Alexandersmap

    Category: Relationships

    • Some Years

      Forever alive, forever forward,
      Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,
      Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
      They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,
      But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great.
      — Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

      Some years feel monumental for the changes that wash over us. Some years feel like nothing happened worth writing home about. For the former, lessons in living life anew. For the latter, a tap on the shoulder that maybe now is the time to shake things up a bit and step outside of the familiar. We only have so many some years to work with.

      Heading into a new year, what are we to make of it? It can’t be more of the same for us, for everything changes all the time. Even what feels familiar and constant is changing, just at a slower rate than the world around that thing. I look around at the house I’ve lived in for what feels like forever and everything but the framing and windows has changed over and over again. Change is indeed a constant, reliable dynamic that we either must surf or be swept away by. We’ve all shown ourselves to be able surfers thus far.

      What makes a life great? Isn’t it the experiences we have with the people we surround ourselves with? Everything in life is an interaction between the inner self and the universe that surrounds us. To have lived well in this shell of a body is to have engaged actively with the world and to draw something from it, that we may grow for as long as we can.

      All years come and go. We advance with the years, forever alive, forever forward. Some years stand out as more memorable than others. Like a puzzle, the full picture doesn’t emerge until we put in the time. As the picture of the year that was is completed, we realize that there’s a larger puzzle still in the works. All our days make a picture—the sum of our lives. We must keep advancing towards something great, even if we can’t quite see it in ourselves. We must decide what to be and go be it.

    • This Gift

      “Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness! Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I!”― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

      It seems appropriate to quote Dickens on Christmas day. The theme isn’t new for this blog, but another reminder to use our time well is always appropriate in a world that tries so very hard to distract us from the hourglass. We ought to remember that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused, and more, act upon that knowledge with urgency. It matters not whether it’s Christmas or the 25th of July, mortal life is barreling right along. We must make the most of life’s opportunities in our time.

      Each day is a gift. May this one bring each of us an abundance of joy, peace and love in close proximity to the most important people in our life. Thank you for following along.

    • Holiday Participation Awards

      “So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they’re busy doing things they think are important. This is because they’re chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.” ― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

      At a certain point in our lives the holidays put a spotlight on the relationships we have. I think of it as the Christmas card display. The friends of convenience make up a big part of the display for the time we’re in the same net, but drift away one-by-one as we grow apart. A few stubborn holdouts keep appearing year-after-year, and those folks anticipate a card from us as well. If we’re still sending Christmas cards to people to let them know we’re thinking of them, chances are they’ll send us one to let us know they are thinking of us too. Send our cards early and we’ll receive a batch from the people who wait to see if we’re sending them one before they invest in the stamp for ours. What we don’t want is to time a card to be postmarked after Christmas, so that race to Christmas Eve is a fascinating case study in human dynamics. For people on the edges of our lives, it’s a game of card-for-card, with your participation award taped to the door frame until a few days into New Year.

      We all know that old expression, “the phone works both ways”, but taken literally, it’s a way of letting ourselves off the hook. We often say it when we’ve lost touch with someone who was always in touch. People drift apart as interests change. There’s no getting around the fact that some people are friends of convenience. School friends, teammates, coworkers, neighbors, soccer parents… all friends of convenience until that netting that holds us together is removed. That’s when we find out who we’re going to invest time in, and who is going to invest time in us. If we don’t like our investments, change the portfolio.. and the Christmas card list. It helps to remember that others are making their lists in a similar fashion. Be the person who receives a card because we’re worthy of it, not because we sent one to them. And accept that some people simply don’t play the game and love them anyway.

      What is the purpose of life? Isn’t it active participation? Humans are tribal, and built to help other humans exist in a universe indifferent to any form of life, let alone our particularly self-absorbed form of life. What makes life meaningful is stepping up and being part of things. To be loved we ought to love. We ought to be in the mix, engaged with others as best we can be in our time. What’s a stamp anyway? Send the card. Or make the call. Reach out and see how people are really doing as we close out another year. We may just surprise a few people who thought we were the ones who had drifted away.

    • Moving Forward

      A long time
      It’s taken me
      But I’ve figured out
      Now to some degree
      This life
      It happens fast
      I’ll enjoy the time in this hour glass
      Yes I will will will oh yes I will
      
Yeah, I’ve looked
      And what I see
      It’s not what’ve been
      It’s whatcha gonna be
      ‘Cause this world
      We’re walking through
      It’ll dig you out
      Or will bury you
      — Layup, I’m Alive

      The other day my bride and I went out to a local place for dinner and conversation. We secured two seats at the bar right away and celebrated our small victory with cocktails. The gent at the barstool next to me was talkative and we began chatting about the menu and local restaurants and eventually got down to the truth of the matter. He was divorced and alone on a Friday night and missing his wife and kids. He was filling holes in his life wherever he could, but not the biggest hole in his life. Not yet friend, but keep moving forward: This too shall pass.

      Bono and U2 wrote a song about his friend Michael Hutchence from INXS after the latter’s suicide. Hutchence seemed to have it all, but spiraled into a place where he killed himself despite fame, fortune, good looks and good friends. As Bono observed,

      You’ve got yourself stuck in a moment
      And you can’t get out of it

      The whole point of being alive is to grow and to keep reaching for our potential. There will be plenty of setbacks and hurdles along the way that make it all feel meaningless and futile. It’s all part of the climb. Our story in the end is not who we were, but who we become despite it all. The trick is to keep moving forward to that someone better. It’s usually closer than we believe in the moment.

      Moving forward doesn’t mean forgetting the lessons of the past. For those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, as George Santayana stated so well. We are the sum of all of our parts; the good, the bad and the ugly. It takes time to find all three within us, and to push aside the aspects of our identity we don’t want to dance with anymore. The thing is, when we take that weight off our shoulders we become lighter on our feet, more nimble, and in turn, more alive.

    • So Apart We’ve Grown

      One of these days
      I’m gonna sit down and write a long letter
      To all the good friends I’ve known
      And I’m gonna try
      And thank them all for the good times together
      Though so apart we’ve grown
      — Neil Young, One of These Days

      Talking to an old friend, we asked each other about other old friends. Who have we seen? Who has drifted away? How are the kids? It was a reminder of the person I used to be who danced with the world in the best way he could at the time. We’ve grown so far apart since then. Yet we’re still the same in so many ways.

      The thing is we’re all becoming something more as the layers pile on. Those layers either smother who we once were or keep that person warm for the day when we fling off the years and dance like it’s 1999 again. Like a tree, those growth rings differ year-to-year. Some years are better than others, some are distinctly harder. We reach for the sun in good times and bad and put the seasons behind us, until one day we look around and wonder where the time went.

      One of these days, we’ll all get together again. We won’t miss a beat, I expect, just as we didn’t miss a beat last time. Somewhere deep inside us is the person we were then, thrilled to come out and play the part once again. Sure we’re all so very different as life rolls along and sometimes over us all. But there’s a spark of energy between old friends that remains to rekindle the flames of our youth. A time before mortgages and divorces and funerals for people we thought would be here with us now, in this very conversation, talking about who we were then.

      Those conversations change as we grow, from who we want to be when we grow up to who we want to be now that the kids have grown up. That’s a lot of growth to catch up on some day when we get back together with those old friends. Now is just another growth ring we’ll laugh about (perhaps someday). We all know that the future is coming for us soon enough. But those growth rings make their own music. And we have so very much to catch up on.

    • Rooted in Happiness

      “People have often been happy here and the walls have absorbed some of that delight.” — Adam Nicholson, Sea Room

      It’s happened once again. The house transformed over a day from one holiday theme to the next. “Halloween” quickly flipped to “Thanksgiving”, “Thanksgiving” to “Christmas”. These are the days of rapid-fire theme decorating, supported by basement shelves full of every season of the year. In this house you don’t need a calendar to know what time of year it is, just look at the wreath du jour. You could build another house with the number of screws and nails holding up wreaths in the basement, just waiting for their season. I’m grateful there are only 12 months in a year, or we’d have to build a storage shed for the overflow.

      This home has known delight. The walls echo with memories built on joyful moments. The backyard is a place where dogs and now-grown children sprint to for the happy memories they’re drawn to just out the door. I’ve returned aching from the grind of business travel and soothed myself in the comfort of place as well. To be present in a place where so much positive energy reverberates off the hardscape is delightful—and I would argue, essential to our well-being. We must know places like this to stand up and face the world again tomorrow.

      My adult daughter informs me that we are never allowed to sell the home she grew up in, for the memories of place are so overwhelmingly part of her identity that to change it would crush her. I have known many such places in my lifetime, and have yet to be crushed by moving on. A sense of place is one thing, but permanence is entirely another. Nothing is permanent, even home. But we aren’t going anywhere just yet.

      That familiar feeling of a place you’ve spent some of your happiest days is comforting in a world that is so desperate to be unhappy. Why choose to be unhappy when you may be happy? Is it a choice at all or a steady diet of misery and fear doled out on the doom loop? Fear of missing out, pressure to keep up with the Jones, crisis news 24/7, and politicians telling us how horrible the world is without them leading us out of it all create a soundtrack of unhappy. Yet here we are; happy anyway.

      They say home is where the heart is. I say home is what you put your heart into. Happiness isn’t a place, but it is built into our lives with deliberate purpose. We invest in a home, but also in the people we surround ourselves with and the time we spend with them. Home is either a labor of love built for a lifetime or a nest people fly away from to free themselves emotionally. Roots must grow in fertile soil, and in their growth, they stabilize that ground. Seasons and houses and people are always changing, but they may be rooted in happiness when we invest our time well.

    • Changing Pictures

      People come and go from our lives all the time. This is felt most profoundly during the holidays, when family comes together, or sometimes doesn’t. We are each pieces in somebody’s complex life puzzle, and when we lose a piece the puzzle is never again complete. But we must carry on, holes and all. Unlike those cardboard affairs, life puzzles are meant to be full of holes.

      This year flies by like all the years before it, and we reconcile ourselves to the idea of being another year older, and the picture changes once again. We spend our lives filling holes to get a better idea of what our picture looks like before things get scrambled again. Like puzzle pieces in the box we’re shaken up and dumped out on some hard surface to adapt and start anew. At some point we figure out that the picture isn’t really the end game at all. The game of life is finding the pieces that fit right now and being happy with the incomplete picture that emerges. Perspective is knowing it will all change again anyway.

    • A Dream Won’t Chase You Back

      If you got a chance, take it, take it while you got a chance
      If you got a dream, chase it, ’cause a dream won’t chase you back
      If you’re gonna love somebody
      Hold ’em as long and as strong and as close as you can
      ‘Til you can’t
      — Cody Johnson, ‘Til You Can’t

      In America, this week is always distracting. There are so many moving parts before Thanksgiving: Ingredients to purchase and prepare, people to check in with traveling from near and far, furniture to plot out in anticipation of rooms filled to capacity, cleaning (so much cleaning!), and for some of us, work to reconcile before the holiday break. This week is a hectic, wonderfully stressful mess that some of us love more than any other in a year full of blessed weeks.

      We build the life we most want, don’t we? But we can’t control everything, we must be open to the changes the universe presents to us. Who won’t be at the table this year who was there last year? Who won’t be at next year’s table? It might just be us. The underlying message is to do what must be done now. That could be rightly viewed as the overall theme of this blog for most of the last five years. Tempus fugit. Memento mori. Carpe diem.

      Most of us postpone the call or the question or simply beginning what is so much more important than what we’re doing otherwise. Most of us waste time. Henry had some advice for such moments:

      As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
      The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
      — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      We ought to feel the urgency of Thanksgiving every week. Perhaps we’d be exhausted and collapse on the couch eventually, but then again, perhaps we’d condition ourselves to living a larger life—full of love and a wee bit of conflict, anticipation and conversation, and something sweet to cap it all off with before you clean up yet again and look ahead to the next big thing. We aren’t here to kill time, we’re here to make the most of our time together before we lose our place at the table. By all means, seize it (because it won’t chase you back)!

    • Loss and Gain

      Your absence has gone through me
      Like thread through a needle.
      Everything I do is stitched with its color.”
      ― W.S. Merwin, Separation

      Stick season brings a different kind of light with it. Trees stand like soldiers, marching across landscapes, over hills and deep into valleys. Without the cover of leaves, we see things otherwise obscured. The early morning sun reaches deeply across this bare landscape, shining into corners it could never reach in warmer months. Like the trees, we come to see more of the world when something otherwise essential is no longer with us. We sense the loss, yet we survive and carry on for another season.

      We approach the holidays aware of who we’re missing. We make lists of who will be with us for Thanksgiving, and with the list we are reminded of who won’t be there. The puppy, who’s grown so very big in so little time, would have melted under the influence of a certain Navy pilot who could whisper mischievous things to any dog and win them over (come to think of it, he was adept at this with humans too). My own interactions with the pup are heavily influenced by observing his dog whispers once upon a time.

      How do we react to a world that is filled with the starkness of loss? How do we live in a world that at times feels darker by the day? A world that feels colder than it once did when things seemed more hopeful and joyous?

      We ought to remember the trees of stick season, bare and sullen in November, but one day budding into fullness once again. Reminding us that this too shall pass. All those bare trees announce something else in their nakedness. They remain linked to each other—roots entwined through the darkness and cold, supporting the whole until warmer days return again. Returning to that Thanksgiving list, I see the names of all of those who will be with us this year and I’m grateful for the abundance of character (and characters) in my life. It’s a reminder that this remains a favorite season of the year, for the warmth and light and color each of us brings to the tapestry.

    • Strokes of Virtue

      “Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But, if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast… We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar.” ― William James, The Principles of Psychology

      On Sunday my bride and I walked fifteen miles around Newport, Rhode Island seeing all that we could in the time we had. We might have driven from place-to-place, we might have chosen a ride service. Then again, we might have simply plunged into the many indulgences Newport offers in food and drink and leisure. But we walked instead, burning more calories than we ate, getting out in the crisp and cold air to navigate city streets and coastal boulders alike. We certainly didn’t leave Newport without enjoying some of its many restaurants and bars, but the central part of our experience was walking.

      The trick is to keep it going. Keep doing the things that bring us to a place of better fitness, greater resilience, deeper connection and richer experience. Most of us have work to do and commitments to keep that prevent brisk walks about town every day, but we can still carve out the time to do something meaningful each day. We can be actively engaged with the world simply by consistently stepping out into it—further and further with every step.

      We are a collection of habits and circumstance, spun around the sun once a year for however long fate gives us. We must rise to meet our better self. To be more resilient in the face of hardship, we must earn it with the things we do each day to be more fit, financially sound, emotionally intelligent, street smart, book smart and with the proper collection of trusted allies. What we do with our time matters deeply, if not to the universe, then surely in how we perceive our place in it.

      The quality of our life lies in our compounding habits. To be healthier than we might otherwise have been, we ought to exercise more and eat better. Even writing that I felt the cliché ripple across the keyboard with a shudder, but we know the universal truth in it, don’t we? When we inevitably get sick or have an accident, that resilient and healthy body of ours will make us more likely to rebound than we otherwise might have been. And we know it to be true that good fitness and nutrition habits allow us to be more resistant to things that a weaker body might succumb to.

      The power of teams comes into play in how we live, for that which we lack ought to be filled in by having the right team around us, just as we fill in a void that they may have. Without the right partner in my own life, I might have opted for an Uber ride back after the first ten miles, but we pressed on and saw nooks and crannies of the city we wouldn’t have seen otherwise, talking about life all the way, while burning calories and locking in memories we’ll reflect on in future days. The people we row with will either propel us to a better future or sink us. Choose carefully and see just how far you can go together.

      Writing this blog every day, I’ve come to see the changes in myself over the last five years. It’s a way to track activity, reflect on what I’ve read or experienced, and to cajole myself beyond complacency. There must be urgency in our days, and the blog is my way of reminding myself to take stock of where I am and get back to it already. I’m surely no ascetic, but I do strive for greater discipline and consistent improvement in all aspects of this brief dance with you. After all, we’re on the same team, aren’t we? Let’s see all that we can in the time we have.