me, running several times a week is great for my bride, and hiking every weekend has transformed some friends who are rarely seen in social settings anymore. There’s no arguing that positive habits have the potential to offer growth and vibrancy, but it’s fair to question now and then whether we’re simply going around in circles.

      What are we chasing? What are we moving towards? Are we collecting experiences or are we accumulating wisdom and leaning in to growth? We ought to look around and ask ourselves hard questions now and then, questions that force us to see who we are becoming. It is only through seeing that we find our direction.

      None of us is getting out of this alive. What we do with this knowledge is essential to who we become in our brief dance. Do we embrace a life of nihilism and distraction or do we double down on finding a purpose that resonates for our time?

      Growth offers the opportunity to make a bigger splash, doesn’t it? We all sink in the end, but each of us offers a ripple that carries across the plane of existence even after we’ve disappeared from sight. Ripples are circles too, but radiating beyond us, that we might touch others, even those who appear out of reach. This is true in our time, and surely beyond it.

    • Borrowed Awareness

      “One day Rumi was teaching by a fountain in a small square in Konya. Books were open on the fountain’s ledge. Shams walked quickly through the students and pushed the books into the water.
      “Who are you and what are you doing?” Rumi asked.
      “You must now live what you have been reading about.”
      Rumi turned to the books in the fountain, one of them his father’s precious spiritual diary, the Maarif.
      Shams said, “We can retrieve them. They will be as dry as they ever were.” He lifted out the Maarif to show him. Dry.
      “Leave them,” said Rumi.
      With that relinquishment of books and borrowed awareness, Rumi’s real life began, and his real poetry too.” — Coleman Barks, From the introduction of Rumi: The Big Red Book

      There’s a creeping awareness that comes over you when you read a lot of books. A realization that you’re simply borrowing knowledge but not living it. It’s the equivalent of being all talk and no action. Being well-read is only a starting point, the rest is up to us.

      Humanity is filled with people who are formally educated but not fully realized. We each have an opportunity to meet our potential, but most of us hide from it in books. Our development doesn’t stop when we finish the book—really, we’ve only just begun. The universe shows us the way and nothing more. This is where we pick up and carry ourselves forward into who we will become.

      There’s nothing wrong with reading books, but we must get out of the covers. We’re far better for having borrowed the knowledge, we just can’t stop with that, satisfied and on to the next. We must stand up on those books, and from that higher plane, reach for something that might have been out of our grasp otherwise.

    • Let’s Begin

      It’s our time to make a move
      It’s our time to make amends
      It’s our time to break the rules
      Let’s begin
      — X Ambassadors, Renegades

      If you want to feel hope for the future, go to a ceremony honoring High School graduates awarded their scholarships. I was awestruck hearing their accomplishments over the last four years, much of which was endured during and in the aftermath of a pandemic when mental health and questions about the future of leadership in this world were very much on display elsewhere. The future, at least in that room, looked very bright indeed.

      Our stories are constantly evolving. Sitting in that room listening to the brief biographies of those kids, with no stake in the game myself, was one of the most enlightening nights I’ve had in a long time. Surely it made me question my own productivity over the same duration. How do we see greatness and not want to have some of it for ourselves? The thing is, greatness is earned, not taken. We may reach higher still.

      Carpe diem: Seize the day. These words are forever associated with a fictional high school class in another time and place. Isn’t it something when you witness it in real life? It’s all around us, hidden in the quiet resolve of people getting things done. Given the same amount of time in a day, we each choose what to do with the minutes.

      It’s easy to see a group of high achievers and feel optimistic. It’s also easy to question what we’ve been doing with our own time, and perhaps feel a bit of an underachiever by comparison. It’s essential to remember in these moments that comparison is the thief of joy. Let us instead be inspired by those reaching for greatness and help them find the way. Greatness isn’t a destination, it’s a never-ending pursuit of mastery in one’s chosen path. If that pursuit is never-ending, it also means it’s always beginning. As in, here we go again. Shouldn’t that realization excite us?