Alexandersmap

    Category: Personal Growth

    • Saper Vedere: Knowing How to See

      “And so she woke up
      Woke up from where she was
      Lying still
      Said I gotta do something
      About where we’re going”
      – U2, Running To Stand Still

      This song is about drug addiction.  Thankfully I’ve never been a drug addict and so I guess I don’t hear it that way.  Instead I hear the cry out for more than this that leads the couple to escape through drugs.  Seeking a more vibrant canvas than the one we’ve currently painted is a common trait among humans.  Whether we do it through positive pursuits like travel, art, or exercise or through other pursuits like drugs or porn or consuming media makes all the difference in how we grow.  The character Bono sings about could easily have gotten up and picked up a pen instead of a needle.  Perhaps they didn’t see another path out of their current situation.  Perhaps they never saw the light that glimmers around us in the dim reality of poverty.

      “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

      To reach for “newer” demands we stretch ourselves.  To reach for “richer” infers personal growth as we expand our ideas about what our place in this world can be.  We all face the same ticking clock and react to it in our own way.  And that reaction itself changes with time and experience.  At least if we learn from our experiences as we accumulate them.  I shake my head at some of the experiences I had earlier in my life that I didn’t learn from.  But not learning from what happens in our lives is as much an experience as learning and adjusting the first time.  We all travel the winding path of life at our own pace, and some paths are much harder than others.  But having the vision to see what you want your life to be and building a foundation underneath it is the missing link for so many.

      “The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.” –  Leonardo da Vinci

      Leonardo da Vinci had a philosophy about life called “Saper Vedere” that I find particularly fascinating.  Saper Vedere means “knowing how to see” and it involves visualizing whatever it is you’re creating through a mix of “arte (skill), scientia (knowledge), and fantasia (imagination)”.  (Here’s my source of this information).  So Saper Vedere applied to our lives offers clarity and purpose to the sculptor inside of us.  We’re all inventing our lives every day, or we’re sliding sideways letting the world dictate what we do today and tomorrow and the rest of our days.  I like the former, don’t you?  Every day I try to learn a bit more, to apply that knowledge in productive ways, and to taste, and learn from, experience.  I don’t always achieve everything I visualize in a day, but believe I get closer to the ideal than I might otherwise.

      So Saper Vedere takes its place with Carpe Diem and Memento Mori as a way of living that squeezes the most out of our raw potential.  Slowly creating the life you visualize, one step at a time in our quest for Arete (another word that’s been lodged in my brain since I was a teenager).  In Greek mythology Arete means “Excellence”, or reaching one’s potential in this very human life.  I’m not sure its possible to reach our potential, but we can get a lot closer, can’t we?  The striving for excellence begins with having a vision for the life you’d like to live, and then doing the work to achieve it.  To wake up and do something about where you’re going.  To reach out without fear for newer and richer experience.  To have a vision for your life and to pursue it in earnest, beginning today.

    • Be Less Comfortable

      “It takes many hours to make what you want to make.  The hours don’t suddenly appear.  You have to steal them from comfort.  Whatever you were doing before was comfortable.  This is not.  This will be really uncomfortable.” – Derek Sivers, Where To Find The Hours To Make It Happen

      This phrase, stealing hours from comfort, was  plucked from a blog post Sivers wrote last October and highlighted yesterday by Seth Godin, borrowing for one of his own blog posts.  And so I pay it forward here.  For there’s genius in the phrasing, isn’t there?  We all have the same amount of hours in the day, and those who do exceptional things with their lives do so by stealing hours otherwise spent on comfortable things like binge-watching Ozark or SV Delos YouTube videos (guilty x 2).  In the meantime the great novel in your head slides sideways into the abyss.  The language you might have learned remains a mystery to you.  The belly gets soft.  The community volunteers carry on without you.  The work is accomplished by others, and we look on in awe at what they achieved.

      And the answer, of course, is to be less comfortable.  To challenge yourself more.  To do the work that must be done to get from this place of relative comfort to a better place of greater meaning and contribution.  To stop scraping by at the bare minimum and double down on your effort.  For all that is worthwhile in this world requires an investment in time and a healthy dose of discomfort to earn it.  But we have to remind ourselves of this daily, because comfort is a dangerous temptress.  And before we know it the days, weeks and years fly by and the dreams remain only dreams.  So toughen up, buttercup!  A bit less comfort is the answer to the question of where will you find the time?

      As Jackson Browne sings, I’ve been aware of the time going by…  and so I’m trying to invest my time in less comfortable things.  Hiking with intent, writing more, working more focused hours in my career, and slowly chipping away at expanding the possible of today.  But I’m still too comfortable.  When there’s so much more to do in the time we have left, isn’t it essential we get to it already?  And in some ways the pandemic offers us a reason to make profound shifts towards the uncomfortable.  To break from the routine and tackle the meaningful.  A catalyst for change just in the nick of time – in this, our critical moment.  For if not now, when?

    • All That’s Beautiful…

      “I heard the old, old men say, ‘Everything alters, And one by one we drop away.’
      … I heard the old, old men say, ‘All that’s beautiful drifts away Like the waters.’ – WB Yeats

      Most people don’t like change.  They want to stay in the same comfortable place indefinitely, go to a time share vacation at Disney World every year or to the same beach to have the same experience they had last summer.  Familiar and enjoyable, so why not do it again next year?  And that’s why people buy time shares and beach cottages and permanent camp sites for their Airstream.  There’s a lot to be said for the tried and true.  Immersion for one: Really getting to know a place by going there often.  I’ve really gotten to know a small corner of Buzzards Bay in this way, and find that I still don’t know it as well as I thought I did last time I visited.  Yes, there’s clearly benefit in returning again and again.

      But as Yeats points out, everything alters.  I look at the neighborhood I live in that once had a roving pack of 50 kids riding bicycles and playing games in each other’s yards (a rare phenomenon in the last 20 years).  All those kids are grown up and moved on.  Some new families have moved in, I don’t really know their names, and have started raising the next generation of kids.  Maybe someday the neighborhood will have those packs of kids playing again.  I hope so – otherwise all that Halloween candy goes in my mouth.

      In general I’m a big fan of change.  I’ve changed jobs when it didn’t feel right staying at a place and longer.  I moved primary residences ten times before settling on the place I currently live in, where I’ve been living for 21 years.  But I’ve painted every room in this house a different color at least twice, and some four times.  Change is part of the deal, whether we move or not.  Embrace the changes that happen around us and adapt in ways that make it work for you.  Nobody misses rotary phones, which made your finger numb when you had to dial a long number.  Nobody misses the days when you had to go into a bank to make a deposit or withdrawal instead of using an app on your phone or Venmo to complete a transaction.  Some change is good.  Its progress – the progression of humanity from one stage to another in our technological development.

      “I see my folks, they’re getting old
      And I watch their bodies change
      I know they see the same in me
      And it makes us both feel strange
      No matter how you tell yourself
      It’s what we all go through
      Those eyes are pretty hard to take
      When they’re staring’ back at you”
      – Bonnie Raitt, Nick of Time

      Then there’s the changes that happen with aging.  The progression of decline in our bodies as we grow older.  Aches and pains we didn’t have when we were kids.  Seeing those around us again as well and recognizing the path we’re all on.  I’ve got a heightened sense of awareness of this now more than ever.  We’ve considered moving to a faraway place just to change things up a bit.  Scotland, Iceland, the Azores, the Faroe Islands, Dominica and New Zealand all remain tantalizing places to relocate to for me.  Sailing around the world sounds attractive when the world is open for business, but what do we leave behind when we slip away from the dock?  I think a younger me might have made the leap had the younger me known the stakes.  The me before kids, before aging parents, and such things.  Now I’m not as sure.  But aging doesn’t mean you have to break down quickly.  Fitness is a way to stem the tide and live well in the time we have left.

      All that’s beautiful drifts away, whether we like it or not.  But its replaced by new beauty, if we only open our eyes to it.  We’re all breathing in the dust of eternity, and exhale a part of ourselves back into the universe, which makes us all connected, really.  All part of the timeless wave of humanity, surely, but also all matter.  We all have our minds wrapped around our own mind and body, but we’re just matter and energy with a soul.  The matter and energy move on in time.  Beauty doesn’t disappear, it just moves on down the chain.  We’re just links trying to jealously hold onto to it as long as possible.  But the soul is ours alone, here today, but where will it be tomorrow?  Time will tell.  Anyone who tells you they have the answer is conning you.

      My wife got a call from her mother yesterday, telling her the bad news about one of their neighbor’s kids who has cancer all over their body and isn’t expected to live more than another 18 months.  I suppose that got me thinking about old Mr. Yeats and his poem.  We’re all drifting away eventually, and sometimes much sooner than we’d prefer.  A good reminder to get on with living already, changes and all.  Life is more than a weekly paycheck and a house with a pool in the backyard and a familiar spot on the beach every summer.  Life is about making the most of ourselves in the time we have left.  Live beautifully alive, changes and all.

    • Everything Flows

      Everything Flows

      “Wu-wei is the understanding that energy is gravity, and thus that brush writing, or dancing, or judo, or sailing, or pottery, or even sculpture is following patterns in the flow of liquid.”
      “Panta rhei—everything flows, and therefore the understanding of water is the understanding of life. Fire is water falling upwards.”
      – Alan Watts, Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown

      I’m a novice when it comes to Chinese philosophy – Taoism – and perhaps I should have spent more time previously in pursuit of a better understanding.  But in a way I was following my own flow in a different direction.  Or better put, I was following a parallel stream with gardening, hiking and time on the water.  Eventually experience leads you to the same conclusions, even if you don’t understand Chinese characters and the rituals that lead you to the stream.  I’m not sure yet how deeply I’ll be swimming into this stream, but find it familiar and natural.  I believe that’s the whole point.

      Google the term “go with the flow” and you’ll see various points of origin, from Marcus Aurelius to William Shakespeare.  I wrote a post a while back about the river as an analogy of timelessness.  So to now tap into the stream of consciousness that is Alan Watts and dipping a toe into the waters of Taoism isn’t unnatural.  Unnatural is commuting to the same place every day, sliding into a cubicle and staring at a screen for hours, working through lunch to prove you’re a team player and willing to pay the price to get ahead.  Intuitively I knew I had to get out of that world as soon as possible and delighted in the exit strategy provided by my employer at the time.  I used a phrase back in my rowing days to describe the lifestyle I’d found myself in with coaching and doing odd jobs to sustain my pursuits: It was an “attractive rut”.  Enjoyable enough to keep doing it indefinitely, but limiting enough to recognize that you needed to do more in life.  Attractive rut also summed up my time working 50 hours per week in an office environment.  Great money, but soul-crushing in the end.

      Career shifts, sabbaticals, graduations, divorce, moving across borders to new places and the like are all forms of state changes. Fire is water falling upwards.  Transformation of our former self into something new, as dried wood transforms to fuel for fire then ash and finally back to the earth to begin again as something entirely different.  But transformation happens in every moment along the way from birth to death.  The question for each of us is how true to our path we remain along the way (I’m reminded of splitting wood, and how some pieces are all knotted and stubbornly resist the swing of the axe.  Difficult and unnatural, but they’re consumed by the flame just the same in the end).  This concept of transformation isn’t exclusive to Taoism:

      “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” — Genesis 3:19

      We’re inherently different people day-by-day as experience molds us and events steer us just as water swirls around rocks in a stream.  We’re watching the world around us swirl around the pandemic and social unrest and transform who we are and will be downstream, and I recognize that I’m also transforming.  And so it is.  Life is a dance, and we’re all finding our way across the page one way or another, following patterns in the flow of liquid and making our small ripple in the endless stream of time.  There’s nothing unnatural about Tao, for it is inherently the natural path of life.  What’s unnatural is resisting the flow and diverting yourself towards pursuits that don’t align with who you are.  One of the beautiful things about life is discovering your own flow and releasing the resistance to following it.

       

    • Getting Lost is Not a Waste of Time

      “We can park the van and walk to town
      Find the cheapest bottle of wine that we could find
      And talk about the road behind
      How getting lost is not a waste of time
      Le Bois d’Amour will take us home
      And in a moment we will sing as the forest sleeps”
      – Jack Johnson, What You Thought You Need

      I was thinking about getting lost, and how it never really turns out that badly.  There are different ways to get lost, of course.  Getting lost on the road used to be common until we put global positioning services in our pockets.  Shame really, in most cases when I wasn’t in a particular hurry, I used to love pulling the atlas out and looking up the street name I was looking at to figure what the heck went wrong on my drive.  There’s magic in maps, and the whole world would open up for you in that moment of realization of where you were.  Now people just follow directions from a phone.

      I see a generation of students graduating with degrees that don’t really tell them what the directions are.  You get a degree in Electrical Engineering you generally know the first step on the path after that.  But what of the Philosophy or the Business major?  What shall they do as a first step out into the world?  Suddenly lost in a world that seemed to offer clear steps to take every moment until this one.  And to double down we’ll throw a pandemic at you.  Enjoy!  So it’s no surprise that so many are looking around saying What next? and hoping for an answer.  The answer lies within, friend.  You’ve been told what to do for your entire life, now it’s your turn to tell us what you want to do.  Don’t know?  Welcome to adulthood.  Take the time to listen.  Do things that pull you in different directions.  Uncertainty is a gift should you use it wisely.  Most don’t use it wisely. Life is full of transition moments where you need to sort through things to find your way.  Not what you “have to do” but what you wish to experience.  What is the path that brings you there?  Be patient, you’ll find the way.

      “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
      – Ralph Waldo Emerson

      Closely related is being lost in your mind.  Not losing your mind in a road rage sort of way, but lost in your thoughts.  Driving an hour and realizing you’re already there and not quite sure where you were for the duration.  Where did the time go? Getting lost is a gift.  It’s the soul’s way of gently steering you towards another track.  I find I’m spending less time lost in my mind as I write more and as I’m more present in the moment.  I take long walks trying to get lost in my mind and realizing that I’m present the entire time.

      “To be awake is to be alive.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      Thoreau was awake, but he was restless and lost until he had time to sort through things.  Walden was a great example of sorting through things and putting it on paper to help the rest of us find our own way.  I think of the moment before he went into the woods, when he was living a life of quiet desperation and lost on the path.  He found it in writing and contemplation and conversation with great thinkers like Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne.  I should think there might be no better place to find your way than getting lost in conversation amongst great thinkers.  That might not be possible with that cast of characters, but we can still tap into their thoughts, conveniently downloadable right onto that magic computer in your pocket.

      “Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

      And here I think of the scene from Dead Poet’s Society where the boys find the cave and reveal the great works of time to each other.  The magic is in discovery and sharing and lifting each other up.  Conspiring with some fellow soul and realizing that hours have gone by like minutes.  Helping lost souls find their way, together.  Until the adults get in the way anyway.  Rejoice in getting lost in conversation and in reflection, for getting lost is not a waste of time.  It’s a pivot point in our lives and a chance to find a new direction.  If you’ll just stop listening to the adults telling you where to go and listen to yourself.

      “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” –  Ralph Waldo Emerson

      It’s easy to get lost in this mad world.  Billions of souls all trying to find their way – how do we figure out our place in all of this?  The world sparkles in light and breathless magic.  The world also grinds down dreams into dust and feeds it back to you as cake if you let it.  Who says everyone else has it figured out anyway?  I can assure you they don’t.  Celebrate being lost.  It’s far more interesting than knowing every step laid out in order like those cars in amusement parks that ride on tracks.  Remember how boring that got as you realized you weren’t really going anywhere special?  Suddenly the only interesting part was crashing into the car in front of you or getting bumped from behind.  I’ve seen many career paths that look just like that.  There’s nothing wrong with finding yourself off the track.  You’ll be amazed at the view as new paths open up ahead of you.

    • Capturing the Light

      There is a scene in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty where Walter Mitty looks at a picture of Sean O’Connell.  Walter is the daydreaming, play life straight ahead guy, Sean is the bold, adventurous photographer who masterfully dances on the edge between chaos and order.  Walter looks at the picture of Sean looking back at him and sees Sean waving to him “Come on, already!” as Wake Up by Arcade Fire begins to play.  I find it impossible to not be stirred up by this scene, no matter how many times I’ve watched it.  Because that’s all of us who play life straight ahead, looking at the bold and adventurous and wanting someone in that world to look us in the eye and tell us, “Come on, already!”  Mostly we forget that we can say it to ourselves.

      I took my typical plunge into deep water this morning and watched the sun beams streaming through the forest, lighting up each leaf it landed on in thousands of fluttering florescent green glowing congregation of the faithful.  Those who remained in shadow seemed to gaze longingly at the brilliant dancers, and I understood the look as my own.  I confess I’m awestruck at moments like that, and floated in the water watching the light probe deeper into the forest and continue the dance beyond my line of sight.  Light and shadow and me treading on the surface, floating in wonder.   It occurred to me at that moment that writing is capturing the light, and having the audacity to try.  There was better poetry in that moment, and I don’t quite have the words to reveal it to the world.  But I recognized it nonetheless and work to serve the muse who patiently awaits my contribution.

      I’ve been pondering the word audacity since I woke up this morning, but I don’t feel like it’s a word I can own.  After all, I’m not living an audacious life.  I fancy myself bold and audacious, but really I’m rather conservative in every day living.  I do audacious things on occasion – little exclamation points on a moment as I’ve written about previously.  But upon further review I’m more Walter than Sean.  I suppose most of us are, and that’s the appeal of a Walter Mitty moment.

      Whenever the fog of life clogs my line of sight I put on those noise cancelling headphones and watch Arcade Fire perform Wake Up at the Reading Festival and I’m jolted to clarity.  I suppose that’s what plunging into water does for me too.  An immediate state change.  An opportunity to reset.  But ultimately I come back to the reality that I’m still in the Walter skin.  And I choose to stay in it.  Secret conspiracies for audacious living remain, but Sean hasn’t waved vigorously enough to shake the inertia just yet.  Come on, already!  Absolutely, but could you wait for tomorrow?  I’ve got to finish this project I’m working on.  That wouldn’t be a very good movie at all, would it?

      Audacity has a negative connotation, but I’m rather fond of the positive connotation.  It derives from Latin, audacia  and means daring, boldness, and courage.  Three traits we’d all like to think we have in abundance.  Like most people, I’m chafing at the bit, restless at the quarantine and the impact on travel and getting out there.  It’s hard to live audaciously when you aren’t allowed to cross borders.  But then again, maybe it’s just waiting for you to wake up and get to it already.  Audaciousness is capturing the light within ourselves and showing it to the world.  Highlighting our spirit within for the world to see.  It seems you don’t have to cross borders to be audacious.  You just have to get to it.  Cue the music.

       

    • The Highest Alchemy

      “The process of life should be the birth of a soul. This is the highest alchemy, and this justifies our presence on earth. This is our calling and our virtue.” – Henri Amiel

      I’ve managed to finish three books this year, a disappointing total to be sure.  But I’m actively reading every day, and balance a stack of virtual books on the Kindle app that I read through often with an actual stack of books that I return to now and then.  I’m reading a lot, and yet I’m not finishing a lot of books.  Go figure.

      I’ll often read a quote like the Henri Amiel quote above and immediately research the author’s work on Wikipedia, scroll through highlights of their publicly available work and if inspired I go on Amazon and add to the stack.  I added to the stack with Amiel’s Journal, widely declared his master work (free on Kindle)… and published posthumously.  Which brings me back to the quote that inspired the search, and emphasis on the quote that wasn’t there previously.  Quotes are funny things, we pull out a set of words that seem especially powerful, tag the author and leave it out there like a neon sign on a dark night.   Knowing something of the author brings context and resonance.  It’s something that Maria Popova is masterful at with Brain Pickings, and you’ll see my own attempts at it here now and then.

      I’ve learned over the years to dig a bit deeper in my own process of life.  To linger on something that others might skim over.  And most of all to learn, and to hopefully add a bit of value to the rest of the souls walking this earth now, and maybe some future then too.  To pursue the highest alchemy, if you will.  And I’m seeing some return on investment with my two adult children.  Both are deeply empathetic, thoughtful observers with strong leadership traits.  If nothing else comes of my time on this earth, the ripples from these two might be enough.  But that shorts my own time here, doesn’t it?  We’re all a work in progress in our time, from day one to the final day, and there’s still plenty of time to add more.  Today anyway.

      Alexandersmap started out as a blog about the places I was visiting, digging deeper into the history of the place, occasional insight into the best fish and chips or whatever.  And I surely will dabble in these observations again when travel isn’t limited.  But the blog evolves as I read more, think more, observe more….  and write more.  It turns out I’m digging deeper into myself, and putting it all out there for the world to see (thanks) or not see (yet).  That’s writing for you: taking you places you didn’t expect to go.  Then again, maybe deep down I did expect to get here, I just needed to write about fish and chips enough to reach this point.

      “You get better at the craft of writing the more you do it, and that’s the beauty of non-fiction writing being a craft rather than an art. You can practice it, you can get better, whereas with an art, you’re either a genius or you’re not.” – Alex Perry (via Rolf Potts interview)

      Writing, like life itself, is a process.  We’re all just birthing our souls here.  Some remain soulless (I’m not naming names) while some illuminate the darkness for all to see.  Personally, I’m on the journey and marking the trail as I go.  I’m not sure I’m illuminating darkness for anyone, but I’m lighting the way for myself one post at a time.

       

       

    • Smile

      O wondrous creatures,
      By what strange miracle
      Do you so often
      Not smile?
      – Hafiz, Strange Miracle

      The world is challenging at the moment.  It’s always been challenging of course, but most of us never really felt the full weight of the world like we do this year.  Still, there’s plenty of reason to smile, beginning with waking up this morning.  Hafiz pokes at us, offering a challenge to crack the stoic face more often and smile.  Life is a miracle, and we need to celebrate being alive, even as we tackle the realities of our time. A simple smile breaks the spell, and opens up the wonders of the world.  Smiling is the universal language.  God knows we need more smiles now.

      “Smile and maybe tomorrow
      You’ll see the sun come shining through for you”
      – Charlie Chaplin, Smile

      I smile more now than I did when I was younger.  I wasn’t unhappy then, I just didn’t smile as much as I should have.  Always serious.  Always earnestly charging through life. Always looking grimly ahead, focused on the task at hand.  But grim is no way to go through life.  And so I remind myself to stop being so damned serious all the time.  Bring a little joy to others; smile more.

    • Going to Do

      “What’s the me in ten years going to think about what I did today?” – Hugh Howie, TKP Interview

      I wrote a 500 word post Friday night about what I was going to do, read it and tucked it away in the drafts folder. I won’t write about what I’m going to do, I’m just going to do it and write about it after I’ve accomplished something. I have nothing against planning, but I’ve been caught in the trap of making bold claims and not getting there. No more “We will go to the moon” proclamations, just set the goal and get it done. And then I listened to a couple of The Knowledge Project (TKP) podcast interviews I’ve been meaning to get to, and it clarified my thoughts on the matter. I’ve noted my short-term goals, and I’ll pursue them earnestly, but quietly.

      “A lot of our calcification, the inability to break our stasis and launch our lives in a different direction is the feeling that we should have done it ten years ago and we’ve lost the opportunity and now we can’t do it.  But ten years from now we’re going to think the same thing about this very moment, today…  whatever you think you could have done five or ten years ago to change the direction of your life, you can do that right now, today, and make that deflection point, that decision…” – Hugh Howie, TKP Interview

      I can look back and see deflection points throughout my life. Places where I did something that led me to something else that led me here. We all can, really. And sometimes you’ll wish you’d done this or that other thing along the way, or done more of something that clearly would have brought you further down the path to where you wish you were at. But Howie turns that around and points to the future you looking back on you today. Today is your deflection point – what will you do with it?

      And that brings me to another TKP podcast that the interviewer Shane Parrish highlighted in his newsletter; Robert Greene’s concept of alive time. It’s been borrowed and amplified by Ryan Holiday as well. I keep coming back to this concept, and the words “alive time” chirp in my ear whenever I waste time playing one-too-many games of computer chess or watching television or scrolling through political opinions on Twitter. No, you were meant for more than this, get to it already.

      “You really don’t own anything in life. When you’re born, and you come out of your mother’s womb, and you’re kicking and screaming, and you go through your 60, 70, 80, 90 years of life, you think that you own stock and money, and this, that, and the other, but really, you don’t own anything, because it all disappears, it all goes away, and you die, and there’s nothing left. The only thing, the only thing that you own, the only thing that we can say is that you own time. You have so much time to live. … Let’s just say you have 85 years to live. That is yours … Alive time is time that’s your own. Nobody tells you what to do, nobody is commanding you how to spend it. … Taking ownership of your time means I only have this much time to live, I’d better make the most of it, I’d better make it alive time, I’d better be urgent, have a bit of an edge, be aware of each moment as it’s passing and not in a fog.” – Robert Greene, TKP Interview

      So when we talk about this pandemic in ten years, how did it serve as a deflection point in your life? How did you use your alive time to pivot into a new and exciting pursuit? How did you use the extra time with family? What did you learn? What workout did you do that proved foundational in your path to better fitness? What’s the me in ten years going to think about what I did today?

    • Recently Collected Quotes

      My mind’s distracted by work and projects. I need to write them all down and get them out of my head. Prioritize and tackle the list. First on the list is writing, and in writing I’m tackling another distraction: I’ve noticed my quote collection piling up again, which means I’m not sharing enough of them. I save quotes for blogs, for inspiration, for reflection… or simply to remind myself that others thought deeply before my attempts to do so, so get out of your head and do something. I was raised to share, so here are some favorite recent acquisitions to the collection:

      “Don’t do things that you know are morally wrong. Not because someone is watching, but because you are. Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself. You’ll always know.” – Naval

      “Wild success requires aggressive elimination. You can’t be great at everything.” – James Clear

      “Every great thing is done in a quiet, humble, simple way; to plow the land, to build houses, to breed cattle, even to think—you cannot do such things when there are thunder and lightning around you. Great and true things are always simple and humble.” – Leo Tolstoy

      “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” – Marcus Aurelius

      “Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.” – Mortimer J. Adler

      “Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.” – Jack Kerouac

      “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” – Henry David Thoreau

      “Nothing is so certain as that the evils of idleness can be shaken off by hard work.” —Seneca

      Until tomorrow then…