Alexandersmap

    Category: Relationships

    • Keeping On

      I don’t want to wait anymore I’m tired of looking for answers
      Take me some place where there’s music and there’s laughter
      I don’t know if I’m scared of dying but I’m scared of living too fast, too slow
      Regret, remorse, hold on, oh no I’ve got to go
      There’s no starting over, no new beginnings, time races on
      And you’ve just gotta keep on keeping on
      — First Aid Kit, My Silver Lining

      At a work event this week I looked around the room at the characters in the play. I’ve known them all so long, and yet only know a few of them very well. Some of the older characters talk of retirement and moving on, some of the younger characters openly plot their next move. I don’t play either of those parts, yet I’m still in the game.

      Building something tangible in our lives is really nothing more than showing up every day and being an active player. Life is humbling and teaches us we can’t have it all, and some will have more than perhaps they deserve. There are things we simply can’t control in this world, yet so much we can influence when we apply energy and focus on what matters most.

      We know when we’re running hard. When we’re pushing ourselves into new places. And we know when we ease off more than we should. Life is this balance, lived on the tightrope of commitments and aspiration while the winds of change swirl around us. Putting one foot in front of the other is really the only way forward. Still, we must ask ourselves, are we moving in the right direction? When should we follow another line?

    • A Thing Promised

      Who hasn’t thought, “Take me with you,”
      hearing the wind go by?
      And finding himself left behind, resumed
      his own true version of time
      on earth, a seed fallen here to die
      and be born a thing promised
      — Li-Young Lee, To Life

      We feel the urgency to live, feel it deeply within. We see the days go by so rapidly—blink and you’ll miss it quick—and something wells up inside of us to do something with the moment. Before it’s gone forever. Each moment matters, the moments of inertia just the same as the moments of peak performance (whatever that might mean for us). We are the sum of each, collected in our time, defining our lives.

      Each of us wrestles with the desire for more against the desire to savor what we have already. This restlessness is expressed in different ways, varying from bucket list experience-checking to home improvement projects to staying up all night to read a page-turner, or perhaps binge-watching a favorite show just to know how it ends. What satiates this restlessness? When do we linger a beat longer?

      As we accumulate experience, we naturally want more of it. To leave this world with boxes unchecked seems a waste. But rushing off to the next big thing usually means missing the best part of the big thing we’re already living in. The moments that are locked in the amber of our memories are those moments we paused a beat and payed attention. Dwelling in place and time offers opportunities to add layers of experience too.

      Seeds are often carried by the wind, but grow in place. Aren’t we the same? Our best relationships with people and place are developed over time. Our promise in this lifetime is fulfilled with our presence.

    • Serving Joy

      “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” — Rabindranath Tagore

      As spring usually goes this time of year in recent years, we seemingly went right from winter to summer, fooling the daffodils and hyacinth into blooming quickly, lest they miss their moment with the sun. There’s something to be said for rising to meet the fragile moment. Flowers know this instinctively. What of us?

      Traveling all week, I almost missed the fragrant offering altogether. This was a long week full of work and follow-up and more than one’s fair share of absence from those one loves. We each have our dues to pay in this transactional lifetime, but there ought to be joy in the work too. What are we here for but to serve our compelling why? Life is service to others, or it is nothing at all.

      We know it when we find our joyful service. It’s work that matters a great deal to us. It’s stirring words together just so, words that stir something deep inside of us, words better shared than jealously sheltered. And it’s doing the quiet daily offering that mundane chores represent, moving us forward in our progression through life.

      Talking quietly in the early evening hours, shedding myself of road weariness, talk moved to the garden and work still to be done. There’s always work to be done in a garden, isn’t there? What mattered wasn’t the weariness of the work week, or the prospect of more chores ahead. What mattered was the why: growing something more, together. Serving our fragile moment with joy.

    • The Gestures With Which We Honor

      the path to heaven doesn’t lie down in flat miles.
      It’s in the imagination
      with which you perceive
      this world, and the gestures
      with which you honor it
      — Mary Oliver, The Swan

      Heaven is right here, friends. Whatever comes later is unknown to all of us, no matter how much faith we hold. The trick is to be here, now, and love what we have (Amor fati). What comes next has never been in our control, but how we react in this moment is all ours. Not impetuous, not cynical, but earnestly open to all that comes to us in this lifetime.

      I’m excited about the day ahead. Are you? So full of potential, so ready to be experienced. Full of challenges and tests of our will to be sure, but also full of wonder and fresh perspective. That wonder is all around us, a spark of insight into the universe instantly recognized when we pay attention. Pay attention, for it’s there we find delight.

      Don’t wait for heaven. We must find what we can of it today. Tomorrow will take care of itself. It always does.

    • Orange and Order

      “Rejoice! The purpose of life is joy. Rejoice at the sky, the sun, the stars, the grass, the trees, animals, people. If this joy is disturbed it means that you’ve made a mistake somewhere. Find your mistake and correct it. Most often this joy is disturbed by money and ambition.”
      — Leo Tolstoy (via Poetic Outlaws)

      “No one is singular, that no argument will change the course, that one’s time is more gone than not, and what is left waits to be spent gracefully and attentively, if not quite so actively.” — Mary Oliver, Winter Hours

      Productivity and bold action have their place in this world, for progress depends on it. Progress for humanity, surely, but also for the individual. But we must remember too that we skate a line between Yin and Yang, and balance is the key. If Yang represents boldness and action, Yin represents temperance and reflection. It’s quite figuratively day and night, which may be why some of us find the orange hour in between to be our happiest place.

      Our best life is found in balance, and we feel the urge to lean in to both extremes now and then when our body and soul remind us of our imbalance. This disturbance of the Force (if you will) creates restlessness, which in turn triggers change. We all feel it in our own way. For me, it’s often the nagging question of “what’s next?” wrestling with the emphatic reply of “here and now”. Action calls, joy reminds. What will we listen to today?

      Somewhere along the way I’ve put aside some goals I’d been chasing for a lifetime. Somewhere along the way I’ve leaned into different objectives for the balance of my time. We are each in the process of becoming what’s next, and possibly even savoring what it is we’ve become thus far. Life is balance between the two, represented by orange and order. That balance is where the joy is.

      Orange Hour

    • Between Two Waves

      We shall not cease from exploration
      And the end of all our exploring
      Will be to arrive where we started
      And know the place for the first time.
      Through the unknown, unremembered gate
      When the last of earth left to discover
      Is that which was the beginning;
      At the source of the longest river
      The voice of the hidden waterfall
      And the children in the apple-tree

      Not known, because not looked for
      But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
      Between two waves of the sea.
      Quick now, here, now, always–
      A condition of complete simplicity
      (Costing not less than everything)
      And all shall be well and
      All manner of thing shall be well
      When the tongues of flames are in-folded
      Into the crowned knot of fire
      And the fire and the rose are one.
      — T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

      Writing actively, it follows that I actively think of writing more than the norm, but really, I’m just a student of life making up for lost time, before I awakened. I’m always on the lookout for a phrase or sentence that resonates with me on a deeper level. Partly this is admiration for the turn of a particular stack of words, and partly because it offers a train of thought I’d love to explore more in the future. Like an engaged conversation between two people, words prompt. Our engagement with others draws us out of ourselves and places our thoughts into the universe. The ripple that results may transcend space and time, as Eliot’s ripple surely has.

      Eliot observed in Little Gidding that “every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph”. Being actively aware of what is being said is a talent of the truly engaged. I’m still a work in progress, as my bride would remind me (funny that I don’t always seem to hear what she swears she just told me—A sign of a wandering mind, or is it a mind slowly slipping into the abyss? Perhaps it’s simply what is heard but half-heard?).

      When I do drift off into the abyss one day, I’d like to leave behind a few cogent thoughts before I go. We ought to feel the urgency in the moment, knowing we are but billion-year-old carbon making a weekend of it in our present form. This present mix will soon reshuffle, as sure as the sun rises. There’s a resounding call for us to pay attention in such moments. Eliot, himself reshuffled, capture my jumble of words better with his own: “the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living”.

      My bride would add that I ought to pay more attention to the living as well, but my occasional Walter Mitty moments aside, I’ll make a case that I pay attention to the important details. Every moment matters, but some resonate a bit more. If we focused on everything we’d focus on nothing, after all. Playing the long game, and with a lens focused on infinity, is it any wonder that every sentence both matters a great deal and sometimes gets lost in the surf?

      The trick is knowing what to pay attention to in any given moment. We’re all works in progress on our march towards excellence. Knowing that we’ll never quite reach it doesn’t mean we should quit. Our imperfections are a sign of our untapped potential. At least that’s the promise in our present condition.

    • The Greater Good

      “We are burdened with over-realization. Not that we can perceive too clearly the rights and wrongs of every human being but that we feel too deeply our own, to find in the end that what has meaning only for each one alone has no real meaning at all.” — Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

      There’s a contradiction in the world that chafes. We’re all individuals, making our way in this world, trying to live our best life. But we’re also part of something so much bigger than ourselves, part of communities, of nations, and of a species that often forgets that we’re all in this together. Individuals landed on the moon, but what resonated when they did so were the foothold they established for humanity.

      Humans are burdened by individualism, even as individualism stretches our limits and moves us forward. All progress depends on the observation of individuals that what we have isn’t quite enough, and the decision to then do something about it. Unfortunately, all the violence, violation and hatred in history come from a similar place. The irony of the Ancient Greeks is that they saw the contribution of the individual to the greater good as paramount, and created the very idea of democracy. But at the same time, they had slaves and fought wars to ensure that they’d receive more slaves (or become slaves if they lost). They were far from perfect, but they pursued Arete, or Excellence, just the same.

      We might believe the stakes aren’t quite so high for us today. But aren’t they? We’re in a fight for democracy against the autocrats of the world, home and abroad. A few decades of relative peace has made us complacent, but the pendulum will swing towards democracy or autocracy until checked. Things are very much in play even now.

      The problems in the world generally come down to a crisis in leadership. When we have lesser people in powerful positions, we slide backwards or run off the tracks.. When we have exceptional leaders, we rise to meet the challenges of the moment and the world resets itself. Who are leaders but individuals reaching or exceeding their limitations? We are the choices we make, collectively.

      The paradox of living in the modern world is the blessing and curse of individualism. Everyone is so ensnared in themselves and the screen in front of their faces that they forget that we’re each a part of something much bigger than ourselves. When we look at the problems in the world today, they often come down to self-interest. When we look at the greatest accomplishments we’ve made in history, they’re often the result of collective contribution. With this in mind, it seems the answer to much of our problems lies in rising to meet the moment, together.

    • Building Familiarity

      Everything that was broken has
      forgotten its brokenness. I live
      now in a sky-house, through every
      window the sun. Also your presence.
      Our touching, our stories. Earthy
      and holy both. How can this be, but
      it is. Every day has something in
      it whose name is Forever.
      — Mary Oliver, Felicity

      Recently I received a new laptop computer from the company I work with to replace a Surface Pro that was beginning to show signs of duress (blue screens and such). The nice thing about technology is it’s easily transferrable from device-to-device. Apple seems to have mastered this with iPhone and Mac. The PC world isn’t quite as elegant but the process of transferring your life from one device to another is largely seamless… and yet disruptive at the same time. Fingers tap at places once familiar and now foreign. Something as simple as the angle of your wrists makes all the difference in the world. And don’t get me started on screen sizes.

      We build familiarity in our lives through the action in our days. The chairs we default to when we sit for dinner, where we store the plates or the raucous collection of Tupperware. Which side of the refrigerator holds the ketchup. And of course, how we coexist with life partners, children and pets in this space are what make it a home. When things change, we feel it viscerally. Something is amiss.

      If we’re blessed with a good foundation and sound choices, we might build something that lasts for a very long time. But everything changes when you sprinkle enough days together. Most notably, we change. Our preferences and appetite, our bodies, and those of the characters around us too. We are at once shaped by our environment even as we shape it. Every day has something in it whose name is Forever.

      Every interaction with the world is an opportunity to linger, if only for a little while. Or maybe a lifetime. We have a say in what becomes essential to us. We can’t always control its durability. Familiarity is another form of seeing things through to its natural end. Or maybe ours. This, of course, is our forever.

    • On Valentine’s Day, Accept Þetta Reddast

      In Iceland there’s a saying that speaks of resilience and hopefulness. In only a few days there I heard it several times, evidence of the shared belief of her people, . Þetta Reddast means it (Þetta) will all work out (Reddast). In case you’re wondering, as I did, Þetta Reddast is pronounced “thet tah red ahst“. As with countless visitors before me I fell in love with Iceland almost immediately. And I also learned that she won’t always love you back but not to worry because it all works out in the end. Þetta Reddast, friend.

      On Valentine’s Day, we celebrate the love we have for that special someone. But love is a fickle and evasive thing indeed. Live a few years and you’ll experience the good, bad and ugly of love. Some of us are lucky and find a lifetime partner. Some of us never find love at all. Most are somewhere in the middle sorting it out one day at a time. As with Iceland, it all works out in the end, mostly. Enjoy the chocolate either way.

      I say love will come to you
      Hoping just because I spoke the words that they’re true
      As if I offered up a crystal ball to look through
      Where there’s now one there will be two
      — The Indigo Girls, Love Will Come to You

      The thing about finding true love is you can’t expect it, but you have to have faith that love will sort itself out for you eventually. It’s never perfect, for none of us are perfect, and to expect it to be so is a fools game. It’s simply two people finding each other at the right time and place in their lives, when the single track trail becomes wide enough for two to walk the path together. But trails narrow and widen as we keep hiking, don’t they? Þetta Reddast. Remember it will all work out in time.

      My bride and I went to Iceland looking for adventure and a glimpse of the Northern Lights. We found adventure, but we danced with Iceland’s notorious weather and wind each night instead of the Aurora Borealis. Looking at the Aurora app, we could see epic reds, oranges and greens dancing just out of reach. We learned quickly to accept the truth in Þetta Reddast. It just wasn’t our time to be on the dance floor with Norðurljós. Perhaps, as with love, our paths will cross some other time. I’m hoping just because I spoke the words that they’re true.

    • Eternal Sunrise

      Having been married awhile, my bride and I know each other’s tendencies. She rolls her eyes at me when she sees me watching YouTube videos of faraway places. I’ve got a regular playlist of places I’d like to go that I visit regularly, and virtually tag along with friends as they sail around the world. She anticipates my travel proposals well before I open my mouth. In turn, I roll my eyes when I hear her turn on home improvement shows, and feel like I live in one for all the projects her viewing inspires.

      There’s an undercurrent of restlessness that flows through many of us, wanted more in our time, whatever that “more” happens to be. In the best of times it’s positive and productive. Perhaps improvement on our lot in life or progress towards a personal goal. In the worst of times it might inspire jealousy and betrayal. Look around at the world, it’s easy to see examples of both.

      The question of how we’re perceived, or how we perceive ourselves, begs to be answered. The world is very good at showing us what’s possible with the right mix of resourcefulness and boldness. For all the cries for instant gratification in media, in reality most of us simply chip away at things until we get there. We can become some version of who we choose to be over time, but we must apply patient action.

      “The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd – The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.” — Fernando Pessoa

      At what point is enough enough? When are we satiated and content with our share, pushing our proverbial plate away? This seems to be the moment where we embrace bliss. Change will always happen, we just learn to focus on what we can control and find happiness there. The rest is just an entertainment of ideas.

      For us, the nest is always being improved upon, even as we try to fly away from it. Sometimes we go, but we always return. Both the nest and the residents of it change over time. This is our eternal sunrise, as we are forever becoming something new, embracing change as it rises before us.