Alexandersmap

    Category: Personal Growth

    • Irreplaceable Instants

      “Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life.” — André Gide

      Here we go again: another week beginning. Much like last week and the week before, yet we’ve changed. We’ve layered on our moments of insight and irreplaceable instants that root us in identity and purpose, or perhaps left us anchor-less and drifting. Let’s hope for the former.

      The thing is, this week is different from those weeks gone by. It’s surely more tangible and immediate, but more, this one is in our hands. We can’t get too caught up in our previous successes and failures, we can only double down on what works for us. And maybe, try something bold and new.

      I like the idea of micro-bursts: sprints of intensity where you focus on key activities that move you towards your goals. In rowing it was a Power 10, where everyone put aside personal discomfort and focused on making the next ten strokes their very best. It started with a call from the coxswain when they felt the boat needed a boost in momentum. And it nearly always worked.

      Focus on living a bold, meaningful life can start in an instant. Often it begins with a feeling that you need a bit of a boost in productivity or purpose. With the right concentration and effort, like a boat gaining a burst of speed and swing, it nearly always works to reset rhythm and concentration.

      Now seems as good a time as any.

    • The Consent to Discover

      “One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.” — André Gide

      The truth is, we each concede more than we consent. The truth is, discovery is a shore too far for many of us. And yet we each set sail in our own way from the past every day. What seems the same alters ever so slightly each day, imperceptibly, inalterably, and we wrestle with the truth of it whether we set our course for distant shores or futilely try to hold on with all our might to what once was.

      This is the time of year when parents post pictures of children heading off to school, on their way to discovering their own new lands. The discovery isn’t just for the children, but the parents too, as they return to a home different than it was before. At such moments the daily leap is profound in its breadth.

      So often we dwell on the gap between where we are and where we hope to be and our confidence waivers. Discovery requires a leap into the unknown, and the courageous consent to make that leap. Indeed, the thrill of losing sight of who we once were and gliding into an unknown future might be frightening, but ultimately, doesn’t it bring us to places we never thought possible?

      Sometimes we get so caught up in what we might lose that we forget about what we might find.

    • Solitude as a Path Forward

      “Society is the cave. The way out is solitude.” — Simone Weil

      We know, deep down, that our way is found in the quiet moments. It’s so easy to be caught up in the expectations and scandals of society, so easy to trap ourselves in the words so tightly shaped around the stories of our lives, that we might never really fly. Yet we must fly, whatever our flight path may be, if we are to get out of that cave. How many countless souls never fly?

      We grow up hearing we might be odd if we aren’t part of the group. As adults we hear that we’re either in the collective party of the righteous or there’s something suspicious and odd about us. To be a part of the tribe we must participate in the rituals of the tribe. And so we all fall in line, find our career path, work to strengthen our relationships, build our bridges, marry up and in, and then have kids and place them carefully into the right environments to maximize their own potential in society.

      There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a part of things. We learn and grow in society. We play our part and find meaning through our connection with others. We meet people who help transform us from what we were to what we might become. We rightfully celebrate our place in society and the people who are woven into the fabric of our lives.

      One might point to the social structure as the clearest way to find our place in this world. We get in the mix, bounce ideas off each other, collaborate, feed off the energy in the room, get a leg up with the help of others, and so on. And indeed, so it is that we thrive in a world built on maximizing the contribution of the individual for the benefit of our collective future together.

      But if there’s a shared secret we all know, it is the critical nature of solitude in finding our own path forward. It’s the voice inside your head saying, “And what of me?” We can’t really make out what that voice is saying until we step away from the din. What we find, if we are so audacious as to listen, is that that voice has a lot to say.

      Is it narcissistic to ask such questions? Parts of society would shout down such selfish ideas. The very idea of contemplation and individuality are reckless and dangerous in many corners of this world. But is it selfish to seek solitude, or selfless to find places to reflect? We don’t run away from society, we stride boldly towards ourselves. The boldest ideas are conceived in solitude.

    • Time in Orange

      The early morning is my game: fresh ideas, new hope, quiet time with the reset before the madness begins. All the petty frustrations of yesterday punted abruptly to a previous version of me, not today’s me. No, not yet.

      A rising waning crescent moon, just a sliver, dances with Venus, also rising, calling for attention herself. Behind me, Jupiter, god of the sky, living up to his nickname as he brightly dominates the western sky, not conceding any royal status as the sky brightens ever so timidly around him. A satellite glides quickly past, just below the king, brash in its intrusive busyness. “A little decorum, please?”, I think to myself, quietly admiring the boldness of technological advancement in the face of custom. Jupiter, playing the long game, remains stoic and proud, despite the affront.

      I return to yesterday, thinking today might be better. It ought to be better, with a bit more effort, a bit more applied acting the part, and maybe, like that satellite, a bit more intrusive busyness. But there I go again, dwelling on the past, cheating the present. This rusty, orange, glowing, hopeful present. It demands more from me. It deserves more from me.

      I dreamed of a TSA agent who wouldn’t set me free. I’m not someone who remembers dreams, but this one woke me at just the right moment, freshly minted in my brain as it was, that it stayed with me through the ritual of orange. I think of it still, that maddening limbo. And it made me think of fresh starts with a sprinkling of boldness.

      Time in Orange

    • Becoming That Shape

      “The ability to fantasize is the ability to grow. [For] boys and girls… the most important time of their day, or especially at night before going to sleep, is dreaming themselves into becoming something, or being something. Into being something. So when you’re a child you begin to dream yourself into a shape, and then you run into the future and try to become that shape. When I was 10, 11, 12 I began to dream of becoming a writer, and the rest of my life has been the real task of shaping myself to that boyhood thing. So fantasizing has been very creative.” – Ray Bradbury, from Day at Night Interview, with thanks to The Marginarian for showing the way.

      It’s easy to spot potential in others, when you pay attention to such things. A nephew with a knack for brilliant cooking, a niece with an eye for brilliant photography, a friend with the aptitude and attitude for finish carpentry, a son or daughter with the unique combination of empathy and talent that they bring to the world. When you look for the spark in others, often it’s easy to see. And sometimes it’s barely detectible, needing space and air to spark into something more substantial. We, witnesses to the fire burning inside others, either feed the spark or snuff it out. Which will we offer in the moment?

      And what are we with ourselves? Are we stoking our own dreams or snuffing them out? We ought to be arsonists with our spark, stoking our dreams and lighting the way for others. For in those moments alone with a dream, when we see so clearly what we might become, we discover our anima. In Latin anima refers to “a current of air, wind, air, breath, the vital principle, life, soul” (wiki). There’s magic in air as we dance with that vital principle, for there we form our (dare I say it) life’s purpose. For us humans trying to reach our potential, the question or what animates us ought to be front and center in our journey to becoming what we might be.

      In our brief dance with light and air, we must build our beacon in earnest. Shaping ourselves into whatever we believe possible shouldn’t be the stuff of childhood fantasy, it can be our lifetime pursuit. For dreams ought to be stoked, if only to see how brightly that spark might burn.

    • Enjoying the Interval

      “There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.“ — George Santayana

      Santayana was a Harvard professor who personally influenced a long list of people who in turn became influential themselves. People like Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Walter Lippmann, Gertrude Stein, G. E. Moore, Wallace Stevens and others. So the way he spent his interval seemed pretty substantive and consequential. He demonstrated that we can enjoy our time while also making the most of it.

      So sure, they say that life is what we make of it. But on the surface this feels somewhat simplistic, given the general indifference of the universe towards our feelings on the matter of our fragile egos. Through the fair and unfair, the rituals and routines, the obligations and distractions, the magical and the mundane, we all choose and have choices imposed on us. In the end, or rather, in the interval, it’s all in the way we play the game, despite everything thrown at us along the way.

      Knowing we’ve hit this lottery of birth in our time and place, we ought to be fully aware of this moment and the opportunity it represents for us. I might have written a version of that phrase a hundred times now in this blog. Be assured it’s a reminder to myself more than a call to action for others. A reminder that, in the end, this interval is all we’ve got to work with.

    • What We Will

      “If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” — E. B. White

      I grow cilantro, not so much to eat it, but to watch bees roll around in the wispy white flowers that wave ever so lightly in the breeze. Surely someone must grow cilantro for all the tasty dishes (or soapy dishes) one might imagine it worthy of, but give me the bees, please. Summer officially ends for me the moment the cilantro peters out—like life itself—entirely too soon.

      The dance between the earnestness of rolling up your sleeves and fixing things versus opening up your heart and savoring all the world offers is a constant struggle. As with everything, we must skate the line between the world of order and the world of chaos, Yin and yang. Nobody said this living business would be easy, but it’s such a short ride we ought to make the most of it.

      Still, there’s work to be done, and no time to waste in solving the world’s problems. As anyone out there trying to get things done knows, there’s just not enough people willing to make a go of it and do the work. Every school, every hospital, every landscaper and construction firm and restaurant is struggling to find a warm body with an eager mind to simply do the work. Who are we to ignore the call? Yet so many do.

      Every day should be filled with a bit of challenge, and a bit of seduction. Every life lived well ends with a measure of satisfaction for the things we did well and a measure of consternation for that which wasn’t accomplished. That’s life, and we must learn to skate that line. In the end, we do with it what we will.

    • An Active Event

      “We think of inertia as the state of being inert or motionless—one of our purer displays of passivity and disengagement. It’s not. Inertia is an active event in which we are persisting in the state we’re already in rather than switching to something else… The most reliable predictor of what you’ll be doing five minutes from now is what you’re doing now… The most reliable predictor of who you’ll be five years from now is who you are now.”
      — Marshall Goldsmith, The Earned Life

      Yes, you might detect a pattern in the writing recently. I keep returning to the Tom Peters statement that excellence is the next five minutes. Habits are hard to break, routine is either a prison or a path to a brighter future. And inertia now can predict who we are in five years if we don’t take that next step to change right now.

      Does that sound unnecessarily urgent? Perhaps, but aren’t the stakes just that high? We are what we repeatedly do, and more often than not we repeat the same damned thing this five minutes as we did last. So we ought to take this next five minutes and demand something more of ourselves than the previous five. We ought to make it an active event that transcends our previous place.

      The easiest way to determine the truth in that is to look at what we did last week and compare it to what we did last year. Sure, there are highlight moments of trips and events that break up the sameness, and a pandemic mixed in to skew the data, but on the whole things are roughly the same. If our habit loop is positive this can be a very good thing, but if we keep repeating bad habits we might be living in a rut that runs straight to the grave.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it is actually big. That’s the paradox of making small improvements.” ― James Clear, Atomic Habits

      It’s easy to spot inertia when we look at intentions. If we intend to write the book or run the marathon or summit the mountain but find ourselves dancing with the same excuses we had yesterday and five years ago, well, let me introduce you to our friends inertia and low agency. On the flip side, if you’ll allow me to use a few of my own examples, inertia is publishing this blog every day for the last four years, reading early every morning and most nights and maintaining a streak on Duolingo that’s approaching 1000 days. Maybe each is small in the big scheme of things, but each is a +1 on the path to becoming.

      @jackbutcher

      Moment-to-moment we make decisions that pull us forward or set us back. We default to the familiar, which both reinforces our identity now and reinforces it in our future. That past moment isn’t this moment unless we choose the same thing. Will it be a plus or a minus? Our vote ought to be for an active event, our action should be a plus.

    • Reach

      To understand many things you must reach
      out of your own condition.
      — Mary Oliver, Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way

      There’s a place for nuance. There’s a place for understanding. And above all, there’s a place for meeting in the middle. This inclination to receptiveness runs counter to the toxic stagnation of self-centered.

      There is another virus spreading through the world—it’s a virus of the closed mind. We’ve become closed to new perspectives that might challenge our own. Too many sip the same flavor of Kool-Aid (blue, red, orange seem to be the only flavors at the moment in the U. S.). But a full life doesn’t fit neatly into such rigid choices, does it?

      Like a root-bound plant left too long in its pot, we must reach out of our own condition to grow to our potential.

    • Action and Contemplation

      “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who are alive.” — Howard Thurman

      Most people remain too busy to worry about such things as coming alive. They’re too busy getting things done. Bills to pay, a calendar full of meetings, chores to do, calls to make… it’s all too much, really, to be thinking about things like doing something more than this.

      I wonder, who is more alive, a monk living in seclusion and contemplating the big questions or a business tycoon living their answer to a different set of questions? Are humans built for thinking or for action? Most people would point to the latter, for the modern world and our very resilience was built on action: overcoming enemies and disease and solving the riddles of science and technology to arrive right here at this extraordinary moment in time (!).

      But who do we seek out for answers? It’s the poets and philosophers and deep thinkers who seclude themselves from the madness and settle down with the questions everyone else is too busy to answer. The wisdom of the ages was derived from contemplation. So can’t we make a solid case for the monk?

      The world needs both, of course. Action and contemplation are each essential elements for the progress of humanity. Yet each can be a form of procrastination and avoidance. It’s fair to ask ourselves which path is right for us, but we can’t get so caught up in the question that we don’t go anywhere. The world is already full of people who never come alive. Ultimately, we must stop wrestling with questions and seek our own answer.

      So is it ready, aim, fire or ready, fire, aim? The order isn’t always as important as the balance between the two. Running around in circles is just as pointless as sitting there thinking about what you’re going to do without ever actually taking a step. Action and contemplation lead us to vibrancy together. We can’t know what makes us alive without each.

      As Thurman says, ask, but then do.