Alexandersmap

    Category: seasons

    • Swapping Idols for Vanaprastha

      “The first ashrama is brahmacharya, the period of youth and young adulthood dedicated to learning. The second is grihastha, when a person builds a career, accumulates wealth, and maintains a family. This second stage seems fairly straightforward and uncontroversial, but in this stage the Hindu philosophers find one of life’s most common traps: People become attached to its earthly rewards—money, power, sex, prestige—and thus try to make this stage last a lifetime. Sound familiar? This is another description of being stuck on the fluid intelligence curve, chasing Aquinas’s four idols—money, power, pleasure, and honor—that lead to self-objectification, but that never satisfy.
      To break the attachment to these idols requires movement to a new stage of life, with a new set of skills—spiritual skills. The change can be painful, Acharya said, like becoming an adult for a second time. And it means letting go of things that defined us in the eyes of the world. In other words, we have to move beyond the worldly rewards to experience transition and find wisdom in a new ashrama—and so defeat the scourge of attachments. That ordinarily occurs, if we are diligent, around age fifty.
      And that new stage? It is called vanaprastha, which comes from two Sanskrit words meaning “retiring” and “into the forest.” This is the stage at which we purposively begin to pull back from our old personal and professional duties, becoming more and more devoted to spirituality and deep wisdom, crystallized intelligence, teaching, and faith.” — Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength

      Arthur C. Brooks seems to be everywhere at the moment, bouncing between podcast interviews like mad as he hits the circuit to discuss his latest book with Oprah Winfrey. I’m a step behind that book, still lingering with the one he published last year quoted from above. But based on the interviews I’ve listened to, it feels like the themes from one book flow right into the next. That I’m lingering so long on the transition from fluid intelligence to crystallized intelligence tells you all you need to know about my own particular stage of life.

      Books are stepping stones. The path I’ve been on in my reading leads me from one book to the next, and one interview with the author to the next, which points out more source material to dive into, and so on. Life is about growth and becoming. How we cross the stream depends very much on the stones we land upon, and where they lead us next. At some point in our lives (if we reach awareness) it feels natural to stop chasing idols and begin finding wisdom.

      So here we are, figuring out this journey to becoming what’s next for us. The ashramas listed above are one clear indicator that nothing we’re sorting through is unique to us, it’s a human condition of growth and change and reconciliation with the entire process. Writing surely helps, but do does reading and seeking out the perspectives of those who have gone there before us. This is the time in my life when diving deeply into spirituality and wisdom feels like the natural next step. Apparently I’m moving into vanaprastha, with the urge to walk out into the forest but still carrying the obligations of that stage of earthly rewards, grihastha. How about you?

    • Talkin’ to Myself

      Talkin’ to myself and feelin’ old
      Sometimes I’d like to quit
      Nothin’ ever seems to fit
      Hangin’ around
      Nothin’ to do but frown
      Rainy days and Mondays always get me down
      — The Carpenters/Adam Williams, Rainy Days and Mondays

      Rainy days and Mondays never really drag me down. Sure, we’ve had way more rain than we should this season, while others aren’t getting nearly enough of it. I can fret about climate change but I don’t usually care that it’s raining or sunny on any given day. Likewise, I don’t worry all that much whether it’s a Monday or a Saturday, as each is a gift. The key is whether you feel in control of your days or whether you feel someone else is controlling them. We can’t control the passing of time or the weather, only our reaction to it. The jury is still out on whether we collectively have the fortitude to do anything about climate change.

      I saw a friend the other day who parroted the dangers of “mass murderers swarming crossing the border and descending upon innocents across the country”. I didn’t have the energy to get in a debate with him, having learned during the last two elections in the United States that people are going to believe what they believe and you just can’t force an alternate story line upon a zealot. It made me sad to see another one gone though, reminding me of that closing moment in Invasion of the Body Snatchers when you realize someone you once believed in had switched over to the dark side. Sometimes you just want to scream. But like the weather, this is a reaction we can choose or opt out of. Instead I focused on what we had in common.

      The quality of our lives is always going to be about who is controlling our time and our belief system. When we accept that some things are out of our control, we learn to work with what we can. Amor fati. Our beliefs, on the other hand, can be developed independently of what those around us may believe. We may yet become who we want to be in this life, and we ought to have faith in others to find a way forward too.

      Lately my posts have been all over the place in both content and when they’re published. It’s a sign of a complicated life, perhaps, or maybe it’s just the time bucket I happen to reside in at the moment. Either way, it’s documented and best viewed through the lens of time. What I’m sure of is that I’ve often wanted to quit, but just keep writing anyway. That’s how life works too. Just keep showing up and doing the work and things usually work out in the end. Nothing to be down about at all, really. Just one soul in a wild world, talking to himself.

    • Nothing Gold Can Stay

      Nature’s first green is gold,
      Her hardest hue to hold.
      Her early leaf’s a flower;
      But only so an hour.
      Then leaf subsides to leaf.
      So Eden sank to grief,
      So dawn goes down to day.
      Nothing gold can stay.
      — Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay

      Halfway through another month as I publish this, and I shake my head at the magic I’ve missed doing other things. But there are always other things. We do what we can with the time we’re given.

      Memento mori is a statement of freedom. When we understand that we have an expiration date, we go out and live our lives uniquely focused. Carpe diem. There should be nothing more to it than this.

      And yet there are things out of our control that must be addressed as they hit us squarely. Life is an ongoing reality check. The world is not perfect, there are storms brewing, and no matter how well we plan the party sometimes it just rains. Amor fati: Love of fate. As The Police reminded us in a song, “when the world is runnin’ down, you make the best of what’s still around”.

      But this is the deal we made entering this world: We are young and vibrant for just so long. We grow and become what we can in our season and then we hand the reigns in the next season. Nothing gold can stay.

      There is freedom in knowing the truth. It’s a calling that we answer every day. To live with urgency and purpose, gratitude and joyfulness. This is our poem. This is our song. This is our life.

    • Significance Transcends

      “History is, above all else, the creation and recording of that heritage; progress is its increasing abundance, preservation, transmission, and use. To those of us who study history not merely as a warning reminder of man’s follies and crimes, but also as an encouraging remembrance of generative souls, the past ceases to be a depressing chamber of horrors, it becomes a celestial city, a spacious country of the mind, wherein a thousand saints, statesmen, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, loves, and philosophers still live and speak, teach and carve and sing. The historian will not mourn because he can see no meaning in human existence except that which man puts into it; let it be our pride that we ourselves may put meaning into our lives, and sometimes a significance that transcends death. If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children. And to his final breath he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and lasting life.” — Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History

      We are the sum of all that has come before us, with a mission to process and pass along this wealth of knowledge and contribution to future generations. When we talk about the Great Conversation, we rightly wonder what our own legacy might be. We must feel the urgency to contribute. We must lean into Walt Whitman’s response to this very question: That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. Walt wasn’t just writing prose, he was struggling with the same things we struggle with, with fewer notifications and cat videos. We’re simply links in the chain, anchored to the work of those who came before us.

      Lately I’ve seen the momentum that comes from steadily pushing the flywheel for years. The writing is easier, conversations seem more productive and meaningful, and a deeper and richer connection to the world has led to growth and understanding. We simply begin to realize that we’ll never have it all figured out, we cannot live forever and so we’ll run out of time before we grasp everything we hoped we might, and with the startling realization that our significance in the universe isn’t all that big. Yet we may still transcend this lifetime anyway, simply by being actively engaged in our time.

      When we feel the connection to the countless generative souls who made us who we are, we may feel compelled to rise to the occasion of our lifetime as well. There is magic in showing up every day and doing the work. Our verse is ours alone. Just as we thrill at discovering a magical verse from a distant voice, our own verse may one day delight a future treasure hunter. Doesn’t it deserve its moment in the sun?

    • Faster Things

      Last Sunday morning, the sunshine felt like rain
      The week before, they all seemed the same
      With the help of God and true friends, I’ve come to realize
      I still have two strong legs, and even wings to fly
      So I, ain’t a-wastin time no more
      ‘Cause time goes by like hurricanes, and faster things
      — Gregg L. Allman, Ain’t Wastin’ Time No More

      The years fly by, and we begin to notice this at our own pace. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to shake us out of the fog of distraction, as it did for Gregg Allman when his brother Duane died in a motorcycle accident, prompting lyrics like those above. When someone is taken from us in the prime of life it shakes the survivors around that person to the core. At some point, if we’re lucky, we awaken to the reality of memento mori without being turned upside down by tragedy, and simply begin at last to live in earnest.

      The whole point of remembering that we all must die is to live now, while there’s still time. It’s easier said than done, as life piles on the busy. Life will never be perfectly aligned to do everything we possibly could do in our lifetime, but if we focus on essential things we might feel we’ve done enough. A lifetime is always a faster thing than we care to believe, so a bit of structure and purpose go a long way towards feeling we did what we could in the time we have.

      The trick is to structure is to put everything in it’s season. Bill Perkins called this time buckets in his book Die With Zero. Using time buckets, we may prioritize what is most essential now, and what can (and cannot) be deferred to later. For example, I may never hike the Appalachian Trail as I thought I might at 20, but I can still chip away at other things that require the fitness and time I have available now for other worthy life goals. But how do you determine what is essential when if you don’t make the time to make the list and assign it to its proper time? We are what we prioritize. Use this time bucket to map out all the rest.

      Since I began writing this post we’ve seen a few famous people pass away, and we’ve all collectively gained another week of experience in our lifetime. Those sands keep pouring out of the hourglass, whether we’re ready for it or not. Our best chance at a full lifetime is to wrestle with our days one at a time, but with the structure of an overriding purpose and plan for how to use each season. Because time goes by like hurricanes, and faster things.

    • Winds of Time

      I’m growing older but not up
      My metabolic rate is pleasantly stuck
      Let those winds of time blow over my head
      I’d rather die while I’m livin’ than live while I’m dead
      — Jimmy Buffett, I’m Growing Older But Not Up

      Two events happened concurrently over the last few days that rocked the boat for me. Jimmy Buffett passed away, following Gordon Lightfoot, Harry Belafonte and several other performers to Rock & Roll heaven, while signaling once again that the party doesn’t go on indefinitely. And less important to the world at large, a building I once worked at with many motivated change agents was announced to be closing. The subsequent rehashing of memories from people I haven’t seen in years triggered even more nostalgia for me. When things are subtracted from the sum of our lives, we inevitably feel the loss. But those winds of change keep blowing, and we must learn to navigate them as best we can.

      Nothing drives change like time. And we have blessedly little control over the sweeping changes it inflicts upon us all. Realizing this is either the moment that panic sets in and we scurry to grab control over things we will never control or the moment we accept the circumstances of being born into this mad situation. Amor fati: love of fate. The universe isn’t ours to control, only our reaction to the forces blowing over us.

      The thing we sometimes forget about growing older is how lucky we are for the gift of time. Those extra days offer an accumulation of memories and experiences that make life more complete. Alternatively, we might resist change and hold on for dear life to things that were never meant to be forever things. We ourselves aren’t forever things. Memento mori. So don’t postpone living. We can’t live when we’re dead.

    • End of Summer Song

      The cry of the cicada
      Gives us no sign
      That presently it will die.

      — Matsuo Basho

      Summer slipped away quickly this year. It always does, really, but especially when the weather is uncooperative for large swaths of outdoor living time. So it goes.

      The cicadas signal the dog dats of summer but also its end. We know the signs of autumn by now, and it begins with that uniquely mournful song that they make from the trees. Their time is now, the cry, and so too is ours.

    • All the Things

      This is the bright home
      in which I live,
      this is where
      I ask
      my friends
      to come,
      this is where I want
      to love all the things
      it has taken me so long
      to learn to love.
      — David Whyte, The House of Belonging

      The house is full more frequently now. Filled with pets and friends and memories. The nest is empty and yet it’s not, all at once. This is how we do things, you and I. The walls echo with memories of a house full of people who filled our hearts and danced with their moment in our lives. We built this house hoping for all that has transpired in the days that followed, and the days to come.

      Soon the leaves will fall again, blanketing the landscape indifferent to my pleas for relief. They’ve always reminded me in such times that they were here first, and most likely will be here when I’ve moved on again. The trees drew us to this plot of land, and root us to it, even as I grumble at them I know this to be true: they will carry on without me one day.

      The perennials come back every year, rising in the spring to look around at the world. Each year I’ve been here to greet them, as I do the hummingbirds and bees that know a reliable garden when they see it. Seasons come and go, and still we remain, doing our part to make this plot of land sing. Some things remain resilient, other things return to earth sooner than we’d want them to, and we remain to do with it all what we can. At least for now.

      Lately we’ve danced with the idea of beginning again in a smaller place, leaving this place for others to build their own lives. We both like round numbers and feel we might pull off three decades in this home, just as we said we would when we built it for the baby we knew and the one on the way who would only know this house as her home. She reminds us of this still, far from home but still everywhere within it. They’ve both left their mark here, as their parents have. As the circle of family and friends and pets have. We’ve met the years with love and purpose.

      We’ve seen what decline looks like, in loved ones old and young alike. None of us were born without an expiration date. These are days to remember, and to hold on to for as long as there’s another season. Our lives, like this house, are only as full as we make them. All the things that make up our days dance in our memories. Each has made us who we are, together.

    • The Right Kind of Virtues

      “It occurred to me that there were two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?” — David Brooks, “The Moral Bucket List” The New York Times

      Do you ever wonder, what people say about us when we pass? Isn’t it directly related to how much we lean into the right virtue? We might work hard all of our life, focused and disciplined, and successful by most any measure of that word, and still not live a life that is fulfilling and meaningful to others.

      Is striving to be virtuous about resume building or character building? Are we building a list of career highlights and an office in the C-suite or are we building a moral foundation that others will point to as a model for living? Just what do we want to be remembered for anyway? A life of meaning and purpose is a life of service to others.

      How is someone developed in such a way that they’re a contributor and builder instead of a corrosive sapper of joy and trust? It begins with flipping attention from ego to empathy. Easier said than done in a world where the self is so celebrated, but absolutely essential to growing into a person who is reliable, trustworthy and willing to roll up their sleeves and do the hard work.

      There is a recipe for building a strong character. It begins with the way we’re raised and the social network around us. In the way others perceive the world and how they in turn influence how we perceive it. Stir in a proper informal education: being well-traveled and worldly, and well-read and articulate surely help build empathy and understanding. Developing strong listening skills and the inclination and moral courage to rise to the moment when nobody else will.

      When someday we pass from this world, what do we want people to say about us? Will anyone remember the extra work we put in to finish that project, or will the memory be about being fully present for our children and significant other at the most important events in their lives? Will we be remembered as being a good friend or sibling, a great neighbor who looked out for others, or as that person who was never really there when it really mattered?

      A life of service to others isn’t always easy, but it matters a great deal. These moments add up, and will create a ripple that will be felt by others. The person with the most toys in the end doesn’t win, they’ve simply gathered a bunch of stuff that will end up in an estate plan for someone else. Isn’t the real goal to have our lives resonate for those around us, that we’ll be deeply missed when our time comes to an end?

    • New Places

      “Like silence after noise, or cool, clear water on a hot, stuffy day, Emptiness cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness.” ― Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

      I picked up a beautiful stone on a rocky beach the other day, as I often do in such places, to add it to a pot of stones I’ve got from around the world. I realized that most of the stones I’ve accumulated while doing this mean nothing more to me than curious novelties, yet I keep acquiring stones from places I’ve been just the same. It’s not logical, but it is my way of saving a piece of each beautiful place I’ve been. Better than a shot glass or a t-shirt, I suppose.

      Lately I’ve been working to reconcile the fact that I’ve been adding more than subtracting. This is a natural activity for many people in the western world: more stuff, more experiences, more accomplishments, more, more, more… We pick up stuff as casually as we load food on at the buffet table. And it’s not just stuff, it’s responsibilities and commitments, work load, home improvement projects, and on and on. We pile on all of these things as we accumulate experience and live our lives.

      When we fill our lives we leave little room for ourselves to emerge. We’re in there somewhere, under the pile of stuff we’ve heaped on our shoulders. A boat needs an anchor to hold it to solid ground, but if you add enough anchors the boat will sink. Do you ever get that sinking feeling? Let something go from your life and feel released.

      Recently I added a puppy to my life. This can be seen as another added responsibility and maybe one anchor too many. Then again, maybe it was the anchor I needed. What’s clear in getting acquainted with her is that other anchors may need to be tossed aside that this ship may stay afloat. And this is how we grow in new directions in different seasons of our lives. We encounter new and different things that carry us to new places.