Alexandersmap

    Category: Philosophy

    • A Dream Won’t Chase You Back

      If you got a chance, take it, take it while you got a chance
      If you got a dream, chase it, ’cause a dream won’t chase you back
      If you’re gonna love somebody
      Hold ’em as long and as strong and as close as you can
      ‘Til you can’t
      — Cody Johnson, ‘Til You Can’t

      In America, this week is always distracting. There are so many moving parts before Thanksgiving: Ingredients to purchase and prepare, people to check in with traveling from near and far, furniture to plot out in anticipation of rooms filled to capacity, cleaning (so much cleaning!), and for some of us, work to reconcile before the holiday break. This week is a hectic, wonderfully stressful mess that some of us love more than any other in a year full of blessed weeks.

      We build the life we most want, don’t we? But we can’t control everything, we must be open to the changes the universe presents to us. Who won’t be at the table this year who was there last year? Who won’t be at next year’s table? It might just be us. The underlying message is to do what must be done now. That could be rightly viewed as the overall theme of this blog for most of the last five years. Tempus fugit. Memento mori. Carpe diem.

      Most of us postpone the call or the question or simply beginning what is so much more important than what we’re doing otherwise. Most of us waste time. Henry had some advice for such moments:

      As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
      The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
      — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      We ought to feel the urgency of Thanksgiving every week. Perhaps we’d be exhausted and collapse on the couch eventually, but then again, perhaps we’d condition ourselves to living a larger life—full of love and a wee bit of conflict, anticipation and conversation, and something sweet to cap it all off with before you clean up yet again and look ahead to the next big thing. We aren’t here to kill time, we’re here to make the most of our time together before we lose our place at the table. By all means, seize it (because it won’t chase you back)!

    • Lighting Our Own Torch

      “Work is only a part of life. But work is life only when done in mindfulness. Otherwise, one becomes like the person “who lives as though dead.” We need to light our own torch in order to carry on. But the life of each one of us is connected with the life of those around us. If we know how to live in mindfulness, if we know how to preserve and care for our own mind and heart, then thanks to that, our brothers and sisters will also know how to live in mindfulness.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

      Monday’s seem to sneak up a bit more quickly lately. The weekends fly by in a swirl of activity, then suddenly it’s Monday morning again. How we react to that depends on what our relationship is with our work. Then again, how we react to getting up any morning is directly related to how we feel about our life anyway. Rising to meet the day is more attractive when we live a life of joyfulness and awareness. Don’t we owe it to ourselves to reach that place?

      I lingered with the sunrise this morning, not to delay writing but to meet the day properly. A bit of frisbee with the pup, a cuppa to clear the cobwebs free, and full awareness of the light show happening above me as the world turned to meet the sun. The point of living is to be fully alive in these brief moments stacked like dominoes along our timeline. Those dominoes behind us have fallen away, all that’s left is the stack standing in front of us. Just how long that stack is is anyone’s guess. The pup and I felt satisfied with the one just fallen behind us.

      What is work but a series of dominoes stacked in our timeline? Each of those dominoes will fall behind us eventually, but what direction are they carrying us in? We either work out of a sense of obligation to others or we follow the call to contribute something more. The latter is often harder to hear—more a whisper than a scream (that screaming sound you hear is a thousand souls commuting to jobs they deeply resent). Whispers of work to be done are meaningful clues to the life we ought to be living.

      When those dominoes fall behind us, do they land with a hollow thud or do they resonate as time well spent? We each have our share of hollow moments, but we ought to work towards a life that reverberates. To light our own torch is to choose a life of resonance and meaning. That’s something to work towards.

    • Letting Go

      To live in this world
      you must be able
      to do three things:
      to love what is mortal;
      to hold it
      against your bones knowing
      your own life depends on it;
      and, when the time comes to let it go,
      to let it go.
      — Mary Oliver, In Blackwater Woods

      This is the time of year when the leaves release from the trees and drift in the breeze in waves, becoming a force of nature in their return to the earth. It’s easy to see them as alive—characters in their freedom from the branches that once held them. The tree lets them go in their time, and releases their burden that they may survive another winter season.

      Humans hold on to their own things. Homes full of stuff, people who sap our vitality, positions of honor that sap our soul. Why do we hold so tightly to things that, deep down, we know must be released?

      Identity. We begin to believe that we are that person with that job, or the one who raises those children. For awhile we may be the soccer parent or the blogger, the hiker or sailor or the life of the party. Perhaps even that crazy uncle who says the most ridiculous things and prods nieces and nephews out of their shells. Identity is a tricky thing indeed. We are grounded in it, and let it drive our every decision.

      Human beings always cling to things.
      Practice begins when you stop clinging.
      — Awa Kenzo, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow

      Those trees offer a lesson, don’t they? The tree is rooted in place, reaching for the sky, making the most of whatever season it happens to be in. The leaves are not the tree, but a part of it, nurtured in one season and released in another. Everything has its time. No, the leaves aren’t the tree at all, simply a part of it. It’s the roots that matter far more for the tree to survive.

      What are we rooted in? What do we hold on to far longer than we should? What do we need to let go of to survive another winter and thrive when the season changes in our favor? When the time comes, let go.

    • Swapping Idols for Vanaprastha

      “The first ashrama is brahmacharya, the period of youth and young adulthood dedicated to learning. The second is grihastha, when a person builds a career, accumulates wealth, and maintains a family. This second stage seems fairly straightforward and uncontroversial, but in this stage the Hindu philosophers find one of life’s most common traps: People become attached to its earthly rewards—money, power, sex, prestige—and thus try to make this stage last a lifetime. Sound familiar? This is another description of being stuck on the fluid intelligence curve, chasing Aquinas’s four idols—money, power, pleasure, and honor—that lead to self-objectification, but that never satisfy.
      To break the attachment to these idols requires movement to a new stage of life, with a new set of skills—spiritual skills. The change can be painful, Acharya said, like becoming an adult for a second time. And it means letting go of things that defined us in the eyes of the world. In other words, we have to move beyond the worldly rewards to experience transition and find wisdom in a new ashrama—and so defeat the scourge of attachments. That ordinarily occurs, if we are diligent, around age fifty.
      And that new stage? It is called vanaprastha, which comes from two Sanskrit words meaning “retiring” and “into the forest.” This is the stage at which we purposively begin to pull back from our old personal and professional duties, becoming more and more devoted to spirituality and deep wisdom, crystallized intelligence, teaching, and faith.” — Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength

      Arthur C. Brooks seems to be everywhere at the moment, bouncing between podcast interviews like mad as he hits the circuit to discuss his latest book with Oprah Winfrey. I’m a step behind that book, still lingering with the one he published last year quoted from above. But based on the interviews I’ve listened to, it feels like the themes from one book flow right into the next. That I’m lingering so long on the transition from fluid intelligence to crystallized intelligence tells you all you need to know about my own particular stage of life.

      Books are stepping stones. The path I’ve been on in my reading leads me from one book to the next, and one interview with the author to the next, which points out more source material to dive into, and so on. Life is about growth and becoming. How we cross the stream depends very much on the stones we land upon, and where they lead us next. At some point in our lives (if we reach awareness) it feels natural to stop chasing idols and begin finding wisdom.

      So here we are, figuring out this journey to becoming what’s next for us. The ashramas listed above are one clear indicator that nothing we’re sorting through is unique to us, it’s a human condition of growth and change and reconciliation with the entire process. Writing surely helps, but do does reading and seeking out the perspectives of those who have gone there before us. This is the time in my life when diving deeply into spirituality and wisdom feels like the natural next step. Apparently I’m moving into vanaprastha, with the urge to walk out into the forest but still carrying the obligations of that stage of earthly rewards, grihastha. How about you?

    • Existing Determinedly

      “The content of our truth depends upon our appropriating the historical foundation. Our own power of generation lies in the rebirth of what has been handed down to us. If we do not wish to slip back, nothing must be forgotten; but if philosophizing is to be genuine our thoughts must arise from our own source. Hence all appropriation of tradition proceeds from the intentness of our own life. The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.” — Karl Jaspers, Philosophy of Existence (Existenzphilosophie)

      This idea of reading and weaving the philosophical work of past greats into our own lives today is nothing new, yet so many only read new books. If these new books are inspired and drawn from the great thinkers of the past, then doesn’t it make sense to dive deeply into the source material? Put another way, if we are to be a part of the Great Conversation, we must first be conversationally competent. Seek first to understand, then to be understood, as Stephen Covey put it.

      Sitting at the dinner table with some highly intelligent people this evening, the conversation moved from business talk to philosophy, history and religion. Being able to keep pace with these folks doesn’t elevate me to a place of prominence, but it surely makes the evening more interesting than it otherwise might have been. It also makes me more inclined to speak up, and to be listened to by others. Of course, we don’t seek knowledge to be more interesting, but to dive deeper into our own development as human beings. What is the glow of life but feeling fully engaged in the moment? Of rising to meet it?

    • New Places

      “Like silence after noise, or cool, clear water on a hot, stuffy day, Emptiness cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness.” ― Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

      I picked up a beautiful stone on a rocky beach the other day, as I often do in such places, to add it to a pot of stones I’ve got from around the world. I realized that most of the stones I’ve accumulated while doing this mean nothing more to me than curious novelties, yet I keep acquiring stones from places I’ve been just the same. It’s not logical, but it is my way of saving a piece of each beautiful place I’ve been. Better than a shot glass or a t-shirt, I suppose.

      Lately I’ve been working to reconcile the fact that I’ve been adding more than subtracting. This is a natural activity for many people in the western world: more stuff, more experiences, more accomplishments, more, more, more… We pick up stuff as casually as we load food on at the buffet table. And it’s not just stuff, it’s responsibilities and commitments, work load, home improvement projects, and on and on. We pile on all of these things as we accumulate experience and live our lives.

      When we fill our lives we leave little room for ourselves to emerge. We’re in there somewhere, under the pile of stuff we’ve heaped on our shoulders. A boat needs an anchor to hold it to solid ground, but if you add enough anchors the boat will sink. Do you ever get that sinking feeling? Let something go from your life and feel released.

      Recently I added a puppy to my life. This can be seen as another added responsibility and maybe one anchor too many. Then again, maybe it was the anchor I needed. What’s clear in getting acquainted with her is that other anchors may need to be tossed aside that this ship may stay afloat. And this is how we grow in new directions in different seasons of our lives. We encounter new and different things that carry us to new places.

    • Seeing the Way

      Only the perfect man can transcend the limits of the human and yet not withdraw from the world, live in accord with mankind and yet suffer no injury himself. Of the worlds teaching he learns nothing. He has that within which makes him independent of others.
      If the eye is unobstructed, the result is sight. If the ear is unobstructed, the result is hearing. If the nose is unobstructed, the result is smell. If the mouth is unobstructed, the result is taste. If the mind is unobstructed, the result is wisdom.       — Chuang Tzu

      In the quest for clarity, we must remove the distractions and occlusions that get in the way of truly seeing. Mostly, this is our monkey brain at work, but often the circle of influence around us plays their part too. It isn’t a stretch to think of examples of the times we’ve opted for anything but seeing (the phone currently cradled in your hand is a great tool for this). We all want clarity, but take great pains to avoid it. Such is life.

      Seeking wisdom in a world full of madness seems frivolous on the one hand but absolutely essential on the other. None of us get out of this alive, but we may transcend our current hyper-distracted mind with a bit of applied focus. Easier said than done: I mean, I just got a puppy. I’ve blown up part of my home with yet another remodeling project. I’ve got a brother with terminal cancer. Who has time such pursuits as wisdom when your world is upside-down?

      The thing is, life is always full of such urgent distractions. We have to pause a beat, even in the most maddening of times, and find clarity and purpose. Without it we’re simply winging it through life, and find ourselves looking around and wondering where the time went. We must fill our lives with the essential for our lives to be fulfilling. The things I listed as distracting from purpose are themselves essential for a full life. You likely have a similar list. The aim isn’t to remove these things, but to rise above them to see the forest for the trees, that we know where we’re going. To know, deeply, that this is the way for us.

    • Drink Up

      “The cup of life’s for him that drinks
           And not for him that sips.” 
       – Robert Louis Stevenson, Away With Funeral Music

      I read through several poems this morning, finding them all falling flat for me.  Same with the books I’m reading.  I know I have a few stand-byes I can call up, but I resist the urge to tap into Henry and Mary and Hafiz this morning.  I welcome them all, but today I want to explore new places.  And then Robert Louis Stevenson tapped on my shoulder.  Here was a fascinating guy; Scottish (good start), prolific writer and adventurous soul who suffered from respiratory issues but pushed through them anyway to travel the world.  Look at a picture of Stevenson towards the end of his life, while he was living in Samoa, and you see a twinkle in his eyes.  This was a guy who was drinking from the cup of life right to his abrupt departure at the age of 44.

      So what of us?  Why take little sips when you don’t know which will be your last.  Drink with gusto, maybe with a little dribbling out the corner of your mouth.  Get out there when the world opens up and experience all that’s available to us.  I’m not talking about debauchery here, but living larger.  Doing more with the time you have.  Now.

      “Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.” – Jim Collins, Good To Great

      It’s so easy to settle for a good life…  because it’s pretty good.  But Stevenson had a good life in Edinburgh too, and he still got up and got out there to see the world.  And to write timeless work.  And live with a twinkle in his eye right to the end.  So drink up.  We’ve got work to do.