Alexandersmap

    Category: Philosophy

    • 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.

    • Bridge Building

      “Agency is a divine gift to you. You are free to choose what you will be and what you will do.” — Russell M. Nelson

      “Francisco, what’s the most depraved type of human being?”
      “The man without a purpose.”
      — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

      Agency is the essential difference between going through life a serf or carving out a life of self-actualization. It’s the combustion in our engine on this locomotive we call identity. Otherwise what are we but freight cars being towed by someone else’s dream?

      This year has already brought challenges beyond our control, just as every other year in our lives has. We should help those in need where we can, but we must remember not to focus on the chasms we cannot close. Doing so leads to feelings of hopelessness and indifference. These aren’t the tools of agency, they’re given to those who would take them to break their spirit and put out any fire burning inside, that they too may be towed along with all the rest.

      Those with high agency focus on what they can control and take measurable steps to build bridges to realize their dreams. This internal drive is within all of us, but it must be coaxed back out to be realized. Step away from the chasm of indifference the world suggests is our lot in life and move towards bridge building. If we are to do anything in this life, we must begin now. There is no other right time than this one.

    • In the Ripple

      “Men see God in the ripple but not in miles of still water. Of all the two-thousand miles that the St. Lawrence flows—pilgrims go only to Niagara.” — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      As a pilgrim to many a waterfall, including Niagara, I know the call of white water. Isn’t it thrilling to experience the power of water channeled into a plummet? Yet Niagara herself is only a fraction of what she was before most of her water was redirected to hydroelectric power. It turns out that I’m keen on productivity too, and appreciate the clean energy even as I wonder what those falls felt like before they were diminished.

      We focus so much on the ripple we’re making that we forget that a pond was beautiful before the splash is made at all. Deep down we know that those still waters may still be here for what feels like eternity, but humans don’t have that kind of timeline. We feel a compulsion to do something in our time. If it any wonder we’re attracted to the ripple?

      Action is thus our call. Sometimes it’s in service of the harvest; productive and purposeful. Often it’s merely busyness for its own sake, as if churning the waters enough will make up for direction. The thing is, it’s no secret that water that’s been churned up is often murky. To bring clarity we must also have stillness. All this busyness in our lives doesn’t lend itself to insight or revelation.

      I grew up in New England, where great mill cities were built with the power of channeled water. In the spring when the waters are flowing quickly it’s not difficult to maintain momentum in the mills. But after the waters recede, the mills have difficulty getting enough power. So the mill engineers built giant reservoirs to help regulate the flow of water for optimal performance.

      We run ourselves dry if we don’t pause now and then and gather ourselves. We must learn to settle into our stillness and see what it brings. We may find our creativity flows far better when we fill our own reservoir. Seeking out balance in this way brings us to sustained productivity and the ripple we wish to make, and also to revelation and purpose, that we may find the right channel for our power.

    • Realizing Growth

      “You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.” — Alan Watts

      “The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live.”— Mortimer Adler

      I finished a second book this year, a good pace if you look at how early in the year we are, but these were stubborn books that didn’t want to finish with me in the prior year. Everything has it’s time, and certainly this rings true with books. Looking at my highlights and notes from each, I’ve made a couple of incremental steps forward this year. Let’s call that a win in a year that has otherwise started out in concerning ways.

      We know that we’re all (sometimes reluctantly) connected, but we must remain focused on our own development over the trends of humanity, and then use our growth as a catalyst for change. Knowledge isn’t something to hoard like a greedy billionaire’s money, it’s something we share with others as we navigate the world together. This blog is written to share what I pick up along the way, but so is a conversation with a random stranger sharing the same space in a café. We never really know how far our ripple will carry, only that this is our time to turn our accumulated experience and learning into a bigger splash.

      The aim isn’t to be an influencer, but to be influenced by the experiences and knowledge we gather along the way. Shouldn’t we all calculate our lives, not by time alive on this planet, but by our accumulation of experience in our living years? As a tree with it’s rings marking seasons, some years are growth years and some are survival years, but there’s a ring either way.

      It’s no coincidence that ripples from a stone dropped in a still pond resemble the rings of a tree (we might take this analogy all the way out to the universe itself—naturally we aren’t the center of it, no matter what our mother’s told us, but surely our energy and matter are an integral part of it). At the core of each of us is identity, focused either on growth or survival (holding on to what we have already). What will this year be for us? We must act on our intentions if we wish to realize growth.