Alexandersmap

    Category: Philosophy

    • Remember Your Dreams

      Take it all in
      It’s as big as it seems
      Count all your blessings
      Remember your dreams
      — Jimmy Buffett, Jimmy Dreams

      We who try to reason with an unreasonable world can get pulled into distraction before we know it. We know that distraction steals our lives away as quickly as a murderous thief. The time given to distraction will never be returned to us. Focus on the future. Remember your dreams.

      Just writing this, I thought maybe I’d link to a video of Buffett singing the song I quoted, which led me to YouTube, which promptly threw a hundred distracting options at me that could easily have taken this productive moment from me in exchange for trinkets of frivolity. It happens so quickly, so easily, that we hardly notice it anymore. And before we know it our dreams are deferred to a tomorrow that will never come.

      We must be bold to dream big, but then we must be disciplined to realize them. Be present. Be aware. Be alive and vibrantly focused on the things that matter most in this time and place. These are days we’ll remember—the madness in the world assures that, but we must make it our mission to write the script ourselves.

      To be alive and aware of what we’re doing with the time puts us ahead of the masses of minions watching curated videos all day. We may leverage that time advantage to realize a dream or two in our allotment of days. There is no other reasonable alternative but to be bold and leap into life.

    • A Look and a Listen

      I want to leave to you,
      My grandchildren,
      This wren from Down,
      Its cotton-wool soul,
      Wire skeleton, feathers
      Apparently alive,
      Its tumultuous
      Aria in C or
      Whatever the key
      In which God exists.
      — Michael Longley, Another Wren

      I learned that Michael Longley has passed, and realized that I’ve never quoted a single poem by him in this blog. To do so now, after his death, is one way to keep his voice alive. But then, don’t all poets transcend the fragile timeline of life? We all ought to write more, as a gift to our own grandchildren and their children beyond.

      We get so angry at the world and the failings of mankind that we ignore the music playing in the background while we rant. It turns out to be quite beautiful when we return to stillness and hear it as if for the first time. We owe it to ourselves to discover the miracles hiding in plain sight. We become like the Marshall McLuhan analogy of fish in water, not realizing what they’re swimming in. Friends, we’re swimming in miracles. Have a look and a listen.

    • Ship of Fools

      “Why have we left it all to fools? It should have been ours.” — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

      There’s no getting around the foolishness in the world. It’s maddening if we let it be, but we must remember that it’s always been foolish and maddening. This is simply our time to navigate it all. The reason it frustrates us so is because we had such hope for the world not so long ago, and then the fools turned it all upside down.

      We’re setting sail to the place on the map
      From which no one has ever returned
      Drawn by the promise of the joker and the fool
      By the light of the crosses that burned
      Drawn by the promise of the women and the lace
      And the gold and the cotton and pearls
      It’s the place where they keep all the darkness you need
      You sail away from the light of the world on this trip, baby
      You will pay tomorrow
      — World Party, Ship of Fools

      We’re being carried along, pressed-ganged into service to pirates seeking profit, as the world burns. In a moment when humanity needed to rise up to meet the climate crisis head-on, we chose oligarchs and conmen to steer the ship. Where it leads us, only science can predict. But why listen to facts when there’s so much money to be made? There will be consequences, and life will be more challenging than it might have been if we’d simply chosen progress over short term profits.

      Maybe I’m missing the part where all the billionaires and pirates pool their resources to save the world. Let them prove me wrong, but their track record isn’t particularly impressive. We aren’t here for miracles, we’re here to face to world as it is (and will be) and to position ourselves for the best possible outcome given the circumstances. Our answer is to build resilience into our own lives and to have our lifeboat at the ready.

    • Connecting Miracles

      “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” — Albert Einstein

      I spoke with one of my aunts yesterday. I don’t see her and my uncle all that much now. Really, I don’t see any of my aunts and uncles much now. In fact, most of the people who were central to my identity in the first half of my life are not very present today. Childhood friends and enemies, teammates, old coworkers and that person we went on the nervous date with once upon a time. Life gets busy, we tell ourselves.

      The truth is that we can’t be everywhere at once, and some people who mean the world to us gradually slip away as the gap of time and place grows. A bridge requires strong anchors on both sides, but oftentimes we forget to tend our own end of things. So many people in our lives want for a simple call and conversation. We have more power for connection than we utilize in our frenzied, important lives. And what is really all that important anyway?

      We have this one go at things. When we view our lives as a miracle of infinitesimal chance in the cold expanse of the universe, we may appreciate our waking up to face whatever our day brings us a little better. When we consider our fellow time travelers, living their own miracle moment at the same time that we are, well, perhaps we might appreciate their presence a little more. We are stardust, after all, and so is that older neighbor down the street, that barista serving us go juice and the guy that just cut us off on the highway. All miracles in the moment; starstruck and dumbfounded in where we find ourselves. Go figure.

      Connecting miracles is a mission we opt into. Active engagement with the world is a choice. Using that mobile device to actually make a call instead of watching another curated video is a bridge to someone else who may be in desperate need of a reminder that they too are a miracle. Connection is harder than ever in this world of distraction and outrage, but it’s our choice to make.

    • Putting Nothing Aside

      “If you do nothing, nothing will happen.” — Joanna Nylund, Sisu: The Finnish Art of Courage

      Nothing simply delivers the results we deserve. The lesson is to do something more to earn more, so that something might be realized. Even better, we may choose to take meaningful, powerful action, so that meaningful, powerful things may be realized. Boldness may be our dance partner, but she doesn’t dance with just anyone. We must be bold ourselves.

      We wake up with a blank slate each day, and get to fill it in with world-building activity. We are building the world that we live in each day, aren’t we? It might be true that we don’t control a lot of things, but we forget in focusing on that to focus on the things with which we have agency. Forget what we cannot control! That leads to a whole lot of nothing. We must put nothing aside and get busy building.

    • The Length and Breadth of Life

      “Go out this morning. Love yourself, and that means rational and healthy self-interest. You are commanded to do that. That’s the length of life. Then follow that: Love your neighbor as you love yourself. You are commanded to do that. That’s the breadth of life.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

      Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. day in the United States. It’s also inauguration day for the new/old President. We may choose to celebrate what we wish to celebrate today, that’s our right. I’ll be a voice for hope, love and understanding today. May we all become better versions of ourselves than we’ve been thus far, for we still have so far to go.

      We ought to take care of ourselves better. Eat better, drink more water and less alcohol, move more, find ways to let stress float away instead of embedding itself inside us until it metastasizes. Living a healthy lifestyle is a choice that pays dividends, hopefully with a longer life, but surely with a more vibrant, energetic life now.

      All that newfound energy ought to be put to good use. We may find a community of positive, productive people who raise our expectations of what is possible. Opening ourselves to the world allows our minds the elbow room necessary to expand our perspective. We are the average of the five people we associate with the most, so why settle for a community that drags us down? There’s no reason why can’t reshuffle the deck and raise the bar.

      Asking what we’ve been conditioned for is often the first step to moving ourselves to a better condition. A longer life is not guaranteed but possible. A broader life is like changing our glasses out for a new prescription—life-changing perspective is often a matter of changing what we’re focus on. It can happen today. And really, what better day is there than today to bring positive change into our world?

    • Sisu

      “The exact meaning of sisu is difficult to define. There’s no one word in the English language with a literal parallel, and even in Finnish, sisu stands for a cluster of traits that includes stoic determination, hardiness, courage, bravery, willpower, tenacity and resilience. Sisu is an action-oriented mindset: it comes into play as you take on a challenge seemingly beyond your capacity. It is called upon when adversity and opposition force you to give up and only your courage allows you to hold on.” — Joanna Nylund, Sisu: The Finnish Art of Courage

      I’ve encountered this word, sisu, several times over the last few years. Each time I’ve told myself to write a blog post about it to explore it further, maybe in hopes of internalizing the traits that make up sisu into my own mindset. After all, I’ve been writing about stoicism for years with the same goal—surely some stoic traits have permeated the thick scull of this writer. But writing about sisu felt different because it’s not my word to write about. I’m not Finnish, and the traits that are sisu are something you display, not some clever term the marketing team can hijack.

      “An essential trait of sisu is the lack of a need to talk about it. Any kind of swagger or talking up your bravery has no place in sisu. It’s no good just saying you have sisu if you can’t show it – let your actions do the talking.” — Joanna Nylund, Sisu: The Finnish Art of Courage

      So we aren’t talking about bravado here. Living a life more aligned with sisu feels an internal calling. An aspiration to be bold in the face of all of this crap the world is throwing at us nowadays. This is no time to be soft. This is no time to be wringing our hands and giving up. These are our days to reach for personal excellence (refer to my other favorite word; arete). We can’t very well let ourselves down now, when there’s so much at stake in our lives.

      We know that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Maybe this is the right time to finally embrace the word and simply be more stoic, be more brave and tenacious and courageous. To stoke the fire within and push through the challenges ahead. Then again, hasn’t it always been that time? We must simply rise up to meet the moment, again and again. And knowing what we now know about the word, isn’t that sisu?

    • Purposeful Motion

      “It was a strange foreshortening between sight and touch, she thought, between wish and fulfillment, between—the words clicked sharply in her mind after a startled stop—between spirit and body. First, the vision—then the physical shape to express it. First, the thought—then the purposeful motion down the straight line of a single track to a chosen goal. Could one have any meaning without the other? Wasn’t it evil to wish without moving—or to move without aim? Whose malevolence was it that crept through the world, struggling to break the two apart and set them against each other?” — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

      Purpose comes with clarity. Clarity comes with mental space to sift through the noise and find our calling. Once our why is clear to us, we must then act with purposeful motion towards that goal, or the game is up. So many days are wasted playing the wrong game. So it is that we must have clarity to maximize our days with purpose.

      We can be well aware of the news, but that doesn’t mean we have to consume the poison. We vote, we donate, we work to be the voice of reason in a maddening world, but at the end of the day, we’ve got things to do, and we must get to them. We must stay on track with our goals or we’ll never reach them. As my bride loves to say about the madness in the world, it’s not our circus, not our monkeys. Our circus is filled with exciting possibility waiting for our attention to be realized.

      I can see clearly now, the rain is gone
      I can see all obstacles in my way
      Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
      It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
      Sun-shiny day
      — Johnny Nash, I Can See Clearly Now

      This year will be filled with obstacles in our way that demand our focused attention to navigate. How we get past them is to be determined, but doesn’t it make sense to build a little momentum first, that we meet them at peak performance? It’s easy to look out at obstacles and simply give up. Easy, but not very fulfilling.

      The thing is, it’s never been about the obstacle, it’s about the goal beyond the obstacle. Write the book, build the business, reach the peak, build a lifetime partnership—we know our goals, we must stop focusing on obstacles and focus instead on the way beyond them. Life is an accumulation of accomplishments and milestones. On our deathbed will we only talk of obstacles, or of the things we realized in our time?

    • Singlemindedness

      “To follow without halt, one aim; there is the secret of success. And success? What is it? I do not find it in the applause of the theater. It lies rather in the satisfaction of accomplishment.” — Anna Pavlova

      Single-mindedness is a superpower. With it we focus on our top priority at the expense of all others. Without it, we are a jack of all trades. We may become good at many things, but as the expression goes, we master none. We simply cannot reach mastery without single-mindedness.

      The real question is, what should we say yes to that would make all else a no? Is it best to live an abundance of yeses or a highly restricted life of many no’s? Does mastery trump the pursuit of a life of many passions?

      Naturally the world couldn’t care a lick what we wish to focus on. There are many important things on our to-do list and an infinite number of distractions available to pull our attention away from the essential. We must wrestle with these questions as we progress through life, with each stage bringing a different perspective. But throughout our entirety, we must protect our focus as if our lives depend on it. Surely it does.

    • A Fragile Walk

      On and on the rain will say
      How fragile we are how fragile we are
      — Sting, Fragile

      A woman in town walked out on the pond ice to take a picture of the moon and broke through the thin ice. She fought to get out of the frigid water, and when that failed, to hold on for help. After several minutes of struggle a rescuer had a hold of her and it felt like she would survive. But the ice broke on the rescuer and in his plunge he lost grip on the woman. Exhausted and hyperthermic she slipped under the water to her death. The rescuer, distraught and frozen, was himself rescued. I wondered what her plans were for the Saturday evening she wouldn’t live to see.

      It’s thankfully rare for someone to drown in this pond. A friend with a long memory can only recall two other incidents in the last hundred years. He had walked on the ice himself not far from where she broke through, but knew the ice better. She had simply strayed too far from the safety of thicker ice as dusk turned to dark to see the moon. Were it an hour earlier perhaps more people in the area could have made a difference.

      We all tread on fragile ground. Memento mori. Our duty is to recognize this and optimize the time we have left. Don’t fear dying, fear not living while we may.