Alexandersmap

    Category: Philosophy

    • By Whatever Name

      Every day I’m still looking for God
      and I’m still finding him everywhere,
      in the dust, in the flowerbeds.
      Certainly in the oceans,
      in the islands that lay in the distance
      continents of ice, countries of sand
      each with its own set of creatures
      and God, by whatever name.
      How perfect to be aboard a ship with
      maybe a hundred years still in my pocket.
      But it’s late, for all of us,
      and in truth the only ship there is
      is the ship we are all on
      burning the world as we go.
      — Mary Oliver, On Traveling to Beautiful Places

      It’s late for all us. We can see this when we pay attention to such things. We can see the world burning as we go, we see the games of distraction that keep the masses occupied while the power brokers pad their pockets, and apparently we can’t do all that much about it. As I’ve said before, all we can really do is build resiliency and beauty into our own lives. But maybe we can do a little more. Maybe we can help others, lost in the darkness, find their way to beauty too.

      To be aboard a ship with maybe a hundred years still in my pocket… Ah the places we’d go! We’ve only got this one go at things, and it’s late for all of us. Where shall we go today? The more I see, the more I come back to where I started. Our life’s work is ourselves, and as Michelangelo put it, seeing the angel in the marble and carving until we set him free. Yes, it’s getting late for all of us, but we may still keep carving to release the angels.

      I’m not particularly religious (when you see the power brokers for who they are you see them everywhere), but there’s an undercurrent of spirituality running through me that is best expressed in empathy and reverence. Perhaps you feel that too. What’s beautiful in this world is realizing the connection. We’re all in the same boat, spinning through the universe, infinitesimal yet infinite all at once. Isn’t that miraculous?

    • Saunter to the Craft

      “The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day. He is only earnest to secure the kernels of time, and does not exaggerate the value of the husk. Why should the hen set all day? She can lay but one egg, and besides she will not have picked up materials for a new one. Those who work much do not work hard.”
      — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau 1837 – 1861

      Thoreau was a famous saunterer, but he was also a prolific writer. Leisure, mediation, exercise and hard work all have their time. We know when we’ve reached balance and when we’ve stumbled off the line between chaos and order.

      It’s not just work, it’s inspired work that is the ultimate goal for all of us, and it’s out there waiting for us to grab hold of it and take it as far as we can. It’s just hidden amongst all the other tedious, uninspired labor that passes for work. We owe it to ourselves to do work that carries us towards personal excellence, whatever that is for us. Any work that isn’t bringing us somewhere is dragging us sideways down the cliff. We ought to choose our work accordingly.

      Efficiency is the trick. When we focus on the essential work in its time, not only do we get so much more done—it’s done so much better. Take writing for example; I can either turn off the world and write this blog post within this hour, or I can succumb to the distraction of the text messages buzzing me, wonder about the weather today, get up to feed the cats, check the news and watch some video on social media curated especially for me based on previous views. The hour will slip away in any case, but what will we show for it?

      The thing is, most of us love a job well done. We want to bring something meaningful to the world for our efforts, and not look back on the day like we laid an egg. In order to reach our potential, a bit of focused productivity goes a long way. Go ahead and saunter, but when we meet our task we must do it wholeheartedly, that we may rise to our potential. That isn’t tedium, it’s craftsmanship, and isn’t that a far more interesting expression of our time?

    • A Sense of Our Season

      “The follies which a person regrets the most in his life, are those which he didn’t commit when he had an opportunity.” — Helen Rowland

      What season are we in? I don’t mean autumn (as this is published), I mean what season of life are we in? There are things we regret not doing in each season of our life carrying us to here, and things we celebrate having done before that door closed forever. The trick is developing a sense of our season and learning to optimize wherever we are now.

      Lingering in the past is either a comforter that warms us or an albatross weighing us down. Either way, it’s not serving us today. We may know that our past decisions created who we are now, whatever that looks like for us, but it only influences tomorrow to the extent that we keep holding on to whatever we’re carrying. Previous choices are merely lessons learned that must be invested in our decisions going forward. Just learn the most important lesson: don’t make the same mistakes over and over again.

      I’ve reached a point where I don’t want to carry the weight of what a younger version of me didn’t do once in another season and instead focus on doing what I can do in the now. For me, comfortable routines were always the whisper of what felt like reason holding me back from adventures I might have taken. Knowing that tendency within me, I simply ask myself whether the next step is towards comfort or adventure, and which will I regret not taking one day in my future? What’s the worst that can happen? It’s usually not all that bad, and probably not as bad as carrying regret for the rest of our days.

      The currency of our lives are time, wealth and health, and we spend what we have in each season. Saving for the future makes some sense (we all like having a nest egg), but some currency can never be used in future seasons and can’t be wasted by not spending it now. Health is a good example of that. A younger, more fit version of me toyed with the idea of running a marathon. Those days are long gone now. Will I regret not having run one on my deathbed? Probably not, but the fact is I missed my chance.

      We may never have just the right amount of health, wealth and time, but we may have just enough of each to do something special with the season we’re in. And whatever that season is, we ought to do more with it, simply because we may not have the right ratio of currency in future seasons. And that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Do something special with this season before it’s gone, when all we’re left with are regrets.

    • Just the Right Blend

      “I have learned to live each day as it comes and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow.” — Dorothy Dix

      I took a long walk in Manhattan yesterday. It’s all relative of course, but it felt pretty long towards the end of it. If I were on some country path with comfortable shoes I’d have just been warming up, but on concrete sidewalks swarming with people, while wearing dress shoes and a sport coat, a mile walk feels kinda long. I’ll surely need to take a true long walk when I get home just to make up for even admitting to that mile feeling uncomfortable, but all experiences are measured by the minutiae that built it.

      My underlying hope in navigating my series of nows is to find just the right blend of minutiae to make each moment sparkle. We’re building tomorrow’s memories with each today, aren’t we? What goes into today’s blend will fuel our future or set us back. We ought to discriminate on the little things that make now memorable.

      Sure, know the forecast when packing for our future, but don’t wring away the present in apprehension. We can’t borrow time, but we can waste it just as easily as we can optimize it. Those tomorrows will come either way, even if we aren’t guaranteed a starring role in the play. We must accept the fragility of now and offer it our very best, lest we squander it. Not every moment is perfect, we can’t expect that, but we can seek perfection anyway, and celebrate the higher standard we reach.

    • The Wealth of Without

      “We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.” — Immanuel Kant

      We’re heading into the holidays, and holiday consumerism has replaced politics as the distraction du jour. We all know that it’s about to boil over into a frenzy. Honestly, I could do without all of it. Not because I don’t like new, shiny things, but because I want very much to simplify and focus on the abundance of beauty that is already in my life.

      Truth be told, I’ve already been on a spending spree the last few month in the form of the sometimes necessary “out with the old, in with the new” purchases to raise the overall quality of our lives. And I admit that spree has me inclined to reign it all in and reset back to more frugal ways to balance it all out. This is normal of course, all part of the ebb and flow of our financial life. The trick is to keep that balance. Stuff has a way of complicating our lives even as it solves some problem or other, doesn’t it?

      We had visiting friends stay with us for a week, a nice surprise for us and a reminder of what’s truly essential in a world where everyone wants their share of your time. A quiet conversation with friends doesn’t cost much more than the price of a beverage or two. Life without those who mean the most is impoverishment. True wealth is an abundance of equally-invested people in our lives with whom to share the journey.

      When we simplify our lives and focus on the essential, we grow richer in experience and overall happiness. We ought to stop being so busy accumulating distractions in our lives and look for a higher return on investment. To be present in the lives of those we care about the most offers tangible rewards when we spend those limited grains of sand. Shed the excessive and grow truly wealthy.

    • Far More Than Nothing

      You get up every day, you are entitled to nothing.
      Nobody owes you nothing.
      You can have talent, but if you don’t have discipline, you don’t execute or focus, what do you get? Nothing.
      If you’re complacent and not paying attention to detail, what do you get? Nothing.
      So nothing is acceptable except your best.
      Everything is determined by you trying to be your best so you can build on positive performance.
      That is the only thing, and there should be nothing else.
      We can’t accept nothing but our best.
      — Nick Saban, The Importance of Nothing

      We must ship the work in its time, as Seth Godin reminds us, even when it doesn’t feel like the best we could offer the universe when it ships. Nothing matters more than putting out the best we’ve got at the moment. We learn and refine and grow from that release of our work to the universe, and must then leverage that to do it all over again, but better.

      Our best changes all the time as we change. My best rowing time for 2000 meters was in my early 20’s, and I know I’ll never see sub-6 minutes again in my lifetime. But I can get more fit than I am now, and beat the times I’ve posted earlier this year. Improvement is relative to where and who we are now. Better is always on the table for something.

      I’m a better writer than I was ten years ago, simply because I do it every day and I’ve developed the muscle memory to convey what I’m thinking into words on a screen. More than that, I’ve read a few hundred books in that time span, lived through a pandemic and my children growing up and people I care about passing away and a whole host of other experiences that have tangibly changed who I was then to who I am now. Simply put, our best is way better at some things now than ever before. There is always a season for some highly developed skillset or knowledge that we may bring to the world now.

      Without shipping our work we have nothing. Doing our best at the things we feel are most essential for us is the clear path to personal excellence (arete). Perhaps a poetic speech by an old football coach will be just the thing to shake those ideas loose, that we may do our best in our one and only today. Perhaps arete will be evasive today, but we may get that much closer to it than ever before. Maybe our best will be enough for today, or maybe not. But the attempt to reach it is far more than nothing.

    • Working With It

      “Accept – then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” — Eckhart Tolle

      I’m working through a blip in the old WordPress blog, dealing with changes I inflicted upon myself, not happy about that but accepting of the moment. life is change, and not all changes are welcome. Amor fati.

      We must work with what we’ve been given. Today I was given some never-ending tasks and a blog site that turned upside down. So it is. All that is to be done is to make the most of it, and here we are. Our only real choice in life is to carry on.

    • Between the Mortal and the Enduring

      “When you are desiring things and fearing things, that’s mortality. The three temptations of the Buddha—desire, fear, and duty—are what hold you in the field of time. When you put the hermetic seal around yourself and, by discriminating between the mortal and the enduring, you find that still place within yourself that does not change, that’s when you’ve achieved nirvāṇa. That still point is the firmly burning flame that is not rippled by any wind.” — Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

      We each wrestle with the three temptations that hold us in place. Surely, it would be irresponsible of us to simply march off deep into the woods amongst the trees, or atop a summit amongst the clouds, or if you like, to sail off into bliss amongst the rolling waves. And yet it is the desire to hold on to what we already have, or the fear of the unknown, or perhaps simply a sense of duty to others that hold us in place. There’s nothing wrong with staying in place, mind you, but we must remember the price: Tempus fugit.

      To see the world as it really is—to reach nirvana—is to see ourselves as we really are. We are skating the line between the mortal and the enduring, but our bodies are decidedly mortal. The fragility of this life is exactly why we wrestle so much with those three temptations in the first place. We might feel we’re running out of time, or fear we’re missing out on true fulfillment, as we plod along in our chosen role as child, spouse, parent, employee, teammate, friend, follower, mentor… whatever. The shackles are ours alone, aren’t they? Enlightenment was never role-dependent. We become who we will be in our time or we leave this world with untapped potential. It’s up to us to choose the next step.

      We know intuitively what endures. This lifetime is a quest for connection and enlightenment, that we may pick up, carry and then pass the torch to those who follow. Of course, the torch is a metaphor, it is the light we carry within ourselves and pass along. We may burn brightly when we shed the things that dampen our spirit.

      The thing is, we don’t have to chase after dreams, we simply have to reach towards awareness. We may still reach for that place within ourselves that does not change. We may still choose something enduring, even as we accept that we ourselves are mortal. Even as we feel the hold of our accumulated obligations, desires and fears, we should realize that we shouldn’t be chasing anything—we are simply becoming something.

    • Processing Time

      “Wash the dishes relaxingly, as though each bowl is an object of contemplation. Consider each bowl as sacred. Follow your breath to prevent your mind from straying. Do not try to hurry to get the job over with. Consider washing the dishes the most important thing in life. Washing the dishes is meditation. If you cannot wash the dishes in mindfulness, neither can you meditate while sitting in silence.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation

      The writing of the blog post started late this morning, with fresh snow to clear from the driveway a priority, and a relatively subdued morning to follow. The words will come, as they always do, and they’re often better for having changed up the routine. I know I was the better for having done a small bit of exercise in the cold air with a pink and orange kaleidoscope of dancing clouds greeting me through the bare trees.

      The driveway and I have an understanding. If the snow is heavy and wet and more than two inches, I use the snowblower. If light and fluffy and less than four inches, I alway shovel. All other conditions fall somewhere in between, but I default to the shovel when it’s a reasonable ask of myself. I do this because so little in our lives is analog or manual anymore. We’ve got engines and batteries and computers for everything nowadays. These things do the work for us, but rob us of time to process anything in our minds. How many drive to the gym to walk on a treadmill, watching the screen in front of them take them to another place? How does that stir the imagination? I have a friend who walks through the woods to work every day and consider him the luckiest commuter I know.

      We must design a lifestyle that allows us to contemplate things, and to dream and discover things about the world and ourselves. There must be time in our daily lives for us to reflect on the world and our place in it, or we will remain nothing but distracted souls like all the rest. That’s not us, friend. Carve out and protect that processing time. As a bonus, we’ll be greeted with a job well done and a wee bit more clarity.

    • Evolving the Spirit

      “The monotony of life contains a reservoir of ways to find relief, if we can only muster the courage and energy to dive in instead of opting out. If today you find yourself bored with your work—perhaps surfing around and reading some random essay on happiness—you may have just gotten a signal from the universe that it’s time for your spirit to evolve.” — Arthur C Brooks, “Kierkegaard’s Three Ways to Live More Fully”, The Atlantic

      Within the rhythm of living our lives, we may get stuck in a routine that strikes us as boring. Same menu for dinner, same commute, same seat at the same desk we’ve sat in front of for long enough that the thrill of new is long gone. What are we to do in such moments? Change everything? Paint the entire inside of the house again? Get another dog? Travel to faraway places that are fresh and new and distinctly different in every way from the norm? Perhaps. There’s a time for such changes in a lifetime. But there’s also a time for staying put and wrestling with the restlessness of routine by looking inward.

      There’s a secret in blogging every day different from, say, journaling. It’s a daily reconciliation of the writer with the blank page that must be transformed into something substantial. Like each day itself, we are faced with making something of it when we begin again each morning. What is interesting in the universe today? What have we encountered that is a distinct step away from from boring? What surprises and delights us? Scratch that itch and see where it takes us.

      I write this savoring the last of a magnificent cup of coffee. It’s the first of the day, and truly, I hate to see it end. Sure, a second cup is just around the corner should I need it, but it isn’t about having more and more, it’s about savoring what I have in the moment. Sometimes that’s more than enough to carry the day.

      If this sounds like a retreat from the pursuit of rich experience, let me assure you that’s it’s just the opposite. We can’t run from one thing to the next without diving deeply into the experience we’re having at the moment. That’s not immersing ourselves in living a rich life, that’s nothing but a buffet of casual indulgences. Empty calories that we may come to regret one day. ’tis better to choose our daily diet of experience with an eye towards a more nutrient-rich, enlightening way.

      As Brooks points out in the article linked above, Kierkegaard recommend immersion in pursuits of substance like reading, meaningful relationships and our life’s work. Lectio Divina, or divine reading, is not just reading something, but following the steps of lectio (reading), meditatio (meditation), contemplatio (contemplation), and oratio (prayer). We may naturally adapt this methodology to our lives beyond reading: That cup of coffee has been consumed, savored, reflected upon and expounded upon. Isn’t that a better life experience than absent-mindedly sipping it to empty and realizing afterwards that you forgot to savor it?

      Blogging isn’t just documenting everything that we stumble upon in this life, but taking those steps of participating in it, immersion, contemplation and finally, talking about it (oratio). This process may not feel efficient in a multi-tasking, harried world, but it’s surely a better way to live. When we break ourselves of the need for constantly new entertainment for the senses, we learn to live more and savor the moment at hand. We find that what we have isn’t at all boring, but something to dive deeper into.