Alexandersmap

    Category: Relationships

    • Stacking the Positives

      “We are the sum total of our experiences. Those experiences – be they positive or negative – make us the person we are, at any given point in our lives. And, like a flowing river, those same experiences, and those yet to come, continue to influence and reshape the person we are, and the person we become. None of us are the same as we were yesterday, nor will be tomorrow.“ — B.J. Neblett

      On a beautifully still morning I watched the fish in the bay react as a seal hunted for its breakfast. Perfect stillness broken by panicked splashes. The seal must eat and the fish must leap to survive. The story evolves around me, yet I have no meaningful role in it but to bear witness.

      There’s no denying the last few years brought plenty of negative experiences, and each shaped us in ways we might eagerly trade for an alternative outcome. But life isn’t gingerly holding our hand for this ride, it grudgingly allows us a seat on this train. The rest is up to us as the hits and highs come at us. What we make of our lives depends on how the sum of our experiences shapes us.

      The stakes aren’t always so dire, but in life we’re either breakfast or having breakfast. Our story will play out one way or the other, and based on how we react, in subsequent choices made in the balance of our days. We must fight for what we believe in yet accept what we can’t control.

    • Opening Up This Moment

      “Our choice at every second: will we cut up this moment with chatter or open it up with silence?” — Pico Iyer

      We suffer from too much noise. Clutter, really, demanding our attention. And as with clutter, most noise imposed upon us eliminates skating lanes for our mind to wander. Noise often betrays insecurities or impulsiveness or disrespect. Noise reveals even as it repulses. Do we wonder, in the shattered moment, what retreats?

      When I walk with my bride, we talk of the future, about home renovation plans to plunge into or punt for a future homeowner someday, the progress of our children as they wade deeper into adulthood, money, our days… and frequently, blessedly, nothing at all. When you’re with the right person you don’t feel compelled to complete thoughts or otherwise step over what the other is saying. You don’t fill the gap with trinkets. You respect the quiet space between you and let it do all the talking.

      The thing is, silence has a lot to say. Things that so many are afraid to listen to. But not us.

    • Love and Limes

      In the empire of the senses
      You’re the queen of all you survey
      All the cities all the nation
      Everything that falls your way
      There is a deeper world than this
      That you don’t understand
      There is a deeper world that this
      Tugging at your hand
      Every ripple on the ocean
      Every leaf on every tree
      Every sand dune in the desert
      Every power we never see
      There is a deeper wave than this
      Swelling in the world
      — Sting, Love Is the Seventh Wave

      We’re aware of the hate-mongers pitching their mantra of fear and scarcity and race theory. We’re aware of wars and desperation and greed even as we wake in relative peace, paying for the sins of the world with higher supply chain prices and a distinct and distressing shortage of limes due to climate change and drug cartels playing games. What are we to do in this scenario? Hoard? Buy more ammunition and higher fences?

      Maybe the answer is to be better ambassadors of truth and understanding. To embrace our community, warts and all, and make something of it. To go out into the world and embrace cultures distinctly different from our own and show them that we’re not as bad as what they’ve heard about us either. Maybe we ought to double down on love and respect.

      The carefully curated news washes over us, wave after unrelenting wave. We either accept their view of the world or we make one of our own. They say that the seventh wave is the largest of all, the one that surfers seek out and sailors watch out for. We might think of it as the wave that will wipe us all out or the wave that will wash away all the madness in the world. I guess the answer lies in which wave has the most mass and momentum as it heads for the beach.

      Creative optimism and a healthy dose of love ought to trump hate and madness. When life gives you lemons make lemonade. When it gives you limes make margaritas. But let’s stop all this bickering and enjoy a drink together. For we have work to do.

    • Where Deep Roots Grow

      From the bottom of my heart
      Off the coast of Carolina
      After one or two false starts
      I believe we found our stride
      And the walls that won’t come down
      We can decorate or climb or find some way to get around
      Cause I’m still on your side
      From the bottom of my heart
      — Jimmy Buffett, Coast of Carolina

      Long-term relationships are about finding the space to grow together. We’ve all seen examples of couples who find a way to make things work because they want to make it work. We’ve seen the opposite too. The thing about walls is they’re always there—we either find a way around them or we let them close us off from the people who are most important for us.

      Relationships work when we break down barriers. They fall apart when we let the barriers define the relationship. None of us has to think too long about a friendship or romantic relationship that suffered from one or both parties seeing the differences of opinion but not the way around it. Nothing grows very well in a tight box.

      We live in a world that amplifies our differences. What might grow if we knocked down a few walls instead of throwing up more? The very question prompts a new level of thinking, doesn’t it? Thinking in possibilities instead of limitations opens us up for deeper relationships, wider experiences, and stronger bonds.

      It brings us to a place where deep roots grow.

    • Time for a Friendly Visit

      When a friend calls to me from the road
      And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
      I don’t stand still and look around
      On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
      And shout from where I am, What is it?
      No, not as there is a time to talk.
      I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
      Blade-end up and five feet tall,
      And plod: I go up to the stone wall
      For a friendly visit.
      — Robert Frost, A Time to Talk

      Imagine the audacity of pressing deadlines and the urgency of the moment pulling us away from what is most important. And we willingly do it, thinking there will be another time when we’re less busy and feeling less obliged to do what clearly must get done. Where do we best spend our time, if not for furthering relationships with our fellow time-travelers?

      We hear about rampant depression and a longing for something tangible. There’s nothing tangible in the comments section of those popular social media platforms. We must meet each other face-to-face and sort out the world together, or together we’ll spiral deeper into chaos. To do this requires nothing more than meeting halfway. Doesn’t that idea feel as antiquated as the horse in Frost’s poem? Yet it remains the obvious answer to the problems of the world: diplomacy, compromise, mutual respect and understanding. These aren’t signs of weakness, in fact just the opposite: they betray inner character and a measure of emotional development.

      We are the diplomats, you and me. We walk across the minefield of distrust and find common ground. Seeking first to understand, and then to be understood. There’s nothing easy about this in a world that rewards mic drops and jaw-dropping tweets, but the world has always been divided between those who make all the noise and those who quietly keep things from falling apart.

      Imagine if we all simply stopped shouting and began to listen instead?

    • Forever Intertwined

      “Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti

      We often talk of those we’ve lost as if a part of them is still here with us. I can still hear the laughter of a few people I held in high regard, still see the twinkle in their eyes. They aren’t truly gone if we still feel their presence within us, are they?

      Krishnamurti turns this around, reminding us that those who slip away from this world take a piece of us with them too. Our lives are forever intertwined, even if we aren’t physically in the same place anymore. We feel their loss as a tangible part of us forever missing. There’s comfort in knowing that’s the part of us that’s keeping them company now and forever more.

      We say goodbye, but we never really part from one another.

    • The “What’s Our Fire” Exam

      “Proper examination should ruin the life that you’re currently living. It should cause you to leave relationships. It should cause you to reestablish boundaries with family members and with colleagues. It should cause you to quit your job.” — @naval

      We march through our day-to-day life without serious thought about the big picture. What really matters to us, and are we moving towards that? Sometimes examination tells us we’re on the right track, sometimes we find more smoke than fire. But we ought to sort out what’s going on either way.

      Examination doesn’t invite trouble, it offers a lifeline. We get in the habit of saying things that won’t rock the boat. I’d suggest that the boat ought to be rocked now and then. There’s nothing wrong with a spring cleaning for the soul. Purge all those pent-up resentments and simmering anger and give them air to breath. They’ll either ignite into a bonfire or smother for lack of fuel. But we can’t just live every day ignoring the growing inferno without being burned alive from the inside-out.

      Socrates famously said that “The unexamined life is not worth living”. Are we meant to be a torch or merely kindling for someone else’s dreams? Think of the things that we accept in our life that are frivolous and inconsequential on the surface, and worse, distract us from the things that might be life-changing given the chance. The thing that makes Naval’s statement incendiary is that we may find we’ve just been kindling all along. Isn’t it fair to ask, what is our fire, anyway?

    • Breaking Through the Anonymous Line of Orders

      There’s a common practice in fast food and coffee chains where you place your order on an app and then either pick it up at the counter or have some random stranger deliver it to you. It seems super convenient and eliminates waiting for someone to prepare your order. In a way it probably feels like cutting in line in that you’re the hot shot who ordered ahead and simply need to pick up your order on the fly, or have that random stranger drop it right at the door. No human contact required. No small talk. No uncomfortable wait amongst the crowd. Grab and go!

      When I see that counter full of anonymous cups and bags lined up neatly I view it for what it is: the lost opportunity for two humans to interact in a world increasingly ruled by convenience and disengagement. No wonder it’s so easy to demonize people with different world views–if we don’t ever talk to them they can’t possibly be otherwise just like us. Is it any shock that the only way young people can meet others now is through an app?

      Not for me. Even if I’m the only sucker who stands there to place an order, I’ll take the eye contact and interaction. I’ll take the clarifying questions, the banter, the brief spark of life between two humans before we both move on with our busy lives. Call me the lone hold-out if you’d like, but I prefer to think of it as being a bridge between the isolated and the engaged. Bringing people together, one order at a time.

    • Centered

      The knight and the castle move jaggedly across the chessboard,
      but they are actually centered on the king. They circle.

      If love is your center, a ring gets put on your finger.
      Something inside the moth is made of fire.
      — Rumi, A Mystic and a Drunk

      We wrap our lives around certain customs and communities, we pursue certain career paths and devote ourselves to certain people. But what is it that centers us there? Are we attracted to comfort and familiarity, or is it something more? When we get a sense of place, from where inside of us do we hear the siren?

      If we are the average of the people we spend the most time with, what in turn draws them to us? What energy are we bringing to the universe aside from a refrigerator full of beer? When friends grow old and drift away, when family is busy and distracted by life and the days grow silent, how do you fill the void? What is your fire that warms you in the dark?

      Our center is not the frenzied world we surround ourselves with. The problem with finding purpose and identity in a world full of noise is that we don’t hear our own voice. For all the talk of finding a burning purpose and following your heart, most people keep looking the wrong way. Instead of throwing more wood on the fire sometimes you’ve got to let things burn down to their essence. Our answers lie deep in the embers.

    • Good People

      “They’ll never be any shortage of good people in the world. All you got to do is seek them out and get as many of them as possible into your life. Keep the rest the hell out.” — Charlie Munger

      “You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” — Jim Rohn

      I’ve tried to live this “no assholes” philosophy in every aspect of my life. We are who we continually surround ourselves with. It’s one reason you’ll never find me on the extreme edges of politics, fighting for every dollar in certain business cultures, or spending any significant amount of time on Facebook. I enjoy living a happy, trusting life surrounded by wonderful people. Call me crazy.

      We’ve seen what a toxic culture can do. The world of assholes has an awful stink. Find the good people where the air is clear. Where the building of bridges happens. Where there’s hope for the future and an earnestness to contribute to it.

      When you find a company that is filled with good people, trying earnestly to make a positive difference, you want to try a little harder to measure up. When you join a company filled with people trying to step on you to climb a notch ahead, you either kick them back or immediately find another company. Seems an easy choice to me.

      Where did all the good people go,
      I’ve been changing channels I don’t see them
      On the TV shows
      Where did all the good people go,
      We got heaps and heaps of what we sow
      — Jack Johnson, Good People

      Sometimes I surprise people when I tell them I don’t watch a lot of television, and definitely don’t watch a lot of news. Talking heads on a program, no matter how earnest they might seem, aren’t there to serve you and me. They’re there to amplify and draw you in. There are surely good people swimming in the red ocean of news programming, but why risk getting eaten alive trying to find them? Swim in the tranquil sea instead. The water’s great, come on in.

      If all this seems rather utopian, well, it’s not a determined ignorance of the dark side of humanity. No head in the sand here, thank you. Rather, it’s an informed decision to associate with the best people you can find, people who will lend a hand. People who make you want to be a better person yourself.

      That kind of good vibe builds on itself. That’s how communities are formed. It’s how families stay together. How marriages last a lifetime. Find the good people and earn a place at the table. You might even discover happiness was right there, waiting for you to stop paying attention to the not very good people.