Alexandersmap

    Category: Relationships

    • Hugs

      October has been a month of hugs in my circle, and I’ve made the most of every one of them. Seeing old friends and family, celebrating moments together, absorbing loss together. Hugs come in all shapes and sizes, just like people do. But there are a few that stand out:

      Hello hugs are the best, for they signal reacquaintance after time away. Sometimes that time is as brief as a walk to the other room, and sometimes it’s a return after years apart. Hello hugs are warm and welcoming and signal “We’re back together again! Let’s get on with the party, already!”. Hello hugs are always tinged with joy for the moment at hand.

      Celebration hugs are savored when our favorite team wins the big game, or when our child successfully navigates a milestone moment like graduation or completing a recital. Weddings and anniversaries are milestones too, and we huggers go a little bit crazy at them. Celebration hugs draw in even the non-hugging crowd if you catch them at just the right moment. High fives are fleeting, hugs capture forever.

      Comforting hugs are rolled out at moments of grief, shock and despair. When we lose someone, when we fail the test, when we don’t get the job or get into the school or our team loses the game it calls for consolation and comfort. Hugs do the trick. It’s a signal that we aren’t alone—we’re in this together. Nobody wants to have to give or receive these hugs, but whether we like them or not, they’re as much a part of our lives as celebration hugs.

      Perhaps the biggest hugs are goodbye hugs. The squeeze is tighter, the embrace is longer, and they radiate warmer than any other hug. On the face of it, goodbye hugs signal “Until we meet again,” but whisper, “There’s so much we’ve left unsaid”. Goodbye hugs are always bittersweet.

      There’s another hug, the reciprocal hug, used often in some circles and never in others. It’s the “You bet I’m still here for you” hug, applied liberally with family and close friends in quiet moments. These hugs are seized out of the thin air of life; captured moments of affection and commitment at any old time. Walking by at just this moment? Have a hug. Doing the dishes? Have a wet hug. Taking the dog for a walk? Let’s hug the dog together. Sadly, not everyone has access to them, but everyone should. My best advice is to seek out people who think nothing of generous, reciprocal hugs.

    • Here Today

      Why do we treat the day
      With so much needless fear and sorrow
      It’s not in its nature to stay:
      Today is always gone tomorrow.
      — Wislawa Szymborska      , Nothing Twice

      The autumn days are now impressionist paintings, one after another, until some day, not very long from now, the show will end. Knowing that one of these days that fall color, like the smell of tomato vines in the hot summer sun, like the dance of daffodils in spring, like that walk in freshly fallen morning snow, one of these days will be the last day we’ll experience it. This isn’t a sad thing—it’s a savoring thing. We must celebrate that which is fleeting in the moment we have with it.

      I think this often while swimming. Living in New England, we think about such things as first and last swims of the season. Which swim in Buzzards Bay will be the last before the air and water temperatures dictate prudence? Which swim in the pool in New Hampshire will be the last dip before the cover inevitably goes on and we call it a season? Which flailing leap into Big Island Pond? Since we rarely know for sure where our lives will take us, we ought to immerse ourselves in the waters of the moment.

      And what of old friends? What do we say to someone today when we never know with certainty that we’ll see them again? We sometimes linger with people at the very end, when we have the gift of knowing it will be our last moment together. We know it’s a gift because life is too often more abrupt than that. So shouldn’t we hold that gaze a beat longer? Hug just a little tighter in our time together? Surely we must savor these moments. For today is always gone tomorrow, friend.

    • Mastering Our Moments of Truth

      “Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is…and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be…and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart…no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn’t matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.” ― Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

      We might never achieve the mastery of a Rodin in our art, but surely it’s something to aspire to. We might also aspire to it in this bold act of living. For living with and for others is itself an art, mastered by some, clumsily attempted by most. Everyone wants to be seen and heard and appreciated in the moment they encounter another person. How many disappoint in that moment of truth?

      I aspire to craft a sentence like Heinlein’s in each post. Maybe I will attain that level of craftsmanship on the next one, or the one after that. Time will inform the reader of such things, but making a go of it day-after-day is what matters most on our journey to becoming. Art isn’t the same as aging, for aging subtracts some vitality from the physical self, while days are accretive in art.

      At a party recently, I was reminiscing with a woman about her mother, who passed away a couple of years ago, shattering my belief that she would live forever. When she was alive she and I had a thing for each other, she being 40 years my senior, but young at heart. From the day I first met her I treated her as the vibrant woman I saw in her eyes, and she treated me as her would-be suitor, doomed to fail but welcome to try. This performance went on for almost three decades before she passed, and still makes me smile today.

      We may not become a Rodin or Heinlein in our art. But living offers other opportunities for mastery. Life is about the connections we make with people along the way, one after the other, in our time here. To master that is truly a gift.

    • When There Is Impulse and Time

      What gentle echoes,
      half heard sounds
      there are around here.
      .
      You place yourself in
      such relation you hear
      everything that’s said.

      Take it or leave it.
      Return it to a particular
      condition.

      Think
      slowly. See
      the things around you,

      taking place.
      .
      I began wanting a sense
      of melody, e.g., following
      the tune, became somehow
      an image, then several,
      and I was watching those things
      becoming in front of me.
      .
      The you imagine locates
      the response. Like turning
      a tv dial. The message,
      as one says, is information,
      a form of energy. The wisdom
      of the ages is “electrical” impulse.
      .
      Lap of water
      to the hand, lifting
      up, slaps
      the side of the dock –

      Darkening air, heavy
      feeling in the air.

      A Plan
      On some summer day
      when we are far away
      and there is impulse and time,
      we will talk about this.
      — Robert Creeley, Massachusetts

      Why do we wait for someday, when today will do? We dream of places far away, when we have far less on our to-do lists, when we might finally slow down enough to catch up with each other. When we might catch up with ourselves. Life moves quickly—too quickly for such things as pondering and poetry. So they say.

      The beauty of poetry is in how the reader interprets a jumble of words just so, transforming them into something powerful or mundane, emotive or passionless, joyful or melancholy. Robert Creeley set these words free and, like life itself, we make of his poetry what we will.

      Maybe, it serves as a reminder to think slowly. To see the things around us taking place. To use this time more impulsively. To be present for those who are here, now.

    • Our Present Sphere

      “All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. I never see any of these things but I long to get away and lie under a green tree and let the wind blow on me. There is marvel and charm enough in that for me.” — Margaret Fuller

      Today we bury a part of the family, completing his journey back to the earth. Back to the eternal. Our time together was relatively short, as lifetimes go, but memorable. We all live on in memories, they say. My experience with such things makes me believe it to be so.

      Memories are borne out of moments. Moments in turn from living with full awareness of our present sphere. Will we ever master the moment? Probably not, but as a sommelier trains their taste buds to discern the nuances of a wine, we might train our minds for nuance too. And in doing so, savor life more each day.

      The thing we generally say when someone passes is, “rest in peace”. But their passing is a message to us too: Memento mori — remember, we all must die. So pay your respects, hug one another and go out and live while there’s still time.

    • A Simple Salut Will Do

      Some words, like salut and aloha, mean both hello and goodbye. It reminds me of the nonsensical lyrics of the Beatles song, catchy tune that it is, but which blathers on endlessly about goodbyes and hellos. A simple word that means both is rather handy, don’t you think?

      My daughter flew home from across the country, making for a lovely hello, and will join me today in saying goodbye to friends and fellow bloggers Fayaway as they set sail for warmer waters. Goodbyes are rarely as fun as hellos. Isn’t it better all around to say; “until we meet again” Then again, a simple salut would do in all such circumstances.

      Hellos and goodbyes are simply placeholders that bookend moments together. We dance on the floor of life for this moment and go our separate ways for awhile. Perhaps we’ll see you out here on the dance floor again sometime. It’s lovely to believe it so, isn’t it? Life is what we make of it, and relationships are very much in line with that. There are people who have lived on the same street with me whom I haven’t seen for more than ten years. And there are people I’d fly across the globe to visit for a couple of days.

      Seeing Fayaway in faraway places seems likely and offers poetic possibilities. Yes, I like the elegance of the french “Salut” in such moments. And today I think it might do.

    • Living Life Between Two Melvill(e)s

      “As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” — Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

      “Ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibres connect you with your fellow-men, and along those fibres, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects.” — Henry Melvill, from “Partaking in Other Men’s Sins”

      (As an aside: Henry lived between 1798–1871, Herman between 1819 – 1891, meaning they were tenants on the planets at the same time for 52 years. I doubt they ever met, but they’re forever linked by the latter quote, often associated with Herman Melville because of the similarities in their names and because people simply grab quotes online and use them without doing basic research beforehand.)

      We each live our lives somewhere between responsibility and adventure, don’t we? It’s like our moralist angel is named Henry, while our adventurous devil is named Herman. But life isn’t lived at the extremes? Most of us find ourselves somewhere in between. Our souls want to dance with a calling all its own, and we ought to find the tune that suits us best.

      Yet a thousand fibres connect us. Think about the hundreds of thousands of souls called to war just this year in Ukraine and Russia, simply because of the decision of one man. I imagine most of them would say their best life would be living the normal life they had before the world turned upside down. We choose to be who we are within the social and political fabric we exist in, and ought to celebrate the relative freedom to choose.

      You might think of Henry as a wet blanket, tossing out themes of cause and effect with such authority, but the reason it resonates is because the truth is woven into his sermon. But so too are the words of Herman. We all hear the tormented call to the coasts of our imagination, those places we’d be but for this other thing we must do first. For some it’s a tropical beach, for some it’s filled with icebergs and polar bears, but it calls just the same. Barbarous is in the eye of the beholder.

      Most of us don’t have to live a life mutually exclusive of adventure or responsible productivity. We get to decide what to be and do our best to be it. We’ll each hear calls from the other side, beckoning us to be more adventurous or more responsible. That’s the sound of freedom of choice in a world that doesn’t always offer it in equal shares. We’re privileged to have such options in our brief dance with life. Ultimately, we choose what we lean into to find our balance, and what we let drift away. We ought to be at peace with that.

    • A Lifetime of Closing Doors

      Death twitches my ear.
      “Live’” He says, “I am coming.“
      — Virgil

      The twitch is there, reminding me to make the most of each day. You may have noticed a lean towards Stoicism early on in this blog. Stoicism celebrates every moment of life, because we remind ourselves that infinity is calling. So decide what to be and go be it. To be or not to be, that is the question that Hamlet forever ponders. And so must we.

      My favorite barista retired. I walked in to chat, er, to get a coffee made just so, and she hasn’t been there. Then again, I haven’t been there, traveling and such, but back again and eager for the banter of familiarity. After a couple of tries, I asked a new barista where Sue was, only to find out she’d simply…. retired. Moved on to try new things with her brief dance with light. And I was momentarily floored by the abruptness of it all. It’s not life and death, not yet for either party, but it was one more door closing in a lifetime of closing doors.

      I have a cat that meows incessantly if there’s a door closed that she wants to be on the other side of. Pick her up, give her a treat, try to ignore her at your peril: nothing resolves the meowing but an open door. We all have this curiosity, perhaps expressed less annoyingly (perhaps), to know what’s on the other side of the door. We aren’t in a rush to find out, but we’ll find out one day. And knowing that, we must accept that the door is closed for a reason. It’s not our time to dance with infinity, it’s our time to dance with light. So dance, friend.

    • What Energy Remains?

      “Everything is collage, even genetics. There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border that we cross.” — Michael Ondaatje, Divisadero

      I read this on the two year anniversary of the passing of my favorite Navy pilot. That this particular quote should pop up on September 12th is easily explainable, of course, being the birthday of the author Ondaatje. Yet it was this particular quote, dropped into my circle of awareness at precisely the moment when I needed to read it, that reverberated for me. And I wondered, what border am I crossing this week?

      We ought to rise up to meet our moment. We ought to raise our voice and lend our hand, for these are the things that demonstrate that we care just enough about something other than ourselves. The question is in the meeting—just what might we offer to another in our brief time with them? The answer to that question lies inside, but generally it ought to be all that we can give.

      Every interaction is an opportunity to lift. We create ripples of positive or negative energy simply by the friction generated in our words and actions. We dance with each, making our mark on the moment, and move on. But have we met a higher standard or did we let the opportunity slip away? What energy remains?

      Our hidden presence lingers even after we move on. You may think back on the energy rippling from the soul of another you interacted with this morning or a decade ago. What is it, exactly, that reverberates from that moment that stays with you even now? How do we process that and return it to the world?

      When I think back on each interaction with my favorite Navy pilot, the ripples tell me to seek more: More joie de vivre, more humor, more effort to measure up in the moment, and more focus on each personal engagement with another as I continue my march through time. These are his ripples passing through me to the world. His energy, continuing to reverberate, even as I remember what was lost.

    • Weaving a More Effective Life

      “Habit is a rope. We weave a thread every day, and eventually we can’t break it.” — Thomas Mann

      “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle

      This business of repeatedly doing is leading somewhere, with our destination highly dependent on what we repeatedly do. Such is the way. Mann’s observation rings true as well, for habits become nearly impossible to break once established. Each small choice is another thread—another resounding, audacious statement about who we want to be.

      Our natural inclination is to be a part of something. To build an identity around community or family. This can reinforce positive behavior, or amplify the worst in us. The choice isn’t always ours to decide which pond to swim in, but we may choose whether to keep treading above the surface or drift down into the muck on the bottom.

      When our identity is wrapped up in a community that is slowly drifting away, as people get older or recede from view towards other communities, we also choose how to react to that. People come and go. Our health and work and feelings about the world we live in change moment-to-moment. To be highly effective in life we ought to weave a thread of consistent activity that remains independent of the whims of fate. When the world unravels around us, and eventually it will feel that way for all of us, just how resilient are we?

      “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”— Viktor Frankl

      Life is constantly testing our mettle. We control so very little in the big scheme of things. Frankl’s famous observation reminds us that we do get to choose how we react. We have a say in what we might become in our brief dance with the universe in all its harsh indifference. We still might decide what to be and go be it.