Alexandersmap

    Category: seasons

    • Shedding Leaves

      The trees say they’re tired, they’ve born too much fruit
      Charmed all the wayside, there’s no dispute
      Now shedding leaves, they don’t give a hoot
      La-di-da, di-da-di-dum, ’tis Autumn
      — The King Cole Trio/Henry Nemo, ’Tis Autumn

      Late October in New Hampshire brings meaning to that alternate name for autumn: fall. For everything is falling all the time now. The nuts and fruits have been harvested and picked over, the maple trees shed their leaves first, and then the stubborn oaks. It’s now too late for leaf peepers, but feel free to stick around for the fall cleanup (they never do).

      Shedding is natural, and prepares us for a future where carrying too much puts us in a vulnerable state. For trees, carrying their leaves too late in the season makes them vulnerable to early snow and ice and wind, with all the damage that being overloaded in a storm may bring. Nature knows that it’s essential to shed excess but store all the necessary energy reserves to survive the season.

      The metaphor of shedding leaves in preparation for the harshness of winter feels appropriate. Lately I’ve shed a few habits, donated some under-utilized clothing, seen the friends sail south and shifted from one job to another. Life isn’t just change, it’s being prepared for the change so that we may surf the wave instead of being knocked down by it.

      Stick season is almost upon us. Are we ready for the changes to come? Resilience often comes down to how much we want to face the truth of the season. Each brings with it clues about what to do next. The only thing left to do is to take the action we know deep down we must do. La-di-da, di-da-di-dum. Life is change, of that there’s no dispute.

    • The Only One

      “We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we have only one.” — Confucius

      Blame it on autumn, or maybe the series of life events I’m currently passing through, but it feels like life is starting over again. Every moment we’re fully alive offers that opportunity of course, but stack enough stuff on the scale and the balance tips enough. Enough for what? For whatever is next in this one wild and precious life, as Mary Oliver so vividly put it.

      This is it, last time I checked, so let’s make the most of our time together. Double down on adventure, take calculated risks more frequently, do the “one day” bucket list things in this time bucket while we have the vitality to experience all it might offer. Defer deferral for a [real] change.

      So stop wasting time already! This is all we have left. Practice active savoring in this one and only dance through life. We can be co-conspirators while the rest of the world marches on thinking there will always be a tomorrow. Let’s not waste a second on such illusions. Seize what flees.

    • The Unexpected Guest

      Before you cross the street
      Take my hand
      Life is what happens to you
      While you’re busy making other plans
      — John Lennon, Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)

      This year will go down as the year of falls in our family. There have been a lot of them, and each brings with it the siren call of life happening, no matter what our plans were a moment before. We must then be resilient, knowing the falls will come, knowing life is all curveballs and fickleness.

      The time to build resilience has already passed when life happens. We ought to be ahead of it as best we can, that we may persevere and grow from the fall instead of spiraling down the slippery slope. It all comes down to how easily we can pivot when those other plans drop in for an unexpected visit.

      We see the future in each stumble that our aging elders make. In the big scheme of things, we aren’t that far off from fragility ourselves. All we can do is defer it as far into our future as we can. Life will happen sooner than expected, it’s the bounce back that gets harder. Each day is our opportunity to build resiliency and flexibility into our lives, that we may one day receive the unexpected guest as prepared as one can be in such moments.

    • What Our Situations Hand Us

      They say that these are not the best of times
      But they’re the only times I’ve ever known
      And I believe there is a time for meditation
      In cathedrals of our own
      Now I have seen that sad surrender in my lover’s eyes
      And I can only stand apart and sympathize
      For we are always what our situations hand us
      It’s either sadness or euphoria
      — Billy Joel, Summer, Highland Falls

      We would be naive to believe that every day would be sunshine and roses. We must build ourselves up to become resilient, accept our fate whatever it happens to be, and manage our situations as best we can. Amor fati indeed.

      If there’s a problem with the world today, it’s this feeling of entitlement and privilege that develops through comfort and distraction. Collectively we lose our capacity to manage the waves of challenges that life throws at us. We build resilience through stressors in our lives, just as we build perspective and empathy by getting out of our own heads and seeing what the rest of the world is dealing with. It turns out quite a lot, actually, and we aren’t the center of the universe after all.

      Philosophy isn’t an escape, it’s a set of tools that help us manage whatever situation we happen to be in now. It tempers us when things are going well, and keeps us afloat when we feel like we’re drowning in it all. It turns out there is a time for meditation, and there is that ultimate power to choose our response between stimulus and response, as Viktor Frankl pointed out to us.

      Somewhere between sadness and euphoria is our normal state. We go through life learning lessons, adding tools to our kit that we may use when we plummet into challenges or soar into bliss. We learn what we can control or influence and what simply happens no matter what we do. Amor fati is simply accepting it all for what it is. We are human after all.

    • Making Full Use of the Decade

      “Don’t try to be young. Just open your mind. Stay interested in stuff. There are so many things I won’t live long enough to find out about, but I’m still curious about them. You know people who are already saying, ‘I’m going to be 30—oh, what am I going to do?’ Well, use that decade! Use them all!”
 — Betty White

      If life is a series of time buckets, we ought to be making the most of each bucket we happen to reside in at this particular stage of our life. My entire life transformed from 10 to 20, and again from 20 to 30, and so on to now. The decade I’m in has been revelatory for the transformation it has brought to my life and for the speed with which it’s going by. It all flies by, we just have to make full use of the time.

      Each decade is a climb, and climbs are filled with setbacks, false summits, detours and exhausting ascents that seem to go on forever without relief. Alternatively, we might look at the decade as meandering through a maze, encountering all sorts of interesting or even terrifying paths, with a series of dead ends we must back away from, before we reach the other side. Whatever life means to us, it ought to be exhilarating and interesting as we begin each day, for this stage of our lives is rapidly coming to an end, and the next is just around the corner.

      The key is staying interested, as Betty White pointed out, and with our interest sparked getting fired up for the next. To explore what lies just beyond where we’ve been thus far is a lifetime adventure which we can all subscribe to. Be bold! This next decade will fly by too, and what will our memories be then? We must exploit each leap into the unknown for all it offers in order to live a full life.

    • Kicking Life Down the Curb

      “Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.” ― Anton Chekhov

      The leaves are falling down pretty quickly now. I type this knowing the truth of that statement: I’ll soon need to clean the pool one last time before putting the cover on and shutting it down until April. Having a pool at all is a luxury in this mad world and I appreciate it for all that it offers, but understand there’s a tax that comes with owning one. The tax is time and attention that might be applied to something else. Everything has its season.

      A pool, like people, grows weary over time. Parts wear out and need to be repaired or replaced. There’s a cost to this and one wonders how long to keep going with it before you just stop using it altogether. It would make a lovely frog pond, as the frequent visitors attest before I scoop them out and relocate them. Yes, there’s a season for a pool in a lifetime. There’s a season for a lot of things. One day the season will end, in the meantime we kick decisions like what to do about that thing down the curb.

      Ah yes, life has its seasons. We grow into some as we grow out of others. The most healthy and vibrant wear out over time. Knowing this, we must not kick life down the curb, but embrace our potential in the here and now. The thing to kick down the curb is the relentless decline of our health and well-being through good choices today. We mustn’t defer living, but rather defer declining through better choices. Sure.

      There’s always something to face—some tax to pay for our day in the sun. And with it there’s also something to kick down the curb. We must remember to make the most of the now we’re in while still preparing for the next. For the next is coming, but the now is flying quickly past.

    • Time to Step Out

      House on fire
      Leave it all behind you
      Dark as night
      Let the lightning guide you
      Step outside, time to step outside
      Time to step out
      — José González, Step Out

      Yesterday was one of those epic days we’ll remember for the rest of our days. I picked up my daughter from a red eye flight, which meant I was up quite early myself, and capped the evening with the northern lights dancing brilliantly overhead late into the evening. Why does anyone stay inside when the universe wants to play with us just out the door? Just what call are we listening for instead?

      Every other time I’ve chased the aurora borealis I’ve gone somewhere other than home. Most of the time I’ve come up empty. Scotland, Iceland, Maine, and northern New Hampshire have largely mocked me with overcast or a fickle aurora. But there’s something to that Cheryl Strayed quote about putting ourselves in the way of beauty that continues to whisper to me. Step out! Be patient…

      What we seek often comes to us if we simply get out of our own way and put ourselves in the way of it. Last night I opted to stay put and see if Norðurljós wanted to dance. It turned out she did, and what a performance!

      The thing is, we get wrapped up in what we miss, instead of simply stepping out of ourselves to find what is often right in front of us. Something like the northern lights is out of our control most of the time, but what is in our control is a willingness to dance with whatever comes our way. Amor fati: Love of fate. Fate brought my daughter home and a visit from Norðurljós in one memorable day.

      Photo credit to my daughter for this one
      Visible to the naked eye, but incredibly bright in night mode

    • Practicing Radical Amazement

      “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. …get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”
      — Abraham Joshua Heschel

      We get so casual with life. We take things for granted, growing tone deaf to the miracles all around us. When we become self-absorbed and jaded we miss so much that might have become a vital part of us. Sure, a good filter is helpful in a world with its share of ugliness, but we ought to remember to be fully aware of the incredible wonder surrounding us that we might fold it into the layers of our identity.

      Today is a crisp, cool October day in New Hampshire. It’s the kind of day that makes postcards. Right now the foliage seekers are poised for that perfect photograph somewhere beautiful. You know what they say about beauty being where you find it? That’s a lot easier when you live in the midst of natural wonder. Call me a country mouse if you want, but I’ll take a quiet country lane any day over asphalt through a concrete jungle.

      One big reason I write and take gazillions of photographs is to prompt attention towards the immediate and to one day recall the wonder previously experienced. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it and all that. Yes! Of course all that! For what else is there? But how many of us hear that call?

      Maybe we can’t all be poets or artists, but we shouldn’t all be corporate lawyers or middle managers either. It’s never been about what we call ourselves anyway, but what we pay attention to in our corner of the universe. That’s exemplified in the stories we tell ourselves and in the wonder we encounter between the previous moment and the next.

      Why is it radical amazement? Because most people settle into comfortable indifference. So we ought to take heed of Heschel’s suggestion: go be amazed—it’s all just waiting for us to notice.

    • What We Notice

      “Life is a garden, not a road. We enter and exit through the same gate. Wandering, where we go matters less than what we notice.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

      After an unsuccessful hunt for the northern lights last night, I walked out into crisp early morning darkness for a just-in-case glance at the heavens. Alas, no aurora, but instead I caught the brilliant Jupiter and a blushing Mars, caught in the act of chasing Jupiter across the sky. Orion stood between them as guardian, forever distracted by the hunt for the bull. As a Taurus myself, I’m always rooting for Orion to miss the mark. It turns out Orion is never inclined to release anyway.

      I find myself uniquely aware of the garden as we wander through it. Some call me a wanderer, distracted by life, never inclined to release the arrow on the hunt for success. Success to me isn’t found in a C-suite, it’s found in a spark of connection between me and another. It’s found in a sliver of hope and direction given to another wanderer, who simply lost their way from here to there. We all do, eventually, lose our way—don’t we? Success is often disguised as a moment of clarity given to another, or found in our own reflection.

      If there is a road at all that we humans travel upon from here to there, it’s a winding road that often doubles back on itself. We are forever wandering through life, figuring out which way to turn next. The only secret adults know that children don’t is that adults are winging it too. We go through life accumulating experiences and apply that knowledge towards whatever we chance upon next. If we’re lucky we choose a path that favors us, if not we stumble eventually, pick ourselves up and figure out the next. It turns out that what we experience on the path matters a great deal more than where we thought we were going in the first place.

    • The Beautiful Present

      “Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.” ― Dag Hammarskjold

      Oh Lord, how shining and festive is your gift to us, if we
      only look, and see.
      — Mary Oliver, Look and See

      For all my talk of stopping to smell the roses, I barely noticed a beautiful sugar maple turning towards peak foliage as we drove by it yesterday. Had my bride not commented on it, I’d have missed it entirely. There’s something to be said for being focused when driving a two-ton automobile, but there’s also something to not rushing through life with blinders on. The point is, we may still get from here to there while enjoying the passage of time.

      When I write about the necessity of savoring each moment I do so as a reminder to myself as much as any reader who stumbles upon this blog (Welcome, nonetheless. Or rather, especially). We ought to begin with the end in mind, as Covey once said, while still enjoying the things we chance upon as we march through our small piece of history. Hammarskjold is absolutely correct in pointing out that we ought to be aware of that far horizon, but the poet in me rejects the idea of never looking at your next step. Our next step is all we have. Have a look at all that is beautiful in it, while still glimpsing the future horizon that we may not lose our way. Put another way, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

      I’m aware of the passing of time, and look towards that horizon with keen interest in how far down the path I might go before I tire and settle into an armchair to tell the same familiar stories to anyone who will listen again and again. But those stories are created today, with full awareness of all that happens in the now. We ought to savor the beautiful present flashing before our eyes instead of fixating on the next intersection. The journey will be all the more enjoyable. We’ll get there either way.