Alexandersmap

    Category: Personal Growth

    • Avoiding the Bankruptcy of Life

      “To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea… “cruising” it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.
      “I’ve always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can’t afford it.” What these men can’t afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of “security.” And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine – and before we know it our lives are gone.
      What does a man need – really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in – and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That’s all – in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade.
      The years thunder by, The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.
      Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life? ”
      ― Sterling Hayden, Wanderer

      Hayden chose the opposite of a comfortable routine, breaking from a lucrative Hollywood career and a failed marriage, he took his four kids and sailed to the South Pacific. Some might demonize this act of defiance as irresponsible. For why would someone give up “everything” and let it all ride on one spin of the roulette wheel? The question, really, is about what you’re risking. Status and reputation? Or a steady paycheck to cover the mortgage?

      I know this debate. I have it often with others. Life is full of compromise and the occasional break from the routine. Isn’t it? But should it be all or nothing? Is there a place for measured discipline to live side-by-side with an adventurous spirit? Is there a place for the routine traverse sprinkled with small delights, or must we choose?

      I wander about in graveyards now and then. This isn’t a morbid fascination with death, but a visit with those who once lived. Two of my favorite graveyards are both named Sleepy Hollow. The one in Concord, Massachusetts has some of the great transcendentalist writers in history interred there—Thoreau and Emerson. The one in Sleepy Holly, New York has Washington Irving and a bunch of formerly rich people interred there. Most of the rich people build huge monuments for themselves, most of the creative types have modest headstones. It’s like a shout from the grave: “See? I once mattered!” The thing is, they’re all part of the infinity now. How they lived is gone, but for their legacy. And so it will be for you and me.

      Somewhere between the routine traverse of life and the bold adventure of throwing it all away in favor of a life of challenges lies a happy medium. To be present but to be bold. To make choices that stretch your limits of comfort and bend your routine. To feel the urgency of now, and live while there’s still time, but to do it in a way that keeps you present for those who need you the most. And that’s the trick—isn’t it?

    • Centered

      The knight and the castle move jaggedly across the chessboard,
      but they are actually centered on the king. They circle.

      If love is your center, a ring gets put on your finger.
      Something inside the moth is made of fire.
      — Rumi, A Mystic and a Drunk

      We wrap our lives around certain customs and communities, we pursue certain career paths and devote ourselves to certain people. But what is it that centers us there? Are we attracted to comfort and familiarity, or is it something more? When we get a sense of place, from where inside of us do we hear the siren?

      If we are the average of the people we spend the most time with, what in turn draws them to us? What energy are we bringing to the universe aside from a refrigerator full of beer? When friends grow old and drift away, when family is busy and distracted by life and the days grow silent, how do you fill the void? What is your fire that warms you in the dark?

      Our center is not the frenzied world we surround ourselves with. The problem with finding purpose and identity in a world full of noise is that we don’t hear our own voice. For all the talk of finding a burning purpose and following your heart, most people keep looking the wrong way. Instead of throwing more wood on the fire sometimes you’ve got to let things burn down to their essence. Our answers lie deep in the embers.

    • Upon Further Review

      “Suppose we suddenly wake up and see that what we thought to be this and that, ain’t this and that at all?” — Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

      The world is full of revelations, for the way we see the world is never really how the world is. Collect enough revelations and you learn to take what people tell you at face value. People have funny beliefs about everything from political or religious affiliation to the subjectivity of the officiating at sporting events. Waking up to the truth in the world requires humility. We all think we’ve got it all figured out. Often what we figure out is that we didn’t really have anything figured out.

      There’s been a plethora of articles in business publications recently about The Great Resignation. Millions of people decided to leave their jobs and to leap into another or just get out of the rat race entirely. I know a few of these people, and easily understand their desire to change things up. Millions of people looked around and said, “This can’t be my purpose here, can it?” They finally saw that it wasn’t all this and that.

      Every day offers an opportunity to review all those things we think we have figured out. All those beliefs we cling to. Every day offers an opportunity to change it all. But it also presents an opportunity to celebrate what we have. Isn’t that something?

    • These Next Five

      “Excellence is not a ‘hill to climb;’ excellence is the next five minutes.” — Tom Peters

      Tom Peters tweeted a one page summary of accumulated wisdom yesterday. I’ve quoted Peters’ “next five minutes” statement before, because it lays it all out there for us so succinctly. I’m using it again with fresh perspective after attending a trade show these last few days and reconnecting with so many people who have been integral in my career. It’s always been about now, not next quarter or even tomorrow. What we do with the rest of our life is nothing more than these next five minutes, stacked incrementally one after the other to form its substance.

      We can’t sustain high levels of urgency, but we can celebrate the ripe potential of each moment and remind ourselves to do something with it. Life is now, we all sense that. The concept of time is very human. Five minute increments are but a basis of measurement, conveniently contained in one hand. Imagine what we can do with these next five.

    • The Battle Inside

      “The greatest battle of all is with yourself—your weaknesses, your emotions, your lack of resolution in seeing things through to the end. You must declare unceasing war on yourself.”
      — Robert Greene

      We all have our moment-to-moment skirmishes with ourselves. We fight through our worst traits or we succumb to them. It’s easy to let things slip, easy to settle for good enough, easy to wrap up early or scroll through Twitter or your social media feed instead of focusing on what must be done in the moment.

      Seth Godin calls it our Lizard Brain, this thing that prevents us from doing the things we most want to do. Steven Pressfield calls it the Resistance. We’ve all felt it when it comes to following our calling: imposter syndrome, distraction or lack of focus, busywork, putting others first… and on and on.

      Routine breaks through the bullshit. Habits force a reckoning with the truth of the matter. We must get past ourselves and simply start doing what we were called upon to do. The battle inside rages, but it becomes a war of attrition. We either give in to it or we see things through to the end.

      Every moment we take meaningful action towards our calling or we slip backwards or sideways on the path. Becoming is dirty work full of blood, sweat and tears. The largest battles are with ourselves. But don’t we have to fight them? Decide what to be and go be it.

    • The Benefit of Being Lost

      Lately I’ve doubled down on getting lost. Now, I understand that deliberately putting yourself into a place where you’re lost might seem counterintuitive and odd. But the thing about being lost is it forces you to find your way out, and this is where learning takes place.

      Case in point: I dove into the deep end with learning languages, doubling down on French and German (!) and forcing myself further beyond my comfort zone with each. I’d been doing the bare minimum with French for a couple of years, never really proceeding beyond “Je m’appelle John. Je suis un homme. Où est le toilette?” Barely functional and not exactly conversational.

      Something triggered me to dive deeper into lost. With French it was a lingering dissatisfaction with scratching the surface of feminine and masculine terminology, never diving into the nitty gritty because I stuck with the bare minimum to check the box for the day. With German, well, I booked a trip to Austria and Germany and forced my hand to figure it out.

      The only way to truly learn a language is to immerse yourself in it. That’s true for a foreign language or the language of your craft. Want to understand the world of finance or a testing laboratory? Immerse yourself in that world and learn the world of pie charts or pipettes. Want to know how to build a house? Join a crew and start hauling lumber. Every apprentice begins completely lost in the world they’ve immersed themselves in. But then something funny happens—your hand is forced and you slowly, awkwardly begin to learn. We’ve all experienced this in school and in our earliest days after graduating and beginning careers. But then we get comfortable and stop challenging ourselves. We stop getting lost. And in our comfort we stop growing.

      Taking the easy path slowly kills our learning and kills us in the process. Comfort kills our brains. Kills our dreams. Kills any momentum for big leaps and dramatic turns. In nature we grow or we die, there is no stasis. Yet so many seek stasis.

      Maybe diving deeper into a couple of languages doesn’t quite equate to growing or dying. But then again, maybe it does. Challenging our own status quo begins with making ourselves uncomfortable now and then. It begins with stumbling through challenges and finding our way out of it. As with physical fitness, growth comes from stress. There are benefits to being lost. For in being lost we may find our way.

    • The Possibility of Beauty

      “What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      Positioning this idea of beauty in the world seems quaint when wars and pandemics flood us with so much ugliness and darkness. What are we to do but find light in the darkest corners? Life is a dance along the edge between chaos and order, and we must know both. But we can’t dwell in either. Still, if we are to become what we focus on the most, why not focus on beauty?

      Writing, like photography, focuses us on what we want to find in the world. We seek out wonder while our opposites wrestle for control and influence. If the world teaches us anything it’s that life is textured and imperfect and more than a little unfair. But it’s still a blessing to be here in it. To celebrate the inexhaustible beauty in this complicated world is a mission of possibility and hope. What we make of it is up to us.

    • Here in My Mold

      ‘Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony, that’s life
      Tryna make ends meet
      You’re a slave to money then you die
      I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down
      You know the one that takes you to the places
      Where all the veins meet yeah
      No change, I can change
      I can change, I can change
      But I’m here in my mold
      I am here in my mold
      But I’m a million different people
      From one day to the next
      I can’t change my mold
      No, no, no, no, no
      Have you ever been down?
      — The Verve, Bitter Sweet Symphony

      Do you hear Thoreau’s “quiet desperation” quote in your head reading the lyrics of Bitter Sweet Symphony? This song exploded in the mid-1990’s, becoming a theme song of sorts for Generation X and maybe some of those who followed. How do the lyrics hold up, almost three decades later? I think it depends on how well you’ve broken free of your mold.

      Breaking free of that mold you’ve been cast in and following your heart is reckless. The very idea of breaking free disrupts all you’ve built around you. For what is a mold but that? Our very place in this world is determined by where we place ourselves. Life is change and moving beyond our old self. We must grow and see where the road takes us. Where our heart takes us.

      Watching people you care about quickly turn from vibrantly alive to quickly sliding into the next triggers an urgency to break molds. To do the things you’ve been putting off and live today. This is what the stoics have been telling us all along. Memento Mori. Carpe Diem.

      Get after it already. Follow the road where all your veins meet. We can all change.

    • One Week in Infinity

      “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
      ― Vladimir Lenin

      I’m hesitant to quote Lenin for all the reasons you might imagine, but the quote resonates this particular week, when the world and my own world turned in on itself and landed with a thud. Plans and lives can change in an instant. Our bravado betrays us as our fragility surprises us. It might all seem too much.

      And yet the rivers still flow to the sea. The sun continues to greet us every morning, indifferent to humanity’s struggles. The most distant stars reach across 100,000+ years to express their indifference, and their light keeps on reaching beyond us to infinity. Who are we to fixate on a single week?

      And yet, in the microscope of a human lifetime, Lenin’s quote rings true. Some weeks are far more eventful than others. Some moments stay with us forever. But what is forever for you and me? We weren’t built to dance with infinity, but we can dance with today.

      Like that starlight flying past us, this moment will pass. We will pass. But we each play our small part in what happens before it all flies away. We ought to make the most of it.

    • Focus in Chaos

      How do you stay informed in a world gone mad without losing focus on the things that are most important for you? It’s not easy–we can all find something very distracting and completely out of our control just a click away. I allocate time for my daily news update from trusted sources, absorb the weight of it and do my best to keep crossing the stream of time one leap at a time without drowning in the abyss.

      When you refocus on that next leap, does it mean you’ve chosen ignorance, or discipline? For all of us to remain sane in a time of escalating tension, we can’t keep drinking from the fountain of bad news. Be aware, react and refocus on what we can control. We don’t cross the street without looking both ways, and we shouldn’t completely ignore the world around us. But it doesn’t mean we should huddle in fear and never take the first step towards our destination. We can’t bring light into this world without action.

      Just like those before us, our time is full of challenges and assaults on our senses. And like those who came before we must find a way to focus anyway. The only real choice is to assess our place, summon up the necessary audacity and make the leap.

      Be bold, despite it all.