Alexandersmap

    Category: Philosophy

    • The Answers Awaiting Attention

      “When a problem is disturbing you, don’t ask, “What should I do about it?” Ask, “What part of me is being disturbed by this?”
      ― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

      If learning is a lifetime journey to understanding, we ought to make our quest more efficient by learning to ask better questions. Sure, there are no wrong questions, but there are questions that draw our focus down the wrong path. We won’t know we’re on the wrong path because we grow excited about finding the answer, not realizing until we’re far off the scent that we were barking up the wrong tree all along.

      That old trick to understanding deployed by young children—asking “Why?” until the adult in the room becomes exhausted, is perhaps the best tool that we have to knowing. And yet we put that tool back in the toolbox because we either don’t want to feel the rising frustration around us or we simply don’t want to know enough to continue chasing answers. Forever asking “Why?” may bludgeon out answers, but it isn’t as efficient as beginning with a better question.

      Knowing is arriving someplace, and it usually just leads to more questions about something encountered there. In this way, questions become infinite. Who has that kind of time to be so inquisitive? And yet we spend a lifetime barking up all sorts of wrong trees, instead of finding the scent again and proceeding accordingly. So many reach the end having missed the point all along.

      Learning to reframe the question is a good way to reset the mind. To question the very question is one way to reach a higher level of awareness. It’s not just asking, “Which tree should we bark up?”, but “Why are we barking in the first place?” A busy mind doesn’t ask enough questions, or is poised enough to ask the right questions. So what are we chasing anyway? There’s clarity in stillness, if we stop barking long enough to have a whiff of the truth. Awareness drifts, awaiting our attention.

    • So Soon

      “How did it get so late so soon?
      It’s night before it’s afternoon.
      December is here before it’s June.
      My goodness how the time has flewn.
      How did it get so late so soon?”
      ― Dr. Seuss

      December came so quickly, and so too did winter…
      Sure, it hasn’t officially begun,
      not until we hit 21.
      I don’t feel all that much older
      and surely not very wise.
      Tempus fugit, they said.
      Ain’t it funny how the time flies.
      We’re all surfing each day
      in our own way.
      Today will fly by like all the rest.
      Doing things worthwhile would be best.

      An admittedly weak attempt at poetry on the fly to mark the 10th day of December. How did we get here? The rapidity of the days flying past shocks the system some days. We know that we cannot control time, only how we use it. But those grains of sand are sneaky fast, and grabbing bunches of them are out of the question. And so we must decide what to be and go be it, today, as best we can before the opportunity is lost.

      Seize what flees, as our old friend Seneca told us. Carpe diem. That’s not a sad refrain, that’s a celebration of the day at hand, and of the hand we may play in making something of it. What a gift! May we use it well today.

    • True Nobility

      “Remember that there is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.” — W. L. Sheldon, What to Believe: An Ethical Creed

      The quote above is often attributed to Ernest Hemingway, but like most things on the Internet, a little digging reveals that the truth is somewhere else entirely. Perhaps some more digging would reveal that Sheldon wasn’t the original source either, but really, nothing is original, is it? We are all consciously or unconsciously influenced by everything that brought us here. The trick is to play the greatest hits and bury the unfortunate mistakes as the life lessons they were meant to be for us. Put another way: Learn from the best, forget the rest.

      Sheldon’s Ethical Creed has some real gems in the mix, worthy of a read if you have the time (and our time is what we make of it). Broken into sections, Think, Believe, Remember, Never and Don’t, each offers a bit of timeless advice worthy of consideration and action. I won’t re-write the entirety of it here, but another gem related to the famous quote above reinforces the message:

      “Don’t suppose that success comes by talent. It comes by plodding. Talent makes the best showing in early life. But the ability to plod makes the showing later on.” — W. L. Sheldon, What to Believe: An Ethical Creed

      So what brought me to Sheldon today? Let’s just say that nobility has been on my mind lately. To be noble and honorable is a lifestyle choice. We either live by it or we pretend to, and pretending isn’t very noble, is it? Every day offers us the opportunity to become a better version of who we were yesterday. Incremental, steady improvement is the path to personal excellence. We never reach perfection, but we won’t get very far at all if we keep taking two steps back. Choose accordingly today. It may feel like plodding at times, but the noble path is a worthy path.

    • All the Little Things

      “Use your mind to think about things, rather than think of them. You want to be adding value as you think about projects and people, not simply reminding yourself they exist.”
      ― David Allen, Getting Things Done

      When we get really busy (not just a little busy), all the little things start to creep into our thoughts relentlessly, persistently, voraciously to grab our attention again in the quiet moments when we wish they’d not. The devil is in the details, they say, and when the details aren’t polished off just so, the devil comes a callin’. Restful moments turn restless.

      The nature of work nowadays seems to be about doing more with less. Technology enables, but it also steals from us. There is no downtime, no escape from one more question, one little detail that needs clarification, one urgent matter that must be addressed right now, even if it’s a Sunday. The curse of profitability and EBITA (earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization) is that it demands more and more from fewer and fewer. When is enough enough?

      “Do you dream about being remembered for your professional successes?” ― Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength

      There is a time for hustle and incremental gain, and there is a time to take our insight and wisdom (hopefully accumulated) and turn it into something. That may be expressed in our careers, or expressed in writing, music or some other creative way. But the only way to figure that out is to kick that noisy devil out of back of our minds where it’s been nagging us and find some clarity in the ensuing stillness. We may embrace productivity and efficiency in our lives while rejecting those who say it’s never enough.

      So what is the value of work? Money? Health insurance? Status? These things are fleeting, and won’t be carved on our gravestones. We will be remembered for who we were and what we contributed. Not to EBITA, not really, but to the people who mattered most. Success is a tricky word that means something different for each of us, but our worth as humans goes far beyond a quarterly target.

      As we begin yet another Monday, it’s fair to consider all those little things and structure our days in efficient, productive ways that we may accomplish something tangible here and now. But it’s also fair to ask ourselves, are these little things the things we ought to be using this precious time on? We must remember that there’s no time to waste on little things. Perhaps a better thing to ask ourselves is, how might we best profit from this time before it disappears forever?

    • Beliefs and Truths

      “Trust, but verify.” — Ronald Reagan

      There’s an interesting story about that expression, “Trust but verify”, attributed to Ronald Reagan. During his Presidency, when the Cold War between the US and the USSR peaked, an advisor to the President told him that the Soviets like to communicate using proverbs. “Trust, but verify” is the english version of an old Russian proverb, doveryai, no proveryai. Whatever we each may believe about Ronald Reagan as a President, we can all agree that he was a talented communicator who captured the imagination of his followers. All consensus begins with some agreed-upon truth. Reagan’s use of the proverb met the Russians on their ground, and it made all the difference.

      Coming from a long line of travelling sales people on my mother’s side
      I wasn’t gonna buy just anyone’s cockatoo
      So why would I invite a complete stranger into my home
      Would you?
      — U2, Breathe

      One should never challenge the beliefs of another person, just as one should never impose their own beliefs on another person. That doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to question those beliefs, or to decide for ourselves what makes the most sense for us. We are not simply zealots; we are intelligent beings moving through a lifetime of information, sifting through all that experience to find our truth. We may be living in a time when people don’t want to agree upon a common truth, but that doesn’t make the presence of that truth any less true.

      “I don’t want to believe. I want to know.” ― Carl Sagan

      I’m not a scientist, nor an engineer, but I still prefer my information diet to be rich in fact and truth. Skepticism is not a contradiction of another’s beliefs, it’s a survival tool that leaves a healthy gap between what someone is telling us and what we ultimately believe ourselves. Developing a strong BS filter is a survival tool. It doesn’t come from books, but from street smarts. We must build our foundations on something solid, or the very structure of our lives—the stories we tell ourselves are true—will crumble one day.

      To pass from this world still believing a lie isn’t the worst way to go. It’s far worse getting to our deathbed and finding out that it was cockatoo all along, told to keep us in line. History is full of such lies disguised as truth. A little skeptical curiosity goes a long way towards finding the real truth. The question is, do we really want to know it, or would we prefer to just drink the Kool-Aid and hope that everything will turn out fine in the end? Give me the clarity of knowing over the haze of belief. Trust, but verify.

    • Like Glowing Coals

      “You cannot quench understanding unless you put out the insights that compose it. But you can rekindle those at will, like glowing coals. I can control my thoughts as necessary, then how can I be troubled? What is outside my mind means nothing to it. Absorb that lesson and your feet stand firm.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      This week I found myself in a string of conversations about books. It began with a copy of The Devil in the White City sitting on the desk of a customer. Having read it and many other books by Erik Larson, we got into an enthusiastic conversation about what we were reading in historical non-fiction. When he and I finished our conversation, someone else jumped in, listing the fiction he reads, mostly Harlan Coben books. I’ve read a few, my bride has read them all, we compared recommendations and then it was on to the next conversation. The third one was most interesting of all.

      A co-worker whom I’d just met, technical and quiet, was tapping away on a keyboard programming a proof of concept sequence (the entire reason we were all there to begin with) and said he’d overhead the two other conversations about reading that had just taken place. He reads philosophy, had just finished Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and was beginning The Discourses by Epictetus. I opened my Kindle app and showed him Nietzshe’s The Gay Science, which I’ve been reading in between physical books (’tis far better to read a book standing in line at the supermarket than to doom scroll social media). And we ran through a list of recommendations as any fellow students of philosophy would do.

      If all of this sounds particularly geeky, well, so be it. Reading isn’t for everyone, though it ought to be. If you’re reading this blog post and have reached this point, you’re clearly an avid reader yourself and understand. We are all self-taught beyond a K-12 education and the opportunities a university might offer. I say might because plenty go through the motions there too. We know the game and we choose how to play it. A lifetime education begins outside the structure of a classroom—it begins within the mind.

      Each book read, each conversation with a fellow reader that points us towards some new insight, is a step along the path to personal excellence (arete). What we consume stokes our inner fire and shines brightly in the eyes of an avid student of living. And living is the whole point, even as so many continue to go through the motions. But that’s not us! So what are you reading right now? I hope it’s compelling and insightful. If it is I’d love to hear about it. We are all climbing to greater heights, one great book at a time.

    • How Words Mean Things

      Imagine you’re on Mars, looking at earth,
      a swirl of colors in the distance.
      Tell us what you miss most, or least.

      Let your feelings rise to the surface.
      Skim that surface with a tiny net.
      Now you’re getting the hang of it.

      Tell us your story slantwise,
      streetwise, in the disguise
      of an astronaut in his suit.

      Tell us something we didn’t know
      before: how words mean things
      we didn’t know we knew.
      — Wyn Cooper, Mars Poetica

      Life feels a little chaotic lately, at least in my world. How about yours? We move through life at variable speed. Lately the accelerator feels stuck.

      Simplify.

      Words having meaning based on weight and measure. A poet knows this and measures out words just so, knowing that the weight of one or two will topple the whole thing. Chaos ensues, if we let it. Do we live a neat and tidy life? I should think not. So why should the words that outlive us portray otherwise?

      What will you miss most about today when it’s gone? This is life, boiled down to the essence of now. Does it sparkle and shine? Does it provoke and rhyme? What will it mean when it’s put to bed? What will it mean when we’re dead?

      Jot it down and leave this thought for tomorrow. It’s not ours any longer when we click publish. It belongs somewhere beyond today. And maybe we do too. What does it all mean? Perhaps we’ll find out when we arrive there. But that feels like living on another planet today.

    • Stop Fluttering About

      Never regret thy fall
      O Icarus of the fearless flight,
      For the greatest tragedy of them all,
      Is never to feel the burning light.
      — Oscar Wilde, Icarus

      Some days we soar, and on some we stumble. The trick is to keep getting up and trying to win the next day. The alternative is to sink into the abyss, and what kind of life is that?

      Life is unfair and challenging. Life is beautiful and ripe with potential. Where is the truth but in the eye of the beholder? We may experience the life we manifest, but we can acknowledge that there is an element of luck too. Most of us reading this were born at the right time and right place. Some were dealt a lousy hand. We may celebrate or blame the circumstances that brought us to where we are, but we ought to recognize that here and now is only the beginning of this odyssey. The next step is up to us.

      This idea of having agency in our life is revelatory or ridiculous if we aren’t conditioned to take matters into our own hands. We may choose to learn and grow, to rise early and stay with something until we’ve reached mastery. Or simply concede that we never really wanted to soar anyway and simply give up our agency to someone with loftier goals. The choice was always ours to make.

      The thing is, this is nothing but words until we take action. We all have dreams that will go to our graves with us. But we also have our daily rituals and habits that are leading us to realize something tangible in our lives. Just where are our habits taking us? Maybe we ought to up our game, and soar just a little higher than where we’ve been fluttering about. While there’s still time.

    • Improving the View

      Do not stay in the field!
      Nor climb out of sight.
      The best view of the world
      Is from a medium height
      — Friedrich Nietzsche, “Worldly Wisdom“, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

      I find myself returning to Nietzsche’s Prelude in Rhymes again, because it was so remarkable of an encounter initially. What a delight to discover his poetic tendencies hidden in plain sight. Surely he would be on my list of people I’d try to meet with a time machine, were such an invention possible. But isn’t that what reading is? A time machine that brings us directly to the mind of the writer, wherever and whenever they put thought to paper. Isn’t that what a blog is, sans paper? A time machine to the future, well beyond this character we are as we click publish.

      We write about the things we experience, with the level of knowledge and understanding we’ve reached to this point in our development. I’d like to believe that I’ve climbed beyond the field to medium height, with a nod upwards towards the climb ahead. The view is fine right here, but incomplete—as incomplete as we are in this moment. The thing to do is learn and grow and climb some more just to see where it takes us. Readers of this blog know that the goal is arete, or personal excellence. That lies far beyond this climber’s lifetime.

      The thing to do is to improve the view. One blessed day at a time, with all its thoughts and ideas either captured or evading me. We must be ready for each lesson in a lifetime in order to understand where we are and what we’ve reached. We are forever growing into the type of person who might understand the place we’ve arrived at, but for an open mind and a bit of a reach. So how’s the view? Ready for the next step? For time flies and we have so far to go.

    • Surfacing

      “You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.” — Paulo Coelho, Manual of the Warrior of Light

      It’s easy to get submerged in our routines. Buried in our work. Wrapped up in our frantic days. The obvious question is, when do we come up for air? The less obvious questions might be, what have we immersed ourselves in and should we get out immediately?

      “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys, how’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?”
      — David Foster Wallace, This is Water (Kenyon College commencement speech, 2005

      If each day is structured by belief and ritual, when is it appropriate to question what those beliefs and rituals are? I should think, always. But then life gets a little messy, doesn’t it? When we’re always questioning what we’re doing with our days, we’re not moving through life smoothly. We’re bumping into truth at every turn, switching direction, bumping into something else, and it feels like we’re being constantly jostled. If you loved riding on the bumper cars as a kid, then question everything. If you prefer to charge through life picking up as many experiences as possible until the ride ends, it’s best not to slow down and linger with questions at all. Maybe a roller coaster was your ride. Simply buckle up, put away those loose items and don’t eat the chili dog beforehand.

      The thing is, we need to settle into some form of ritual and routine in our lives, that we may gain a sense of place and time—that we may actually do something while we’re in this place and time. For it will all float away soon enough like all the rest. What the hell is water? It’s all this stuff floating around us friend. Whether we dove into it headfirst or quietly sank in doesn’t matter so much as what we choose to do now. Remember if you lose your bearings that bubbles float up (so exhale a bit now and then). Immersion has its benefits, but surfacing offers perspective and maybe even survival.