Alexandersmap

    Category: Philosophy

    • Sublimity Above Scorn

      “Scorn trifles, lift your aims: do what you are afraid to do: sublimity of character must come from sublimity of motive.” — Mary Moody Emerson

      We’ve all pondered some variation of the question, “who in history would we most love to have a conversation with?” We can easily come up with our short list of fascinating characters. One can easily derive who tops my list by the frequency with which I quote them in this blog. But not all. Consider Mary Moody Emerson, the aunt of Ralph Waldo Emerson and by all accounts a delightful, energetic and fascinating woman who could talk circles around her nephew and the thought leaders of the day residing in or around Concord, Massachusetts.

      She was born in Concord at the beginning of the American Revolution and passed away in the middle of the American Civil War. She saw a few things in her time, and was an avid reader and practitioner of commonplacing, which is essentially the format of this blog for the last several years. For all the bitterness that those two wars represented in our history, she sought enlightenment and sublimity through reading and conversation to better understand the great thinkers of the time. One can easily say she played a strong part in the rise of transcendentalism.

      The America of today is again splitting apart on ideology and scorn. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the ugliness of the moment, and I’m not advocating ignoring it (we’ve seen what happens when authoritarians are unchecked). Awareness and resolve are essential characteristics of the resilient mind. But we must be aware of the cost of participation in the war of words. Perhaps we should listen to someone who saw the worst and the best of humanity in her time and chose to lift her aims. We too may seek sublimity over scorn, knowing it will not easy, but nonetheless essential work.

    • Our Kit of the Here and Now

      “Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.” — Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

      The easiest way to become angry or bitter at the state of the world is to focus on the latest affront to logic and dignity. But that anger and outrage is how we got here. We know this to be true even as we mourn for days when the world seemed more logical and dignified.

      We must zoom out, beyond the shuttered healthcare clinics and deportations, beyond the smirk on the faces of autocrats and oligarchs, and even beyond the ticking time bomb that is our changing climate and unregulated exploitation of the natural resources on this planet. We are in a moment in time—profoundly troubling though it may be sometimes, and we must zoom out to a longer timeline and see just how small all of this really is. The infinite remains indifferent about our troubles.

      Knowing the truth in this, we may switch the lens out to a microscope. How do I react to this moment? We don’t have all the answers, we only have the kit that brought us here. We may aspire for a better kit someday in the future, should we survive that long. It’s nice to think so. But right here and now, with all of this swirling around us, we’ve only got the tools and accumulated knowledge and emotional intelligence developed to this moment with which to choose how to react. We must do the best we can with what we have, right here and now. Alternatively, we could simply waste our moment with distraction and another round before the tariffs make it unaffordable. That’s the kit so many choose to draw from.

      Life is about playing the long game. Life is about this moment with no right to expect another. Life is what washes over us and life is what we make of it. All of this may be true. The universe remains indifferent, even as we are each aware of our small place in the vacuum. The miracle is in this kit, and our agency to react and act with what we’ve become, that we may step towards something else entirely new and equally miraculous.

    • Where Am I?

      “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” ― Lao Tzu

      I was prompted to look at an old blog post I’d written back in 2019 because it showed up in my statistics. That one post has garnered hundreds of views, which isn’t exactly Seth Godin numbers, but it was one of the ones that got more traction than most. Historical, introspective and curious. I’d like to think I’m still those things, even if my focus has changed a bit.

      Back then I was traveling a lot more, we hadn’t had a pandemic yet, and life hadn’t thrown a few more gut punches our way. We all accumulate experiences over time—the good, bad and ugly. In general, I liked the way I wrote back then, I just hadn’t experienced the changes that would wash over me yet.

      The thing is, back in those days exploring place, I was asking the same questions I’m asking now: Where am I? What happened here and what can it teach me?

      Everything changes, and so must we. Each experience accumulated changes us in some way minutely or profoundly. It’s like that river analogy, where both the river and we are not the same each time we visit. And flow we must, always having been somewhere, always on to the next, and yet right here in this moment. What have we learned this time?

    • Trust, But Verify

      “Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.” — Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

      It would do us all good to live by the adage, trust, but verify. The world is full of wonderful people who live beautiful lives filled with generosity and goodwill towards others. The world is also filled with charlatans and evil characters who think only of themselves at the expense of all that is good in this world.

      Knowing that both are true, we may choose to move through the world with cautious optimism armored in strength, resolve and a sharp eye. Put another way, it’s okay to walk into the theater to enjoy the show, but always know where the closest exits are and never turn your back on the bad actor holding a grudge.

      Trust, but verify apparently has its roots in an old Russian proverb, which tells you a thing or two about the Russians. They aren’t all bad, but they also won’t allow anyone to stab them in the back. We should naturally view them with the same level of caution. The Ukrainians have a proverb that goes, “the malicious cow disturbs the entire herd.” And here we are.

      The thing is, we must make our way through this world prepared to meet both the best and worst of us, because we have and will again. To live heroically, we must be both ambassadors and a trusted friend to others while also working diligently to develop resilience and Taleb’s concept of antifragility that we may fend off the malicious intent of humanity’s worst actors. To reach our full potential we must climb and hold the high ground, prepared to defend it when the barbarians make their charge.

    • Letter to an Outraged Friend

      My friend, I hope you know I think the world of you. It may seem sometimes that we barely know each other, but those moments are balanced by deep familiarity. We detect patterns and learn each other’s behavior over time. We know what that certain look means, even when we don’t ever mention it by name. Some things are better left unsaid between us.

      But now I feel something needs to be said about outrage. We’ve all been indulging in it lately. I mean, it’s so very easy to be outraged now. The entire planet seems to be addicted to it. And like sugar, we begin to crave it even when we know it’s not good for us. Once we’ve developed a taste for outrage, we look for more things to be outraged by.

      Others, seeing our outrage, go out of their way to do more outrageous things to savor our reaction. There’s nothing like the feeling of owning the room, and the fastest way to that mic drop moment is to double down on the truly outrageous. The real power always lies with the quiet one pulling the strings. All those tech bro billionaires built their fortunes on our outrage. Brilliant scheme for them, not so good for us.

      Yet we don’t have to consume it. We can choose to consume something insightful, rather than to be incited by someone else’s outrageousness. Remember the old expression? Cooler heads prevail. To borrow another expression from a dark chapter in human history: keep calm and carry on. There’s simply no other way for us to move forward than with informed awareness and intent. If we’re all spun up, we can’t do a damned thing but feed the outrage. And that’s exactly what they want of us.

      When someone is outraged to the boiling point, they seek release of that pressure. And so they pour all their accumulated outrage all over the first good listener they come across. Friend, I’m that listener, and I’m tired of being coated in the filth of outrage. It’s not a good look, and really, I just bought this shirt. And since we’re being honest, that outrage doesn’t look all that attractive on you either. Try some cooler colors.

      The world needs so much more than yet another voice in the chorus of the outraged. So throw all that poison aside and focus on what is in our control: How we react to the world around us. We may choose to do something productive with that emotional energy. Donate, volunteer, write a poem, bake a lasagna and feed a hungry neighbor starved for calories and a bit of positive attention. We can do better, you and I. Our future together demands it.

    • Run to Simplicity

      “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.” — Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

      Do you wonder why the most beautiful people in this world seem so placid and steady? There’s an inner calm like a still pond; clear and deep and surrounded by hushed beauty. Isn’t that something to aspire to in our own lives? Not for the shallow goal of being beautiful, but of living beautifully? Our lives must be more than a puddle in a rut, waiting for a truck to thump into us and drag our essence down the road. Get off that damned road.

      “There is nothing that the busy man is less busy with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.” — Seneca

      The thing is, we’re all so very busy and distracted by life. It’s hard to go deep on anything when we barely have a moment to understand things at a surface level. But surfaces dry up quickly when the drought comes. We’re taught to stick to the surface—to hack our way through the hard stuff, seeking shortcuts and a way out of anything that holds us back from the next. That applies equally well in our education, our work, and our relationships with others. Is it any wonder why so many are unsettled and distracted? There’s no substance to them because they keep running away from it.

      To skate through life without ever lingering long enough to truly know the world and our place in it is the path of mediocrity accepted by the masses. Choose to be the exception—for there lies extraordinary. To truly master anything in life, especially the living of life itself, requires immersion and stillness. We must learn to turn off the spigot and develop a thirst for deeper waters.

      “One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.” — Bruce Lee

      I believe I keep this blog going to force myself deeper. The times when I want to simply shut it down and miss a day are when I’m running shallow—spread thin and beginning to dry up emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. I remind myself to run deeper, to eliminate distractions and to find stillness. Sure enough, the inclination fades away and I begin to write with clarity once again. Like a shallow stream building into a flowing river that steadily moves to the sea, building momentum in a deeper channel carved out of persistence.

    • Don’t Imagine They’ll All Come True

      You’ve got your passion, you’ve got your pride
      but don’t you know that only fools are satisfied?
      Dream on, but don’t imagine they’ll all come true
      When will you realize, Vienna waits for you?
      — Billy Joel, Vienna

      Blame it on the maddening state of the world, or for reaching an age where paths diverge in a person’s life, but I’ve been struggling with uncertainty lately. Make a decision, change my mind and cancel plans, then abruptly pivot back to the original plan again… or not. Really, it’s all a confused mess. And that’s no way to go through one’s days.

      To never be fully satisfied with the plan, and to thus always feeling compelled to modify it, is a blessing and a curse. Forever seeking Kaizen (constant and never-ending improvement) is a path to personal excellence, or to a restless life never fully realized because there’s always going to be something to work on. What works for Toyota ought to work for us, right? But we aren’t corporations, we’re humans. We can’t simply systematize ourselves and expect we’ll arrive at perfection. We must dig deeper and understand where the restlessness is rooted in.

      The answer typically lies in the question: what do we want out of life? That is our direction. Coming to understand it, we may set out in that direction today without trying to change course over and over again. Good habits and a healthy routine automate some important behaviors in our lives like exercise and flossing and writing, serving as gyroscopic stabilizers so we don’t get seasick from rocking back and forth too much with our behavior.

      Some people go to a Vienna coffeehouse simply to enjoy a torte or Buchteln. Some go to lasso a muse. Both can be right. To borrow a lyric from another Billy Joel song, do what’s good for you, or you’re no good for anybody. And to rock abruptly back to Vienna, don’t imagine all your dreams will come true, just focus on the one’s that do.

    • The Path

      Routine sets the tone of our days, which in turn sets the tone of our lives. Routine can be our savior or our executioner, our best friend or our worst enemy. We inevitably feel that we’re either wrapped or trapped in in our routine. Just what path are we on anyway? Our routine leads to a life of optimization or frustration. and so we must step in and design a routine that carries us to a place we want to go to.

      We must listen to the question that stirs within: what is the purpose of this path we’ve chosen for ourselves? When we have a why that is compelling, with a routine that is designed to optimize our purpose, we move through life with a higher level of energy and passion. People that tell you to follow your passion aren’t wrong, they’re just missing a step. Following your purpose leads you to passion. Passion is directionless and can lead us astray. When we get our direction from purpose, passion naturally builds within us.

      What drives us to a rewarding and meaningful life? It’s not the steering wheel, even if we can’t imagine getting anywhere without it. It’s not the engine, necessary as a good engine may be. These are our what and how, and surely necessary to move anywhere at all in this world—but to move where? We must develop a strong navigation system. When we know where we are going, the what and how to get us there are exponentially more useful and efficient.

      And suddenly everything begins to click. Like a fine-tuned vehicle, our routine carries us towards our purpose. And the wow (passion!) begins to stir within and exude outward. When we develop a high level of passion and purpose, we create positive momentum. Everything great in our lives builds from purpose backed by propulsion (action: our engine) and creative adaptability (steering and the set of our sails). This is the path to personal excellence.

    • Nothing Is Different, but Everything’s Changed

      I figure that once upon a time, I was an ocean
      But now I’m a mountain range
      Something unstoppable set into motion
      Nothing is different, but everything’s changed
      — Paul Simon, Once Upon A Time There Was An Ocean

      We know everything has changed, it was always going to be so. Technology brought us here, to this place where people are so spun up and separated by what the voices on their screens are telling them. The media we choose to consume drives and divides us.

      Yes, everything has changed, and it cannot be ignored. It’s always been this way, it always will be so. Change happens, like a rogue wave washing over an island of tranquility, washing away all that was comfortable and familiar for us. The stories change, but humans have always been this way. It was hopeful to believe we’d all changed, but all we were doing was looking in a different direction while the people angry with the change we embraced gathered strength. We live on a pendulum of action and reaction, swinging one way to the next. Knowing this, we must hold on tight and work for what is right.

      And still, we also must continue to focus on things that bring growth to our own dreams. To keep climbing towards personal excellence, even when the world doesn’t feel all that excellent at the moment. We were born at this time and place, and really, it’s been a lucky break for many of us. But not all of us. So we ought to count our blessings as we rise to meet each day, and not be ungrateful for the gifts we’ve received. Use them as tools to build. Use them to climb higher. Not all change is in our control, but some change surely is.

    • Cracking the Shell

      “It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.” — C.S. Lewis

      We all live our ordinary, decent lives, comfortable in our shell. But bless you Clive Staples Lewis for the reminder that we aren’t going to fly anywhere wrapped in comfort and routine. Take a crack out of it and see what opens up.

      There will always be great reasons to put our dreams on hold and focus on keeping the shell intact. The shell has kept us alive, protected us and feels just right most of the time. Sure, we want to grow, and someday we even want to fly, but there’s a time for everything, right?

      Our lives at present may feel a bit upside down, and playing it safe seems the logical thing to do. After all, bad economic policies and reckless idiots are making everything unstable. Prudence seems the right course of action. But prudence isn’t action—prudence is a shell.

      Meanwhile, our runway grows shorter. Tempus fugit: time flies. But will we, in our time? Start now to crack the shell. Or forget about ever flying. The world has plenty of bad eggs already.