Alexandersmap

    Category: Personal Growth

    • A Commitment to Transformation

      “A person susceptible to “wanderlust” is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation.” ― Pico Iyer

      As I write this a cardinal is singing in the window, driving the cat a bit insane, and distracting me with questions: “What are you doing in your nest? Shouldn’t you be flying?”

      “I’m busy leaving breadcrumbs”, I silently answer the cardinal. And indeed I am. For every post is a mark for where I’ve been at any given moment. A public journal of sorts, documenting what I’m reading, where I’m visiting, who I’m learning from, what I’ve stumbled upon that made my jaw drop.

      You can’t document what you haven’t experienced. Imagination is a lovely thing, and brings so much to the world of humans (Refer to da Vinci’s Saper Vedere), but we’re also students on a quest to learn as much as we can about this life we’re doomed to leave too soon. Experiencing requires getting out in the world and finding it, not just living through someone else’s YouTube or InstaGram feed.

      Those different perspectives we encounter are building blocks that in turn carry us somewhere even richer, snowballing experiences into transformation. Who has gone anywhere in this world and returned the same person? And what is the purpose of living but growth?

      The thing about breadcrumbs is they don’t stick around forever. My trail of transformation is a click away from disappearing forever, sort of like us but with bigger data centers. That’s the way of the world, we’re all just fleeting memories in some future person’s mind. But who says we can’t fly in our time? Who says we can’t offer a small ripple felt imperceptibly on a far shore?

    • Struggle Informs

      “Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing. I do not know you God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.” — Flannery O’Connor

      This is the most vivid description of ego as our enemy that I’ve come across. Whatever your feelings on God, put that aside for a moment and recognize the prayer for what it is—a cry to get out of our own way to do what we know we’re here to do. For there’s nothing more universal than the internal struggle of ego casting a shadow on our true mission.

      Struggle informs. It teaches us where our gaps are. Gaps in knowledge or skill or physical strength. Learning where our gaps are offers us an opportunity to bridge it with effort and help. Alternatively, we might turn from the gap thinking it a chasm we cannot cross. We all make choices on what we might grow into and what we let die. When that dying is a piece of us it feels a bit more personal, doesn’t it?

      And yet we must choose to move forward in our lives. We must decide what to be and go be it. That may sound smug and simplistic on the surface, especially when we so clearly see the gaps and view it as a chasm. But the ask isn’t to take a flying leap, but to begin closing that gap, one step at a time. To gently push ourselves out of the way, just a little, to see what we might become over time, should we take another step after this one.

      What casts a greater shadow over our potential than our own ego? We must learn to get out of our own way. For there’s so much more beyond our current position. Can’t you just see it?

    • Consider Life an Adventure

      “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” ― G.K. Chesterton

      Admittedly, I’m tired writing this. Two weeks of travel and burning the candle at both ends and I’m worn out. But that’s why we dance with coffee, isn’t it? To press ahead just a bit further.

      The thing is, we’ve had a couple of years to reset. We all did the best we could under the circumstances. Getting back to whatever this normal is gives us a chance to stretch our imagination more. To find new adventures just around the corner, and to have the gumption to venture much farther. Not to fill our InstaGram feed or gain subscribers, but to shake loose of the cobwebs of the commonplace and experience the world.

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

      Who ever looks back with pride on a moment when you decided to sleep in instead of dancing with adventure? We ought to consider life an adventure and do more with that notion. We ought to rise and seek more from our days, for we only have so many to work with. We’ve spent time with people on their deathbed who literally can’t go outside to see the stars, who are we to complain about stepping out into the world? Dance with the gift of freedom. Be part of something livelier.

      “Who can guess the luna’s sadness who lives so briefly? Who can guess the impatience of stone longing to be ground down, to be part again of something livelier? Who can imagine in what heaviness the rivers remember their original clarity?
      Strange questions, yet I have spent worthwhile time with them. And I suggest them to you also, that your spirit grow in curiosity, that your life be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as you feel how it actually is, that we—so clever, and ambitious, and selfish, and unrestrained— are only one design of the moving, the vivacious many.”       — Mary Oliver, The Moth, The Mountains, The Rivers

      We all have our shackles of responsibility and routine. We can bend our days to find adventure while still honoring our core responsibilities. And we should question our routines when they hold our rambunctious spirit in place. Consider, for a moment, that convenience is a shackle disguised as a mindset.

    • Incremental Awareness

      As the days grow longer in the Northern Hemisphere we detect the changes around us. The changes were happening anyway, but it seems to accelerate. Just this morning I watched the sun rise through a window where I haven’t seen the sun rise since last autumn. A mix of travel and weather conditions made it a complete surprise when it happened.

      And what of the changes we take ourselves through? We exercise, eat the right food, read and write every day and nothing seems to come of it. And one day we catch ourselves in surprise at who we’ve become without realizing it. Hey, that’s me! The light dawns on Marblehead, as they say in Boston when you’re the last to know. We know we’re changing, but don’t often see it in ourselves.

      Until we do.

      Why don’t we have more incremental awareness? Why don’t we see the smallest of changes in ourselves as we’re making them? Are we lacking self-awareness or are we just not giving ourselves the credit we deserve for doing the work? It’s as if we’re trained not to notice that we got up and worked out for three days in a row, we have to wait until we have washboard abs to be allowed to celebrate.

      The only way to be incrementally aware is to track ourselves. To write it down. To draw a big X through another day on the calendar (especially when you didn’t really feel like doing X that day). It’s not about the washboard abs or the number on the scale or the published novel, it’s about the process — saying we’re going to do something and following through on it. And then doing it all again tomorrow. Incremental action isn’t suddenly seeing the sunrise after your first day, it adds up over time and reveals itself slowly.

      When it will suddenly dawn on you.

    • Discipline, Daily

      Watch the man beating a rug.
      He is not mad at it.
      He wants to loosen the layers of dirt.

      Ego accumulations are not loosened with one swat.
      Continual work is necessary, disciplines.
      — Rumi

      We’re all on our journey of becoming. We’re all working to grow in our chosen work, to experience life more richly, to continually refine and reinvent ourselves, to reach our potential. But we can’t grow in a box. The journey requires some space and momentum, which necessitates cleaning out some old beliefs and habits acquired along the way. Sometimes cleaning up the old is easy because it was never really a part of our core, but sometimes the old is so embedded in who we are that we’ve got to beat it out.

      I have some old beliefs and habits I’m not particularly willing to carry around with me anymore. I don’t give them any light to grow, but ugly beliefs and bad habits don’t need a lot of light to fester. The process of clearing them out requires a lifetime of consistent effort.

      Discipline is derived from the Latin disciplina, which means “to learn”. But any dance with the dictionary will indicate that discipline also has another meaning: “to chastise or scold.” Discipline thus has both a positive and negative connotation. No wonder people shrink away from discipline! So what are we to make of it?

      We’re all works in progress. Old habits are like old friends that remind us of what we once were. Sometimes that’s a delight. But often we shake our head at who we used to be. To live in the present is to acknowledge that former self and see who we are today. Every day is a reset, a chance to move forward or to slide back. Every day we get to decide what to be and go be it.

    • Create Evidence

      “Belief in yourself is overrated. Generate evidence.” — Ryan Holiday

      What does your personal scorecard look like as we crossed off the first 100 days of 2022 earlier this week? What were your highlights? What hasn’t met your expectations when we began the year?

      Doesn’t that inform us of what needs to change immediately?

    • Developing Identity

      At what point on the line of consistent routine does a habit accelerate from a regular part of your life to a major part of your identity? Put another way, if we are what we repeatedly do, at what moment does what we do become us? It may be that moment when you can’t imagine doing anything else but this habit now and forever. But I think it’s a notch beyond that: when others see you as that character you’ve developed into and that habit is reinforced and self-perpetuates.

      Consider a friend who has only been consistently hiking for maybe ten years. Her identity developed around hiking and she’s gained hundreds of followers on her InstaGram account because people associate an activity they want to do more of with her. Or consider my bride, who has run consistently since she was a teenager. Half the town knows her as that lady that’s always out running. Heck, I sometimes think of her as that lady too. Consistent routine develops identity. Identity becomes the essence of who we are.

      But both of these women began with a first awkward step out into the unknown. Both learned what worked for them and what definitely was not going to work. The essence of who we are is derived from what is essential for us. The rest is marketing. You either inform the world of who you’ve become or wait for them to see it for themselves.

      Like a river carving its deepest channel on its truest route, what we say yes and no to as we favor our chosen path becomes the deepest part of our channel. In a river oxbows gather silt and are eventually cut off altogether in favor of the channel. Likewise, some things that were so very much a part of our identity peter out and die from lack of attention. I once fancied myself a sailor, yet I don’t currently have a boat. A friend also fancied himself a sailor and purposefully accelerated and reinforced that identity by trading up to bigger and bigger boats and forgoing career advancement for a log book full of hopes and dreams realized. Who’s the sailor?

      I’m about to click publish on this blog, as I’ve done every day for a few years running now. Does that make me a writer? The answer is what you want it to be. Decide what to be and go be it. And then inform the world (and yourself) with your consistency.

    • 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?