Alexandersmap

    Category: Philosophy

    • Agree to Disagree

      Yesterdays post stirred the pot a bit, with an angry response from someone who firmly believes in a “them” versus an “us”. And that’s the state of the world now, with people crawling deep into their angry place and not seeing the nuance of conversation. To slap down any reach across the aisle or to cancel anyone who dares to have a different viewpoint is the way many people choose to live… but not me. I can see the system is rigged, I can be angry at the injustice in the world, and I can choose to live a positive and productive life of inclusion and generosity anyway.

      The thing is, the world can impose itself on our day at any time. We choose how we react to that imposition. Fight or flight? Thoughtful consideration or immediate dismissal? We only have so much time in our days, we must therefore use it judiciously.

      There is no them
      There’s only us
      — U2, Invisible

      These words triggered, but why? Because we don’t want to believe that “them” is “us” too? That there is a conspiracy of them manipulating our every move? We may acknowledge that and choose to react differently. Every moment stuck wrapped around angry retort is a moment less doing something joyful and productive. Stick with us, it’s a less miserable place to be. That doesn’t mean we have it all figured out, but that we find connection despite the torn fabric humanity has always dealt with.

      The way we hold fabric together is by mending tears. Agreeing to disagree is finding agreement on something, even if that something is disagreement. We can then move on to the next thing, and build from there. If we become what we focus on the most, focus on becoming something better—together.

    • The Chain of Understanding

      “A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally, as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only. We hear and apprehend only what we already half know. If there is something which does not concern me, which is out of my line, which by experience or by genius my attention is not drawn to, however novel and remarkable it may be, if it is spoken, we hear it not, if it is written, we read it not, or if we read it, it does not detain us. Every man thus tracks himself through life, in all his hearing and reading and observation and travelling. His observations make a chain. The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest which he has observed, he does not observe. By and by we may be ready to receive what we cannot receive now.” — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      We are conditioned to see by what we’ve seen. When I think about half of the country believing the current direction of our leadership is great, while the other half are horrified and angry, I can only understand it by conditioning. Those who are conditioned by fear and a scarcity mentality believe one thing. Those who are conditioned to be empathetic and develop a growth mindset in their education, spiritual, career, health and financial life believe another thing.

      Knowing this, I see that the answer lies in education and diversity. Unfortunately, the other side knows this too, and so books are banned, late night talk show hosts are cancelled, and even satellites that give us information about climate change are targeted for destruction. Ignorance is bliss. And humanity takes two steps back.

      So what do we do in a world that is so infuriating? We continue listening, reading, observing and traveling. We keep finding the truth and share it with others. We counter the momentum of ignorance with insight and mutual understanding. We are the ambassadors of truth and compassion, and we aren’t going away any time soon.

      There is no them
      There’s only us
      — U2, Invisible

      So stay the course—learn and grow and share. There is no them, there’s only us. When we stop thinking of them as different from us and simply less aware, something opens up within our own minds. We are ready to build bridges—to help them see, not simply them, but all of us. The solution has always been right in front of us, waiting for enough of us to finally receive it. We are all links in the human chain. That chain connects to an anchor of truth or shackles of mistrust. What we connect to is up to us.

    • Walk it Off

      “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.”
      ― Søren Kierkegaard

      As I write this, the pup is sighing behind me, expressing some minor indignation that I’m spending these moments tapping on a keyboard instead of walking with her out in her kingdom, where she can keep track of the squirrels and rabbits who dare to encroach. We each have a purpose for our walks, but we share discovery in common. She catches up on the latest action in the neighborhood, I sometimes process the changes myself, or I dive deeply into introspection. Each step is different.

      Walking is a nonnegotiable part of my life. Every day I must walk, if not for myself than for that insistent puppy who has also deemed walking a nonnegotiable. For all my focus on cycling and rowing and kettle bell weight circuits, walking remains the one activity I do every day, and sometimes several times a day. The reason for walking hardly matters now, it’s simply a part of my identity—it’s who I am.

      Philosophy and walking are natural allies. We think best when we are moving, particularly when we don’t have distractions like music or podcasts plugged into our ears. Walking is also the best way to experience a place when traveling, and I make a point of walking extensively wherever I go to. My step count always spikes up when I’ve landed in a new place for a few days. Writing that sentence, I feel wanderlust stirring inside me. Walking is a nomadic experience. Our ancestors migrated around the world on their feet. Why not us?

      All this talk of walking reminds me that the world awaits. Shall we step to it? Be still no more than is absolutely necessary, friend. For we were born to move.

    • Narrowing the Path

      “Remember your destination. This will help you to distinguish between an opportunity to be seized and a temptation to be resisted.” — Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, The Two Journeys

      There are forces at play with us daily. We form an identity based on the choices we make. Am I a writer because I write every day? Am I an athlete because I work out twice a day, no matter what? I might believe this to be so for either, or not. There is nuance in identity, isn’t there?

      We know that we are more than the one or two things that we’re identified with. We are heading towards some new version of ourselves with every step. Each day brings us face-to-face with more choices to make (or not make) in determining who we will become next.

      So on and on I go, the seconds tick the time out
      So much left to know, and I’m on the road to find out
      — Cat Stevens, On The Road To Find Out

      What are the heuristics we employ to determine our next step? One ought to consider destination, as Sacks suggests in the quote above. Just where are we trying to go anyway? Are we trying to lose weight? Don’t have dessert with that meal, and maybe skip the bread and appetizer too. There’s nothing wrong with bread and appetizers and desserts if they’re each a part of the path we’re on. If they aren’t, well, why have them?

      My own heuristic is streak-based. I write every day because I started writing every day, and I don’t want to break the streak now. And 2600 + posts later, the streak continues. Similarly, I decided back in June to do a 75 day mental toughness challenge this summer, and with two weeks to go, I’ve managed to stay on track despite some strong temptations along the way. Simply put, my path narrowed considerably when I decided what to be. And so I continue to be it.

      Where is all this going? What is the ultimate destination? We know if we look far enough out that we will all end up in the same place. Memento mori. But prior to that? What is our health span? What experiences do we wish to have in a lifetime? What contribution will we make that is uniquely ours (Whitman’s “verse”)? Our destination isn’t really the best heuristic, but the path leading to it surely offers us the opportunity to thrive in our time. The trick is to keep that path just narrow enough even as we strive to experience more.

    • Only You Know

      And only you know where you have been to
      Only you know what you have been through
      There’s better things you’re gonna get into
      And I wanna be there too
      Yes I do
      — Dion, Only You Know

      There is a lot to hate about technology and how it has slowly pulled us away from each other. So many people simply stare at their phone screen instead of engaging in conversation. The act of connection is a leap across the void, and it becomes increasingly more difficult to connect without eye contact prompted by an uncomfortable gap between distractions. I get grief from some people in my life for talking to everyone. But everyone needs connection, maybe not with me, but with someone, and throwing a lifeline across the void can only be helpful. It’s a brief moment of acknowledgement that we are seen and heard before slipping back into anonymity, should they choose.

      This Dion song is relatively obscure compared to his big hits early in his career, like The Wanderer and Runaround Sue and Dream Lover. But simply dropping it into an episode of The Bear has made it rise to a place of prominence in his catalog. And that’s where technology helps the curious among us, by quickly identifying what that song is that I’m hearing right now, that we may look into it further later. And maybe share a lyric that maybe we didn’t know we needed to know.

      Connection is thus possible with technology, when technology is used to pull us together instead of distracting us from the common voyage we’re on. A bit of awareness, an inclination to share, and the courage to step outside of our shell and see what’s happening with the fellow humans around us is a way to transform a lonely existence into a life filled with affinity, affiliation, and maybe even an inclination to stick around one another a lot longer. Only you know what you’ve been through, unless you turn off the noise-cancelling earbuds, look up from the screen and connect with the world.

    • Small and Transitory Grapes

      How the clock moves on, relentlessly,
      with such assurance that it eats the years.
      The days are small and transitory grapes,
      the months grow faded, taken out of time.

      It fades, it falls away, the moment, fired
      by that implacable artillery—
      and suddenly, only a year is left of us,
      a month, a day, and death turns up in the diary.

      No one could ever stop the water’s flowing;
      nor thought nor love has ever held it back.
      It has run on through suns and other beings,
      its passing rhythm signifying our death.

      Until, in the end, we fall in time, exhausted,
      and it takes us, and that’s it. Then we are dead,
      dragged off with no being left, no life, no darkness,
      no dust, no words. That is what it comes to;
      and in the city where we’ll live no more,
      all is left empty; our clothing and our pride.
      — Pablo Neruda, And the City Now Has Gone

      Life, dear reader! We must live in our time, while there is time. That’s always been the message: Tempus fugit. Memento mori. Carpe diem. Time flies. Remember we all must die. Seize the day.

      We must remember our days are short and use the highlighter with abandon. Sprinkle these moments zestfully with awareness and joyful intent. Do what must be done immediately! For tomorrow is not our day. We believe it to be so at our peril.

      This blog will one day end. That it continues at all is an indication of the stubborn persistence of the writer. It’s merely bread crumbs placed gently in line, one after the other, marking the hour or two of who I was in the moment. These moments pass, and what is left are some memories, maybe a photograph, and some words published for all to see if they somehow stumble upon this impossibly hard to find jumble of words. But we bloggers know that the universe isn’t shifting its attention to see what our thoughts were today. The ego thus shattered, we shift our own purpose to growth, where it should have been all along.

      Words flow through us like days in a lifetime. These small and transitory grapes have found you today. But where will the writer be on this occasion? Somewhere further along, or fallen by the wayside—who’s to know? We can hope for a better place of awareness and refinement, but we know the score. It’s best to simply release these words of who we were today and not worry about tomorrows. We must each do what we can with this time, for we all know the score.

    • Overcoming Currents

      “Our bodies do not take care of themselves in this environment—they need maintenance. If those of us in sedentary or repetitive jobs want to maintain our physical fitness, we have to make a conscious effort to move. We have to set time aside to walk, garden, do yoga, run, or go to the gym. We have to overcome the currents of modern life.”
      ― Robert Waldinger, The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness

      The easiest thing to do in a current is to just go with it. But currents don’t always take us where we want to go. A rip current will send you to your doom if you don’t swim perpendicular to it to get out of its grip. Doing what feels good in the moment, or doing what our friends are doing in their moment, can be enticing in its immediacy, but we ought to ask ourselves where it’s taking us. What’s the harm of a few french fries or a beer with friends? The answer lies in the direction of that current. Is it going where we want to go?

      I know: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But the point is, we must be aware of those damned currents. Currents will pull us away from the vision we have of ourselves or that person we wish to become. Sometimes currents do their work quickly, sometimes so slowly that we aren’t even aware of the changes until we notice the pants are getting a little snug or maybe we struggle going up the stairs. Choosing a different current from the one we’ve been floating on takes some effort and mental toughness at first, but once we’ve entered flow, it all becomes so much easier.

      “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit” — Aristotle

      We always come back to Aristotle, don’t we? On our journey to personal excellence (arete), we must be forever vigilant in knowing what the currents are around us. Just where do we want to go anyway? Build some momentum that counters the current that would pull us away from that. Like pushing the flywheel, soon we build momentum towards something better.

      If this blog feels like affirmation lately, my apologies. It’s just the writer swimming towards something far more compelling. One good habit leads to another, then another, and pretty soon we’re really getting somewhere. There will be more stories to build on this timeline, but those will require a level of participation only possible with a high level of mental and physical fitness. If we agree that we are what we repeatedly do, isn’t it fair to ask ourselves, what exactly are we currently doing?

    • A Quiet State of Being

      If I had another life
      I would want to spend it all on some
      unstinting happiness.

      I would be a fox, or a tree
      full of waving branches.
      I wouldn’t mind being a rose
      in a field full of roses.

      Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
      Reason they have not yet thought of.
      Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
      Or any foolish question.
      — Mary Oliver, Roses, Late Summer

      The heat of summer has propelled the growth of the Musa zebrina (blood banana) plants. Bananas have no business growing in Zone 5 New Hampshire, but they don’t follow the rules layed down by zones any more than I do. I’ve had these blood bananas for more than a decade. I bring them out after the danger of frost, patiently wait for signs of life, and watch them reach for the sky when the days grow long and hot. The season is too short for them to produce blossoms, but long enough for them to thrive in their time before I reluctantly drag them back to the cellar to winter over yet again.

      My bride and I were talking about everything that’s happened this summer, and everything that will happen if things go according to plan (we know how plans go, but we also know that some things never happen without a plan). Life is moving along thusly, and we are swept up in the current of being. We are where we are, doing what we believe we should be doing, one blessed day at a time. We may thrive in our time, or simply dance with the days as best we can while we have them. We determine what we can, and accept that whatever will be will be.

      So many people work so very hard to be happy. As if you could earn happiness by how much money you make or how many likes you have from your latest post on social media. Happiness is not an objective, it’s flows from us as a byproduct of purposeful, engaged living. Purposeful in turn is simply moving with awareness towards something. Those potted bananas are trapped in pots, reliant on my inclination to save them from dying of thirst or a killing frost. Yet they dance in the sun each summer day anyway. Are they happy? Or simply living a quiet state of being in the time that they are given?

    • The Path

      “You can figure this thing out. And your path is going to be different from my path… but there’s certain principles that you can apply to whatever your individual path [is]. And you can learn about the value of discipline and of personal autonomy and personal accountability and figure out how to get better. You’re going to have failures and they’re going to feel awful, they’re going to feel terrible, but they’re very valuable. And you can’t shy away from them because that’s where you learn how to get better. And then your feelings of success, don’t dwell on those either because it’s not about that. It’s really about this path. The path is what it’s all about. It’s really about learning how to live, and learning how to exist in a harmonious way with not just other people but also with yourself. And you have to have respect for yourself, and the only way you develop respect for yourself is you have to know what you’ve done. You have to know that you’ve worked really hard. That you’ve overcome things. And known that you’ve had these little mental battles, these bad ways of thinking, that you’ve turned around. And you realize that that’s possible. I did it before I’ll do it again.” — Joe Rogan, Episode 23352 – James Talarico

      I don’t listen to a lot of Joe Rogan podcasts, because I’ve unfairly thought of him as another bro perpetuating conspiracy theories. But he runs far deeper than that, beginning with a strong desire to listen and understand those that he has conversations with. This episode with James Talarico is a great example of that. But what really caught my attention was Rogan’s description of the path he’s been on, from martial arts to wealthy and influential podcaster. The path is the thing—the path has always been the thing. We just get so distracted by the noise of life that many of us neglect staying the course.

      The thing is, we’re all on a path of our making. That path may lead to the promised land or to our destruction, but it’s our path because we are the ones who are on it. Don’t like the path? Step off of it and take your first steps on another path. See where it leads and decide whether to stay on that one. Paths are simple (if not always easy)—it’s our busy and distracted mind that trips us up. Discipline, focus and an earnest desire to see the path through are what keep us on the path. That’s a life leading towards arete: personal excellence. May we all get closer to our version of it this day.

      I’m on my current path just a little while longer. For 52 days I’ve been focused on better health and fitness, learning and practicing a higher level of discipline and mental toughness. I’ve learned a lot in these 52 days, but mostly I’ve learned to simply stay on the path and do what I promised myself I’d do. Next month I may stay on this path or climb up to something even more challenging, but I know that this path is leading me to that one. Sticking to a path always leads us somewhere. Why not make it somewhere better than where we’ve been?

    • Optimistic Tendencies

      “Optimistic people play a disproportionate role in shaping our lives. Their decisions make a difference; they are inventors, entrepreneurs, political and military leaders – not average people.” — Daniel Kahneman

      I’m generally optimistic by nature, so reading Kahneman’s observations on optimism was a brief boost to the ego. It’s nice to think that we’re not average people, but really, most of us are pretty average when measured against the billions of souls who are navigating the world at the same time as us. Yet each of us may be extraordinary to somebody.

      The world may be uglier and meaner now than it’s ever been in my living memory, but the pendulum will swing back one day. How far it swings back, who knows? But we may have a garden, we may write blog posts that focus on the climb to a better place, we may read poetry and support local artists. In short, we may engage in a campaign of civility and empathy all our own.

      Leadership is all of these things. We lead by example by working on ourselves first—building a foundation of emotional intelligence, awareness and self-actualization propelled forward by a keen sense of direction. Leaders show the way by consistently doing the things that need to be done. We don’t have to have a title to be a leader, just do what must be done and others will see.

      What will we take from this day? Perhaps the better question is, what will we give to this day? Begin within, and see what we may realize in our contribution to a path forward. Progress is made by those who focus on a better future with every action taken.