Alexandersmap

    Category: Stoicism

    • Here it Comes

      Another year already? With so much left undone?! So many good and bad days, rolled into twelve months. It’s been a great year. It’s been a horrible year. And now it’s over. And so it all begins again tomorrow.

      If we’ve learned anything from our stack of years, it’s that time flies, and 2023 will go just as quickly as 2022 did, and 2021 before that. We ought to feel that urgency and apply it to our days. I hope we do.

      Ready or not, here it comes. Beginning with today and tomorrow and each precious nugget of living. May we use it wisely.

      Happy New Year!

    • Tossing Aside the Blindfold

      “In the eighteenth century, when educated European tourists visited the Alps, they deliberately blindfolded their eyes to shield themselves from the evidence of the earth’s horrid irregularity. It is hard to say if this was not merely affectation, for today, newborn infants, who have not yet been taught our ideas of beauty, repeatedly show in tests that they prefer complex to simple designs. At any rate, after the Romantic Revolution, and after Darwin, I might add, our conscious notions of beauty changed. Were the earth as smooth as a ball bearing, it might be beautiful seen from another planet, as the rings of Saturn are. But here we live and move; we wander up and down the banks of the creek, we ride a railway through the Alps, and the landscape shifts and changes. Were the earth smooth, our brains would be smooth as well; we would wake, blink, walk two steps to get the whole picture, and lapse into a dreamless sleep. Because we are living people, and because we are on the receiving end of beauty, another element necessarily enters the question. The texture of space is a condition of time. Time is the warp and matter the weft of the woven texture of beauty in space, and death is the hurtling shuttle. Did those eighteenth-century people think they were immortal? Or were their carriages stalled to rigidity, so that they knew they would never move again, and, panicked, they reached for their blindfolds?” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      I think the point of Dillard’s quote, and the reason I chose it, was to highlight the imperfect nature of our time here, and the extraordinary capacity to receive and embrace beauty despite, or perhaps because of our awareness of the duration of the ride. We are active receivers of the ugly truth and the beautiful realization that life is a brief dance with wonder. Our version of modern blindfolds is of course a mobile phone with its infinite distractions flashing pretty images in our face. Do we truly see the rugged imperfections surrounding us when we’re a click away from something with ten million views just waiting for ours?

      A man died of exposure on a trail I’m very familiar with over the Christmas weekend. The details haven’t fully been released but it appears he was unprepared for the elements, trusted his phone to guide him and light his way when it got dark, and perished when he lost the trail and his battery faded away with his life force. Friends or relatives on the other side of the planet alerted emergency personnel, who found him too late to save him. That mobile phone might connect us to the world, but it isn’t active connection to other people, just the illusion of it. Life is a fragile dance with beauty, and (it seems) his ended when he got too comfortable with that illusion in a cold and unforgiving place.

      The thing is, that trail is one of the most beautiful and popular trails in the White Mountains. It’s easy to understand why he chose it. The tragic irony is that he received the beauty he sought in his climb, but his blindfold killed him in the end. It’s unfair to judge the hiker who perished, for at least he was out there trying to make the most of his moment (if tragically unprepared).

      There’s a lesson for every hiker in his story. But isn’t there another lesson hidden in plain sight? For shouldn’t we wonder, how many others are slowly wasting their lives staring into their own blindfolds? We must be actively engaged in our lives to see the imperfect beauty surrounding us.

    • Listen Carefully, Spend Wisely

      Colm Doherty: I just have this tremendous sense of time slipping away from me, Pádraic. And I think I need to spend the time I have left thinking and composing. Just trying not to listen to any more of the dull things that you have to say for yourself.
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Are you dying?
      Colm Doherty: No, I’m not dying.
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: But then you’ve loads of time.
      Colm Doherty: For chatting?
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Aye.
      Colm Doherty: For aimless chatting?
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Not for aimless chatting. For good, normal chatting.
      Colm Doherty: So, we’ll keep aimlessly chatting, and me life’ll keep dwindling. And in twelve years, I’ll die with nothing to show for it, bar the chats I’ve had with a limited man, is that it?
      — Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin

      There’s a darkness in this film that is borne of desperation. The characters react to the bleak reality of their lives in different ways. Colm and Pádraic’s sister, Siobhan Súilleabháin, desperately seek something beyond their relentlessly trivial existence. Pádraic sees nothing at all wrong with living out his days one exactly the same as the one before. And this raises the central question of the film, one we all faced at the height of the pandemic: what are we actually doing with our time? Is this all there is for us, or might we create something meaningful that lives beyond us before we pass? These are questions many of us wrestle with, while others contentedly choose more of the same. We each reconcile our brief dance with the world in our own way.

      These questions are timeless, even if we aren’t. Indeed, this temporary shelf life drives us to find answers. Our old friend Thoreau famously observed in the beginning pages of Walden that “the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation”. We bear the weight of these questions still, amplified by that realization that time is slipping away. Memento mori, friends. Carpe diem.

      The thing is, we shouldn’t despair at the thought. There ought to be freedom in that realization. We have an opportunity to amplify our living, and make it resonate in our time. We have the opportunity to create something that lives beyond ourselves, something that ripples. Alternatively, we might simply live. Neither choice is wrong, unless we’re quietly telling ourselves it is. The answer for each of us is to listen carefully, and spend wisely.

    • A Combination of States

      “Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” — Anaïs Nin (with a nod to Marginarian)

      I might have said something about this process of becoming in this blog a few times, not having read the Nin quote before but somewhere along the way influenced by the thought. We all have similar ideas because the human condition is similar for most of us, generation-to-generation, even as we gradually, possibly, improve our lot. History rhymes, as they say.

      Maybe we’re in a state of bliss, or a state of dread, or a state of exhaustion. We might feel all these in one afternoon. Changes of state are a lifetime migration filled with big and small changes, like ripples dancing on larger ocean swells. We feel the cold splash of reality even as we’re lifted to another height, and drop down the other side. We can try to bob along in one place for awhile, thinking we can control change by treading water, but life drifts on without us if we don’t remain an active participant. Life is movement. Movement is change.

      The trick is accepting state change. Moving through it as it presents itself to us, influencing what we can and leaving the rest to fate. Amor fati. Love of fate. Where we are is where we are. Where we’ll be next is only partially our choice. Love it? Celebrate the moment. Hate it? This too shall pass.

      The distraction industry thrives because people want to remain in a state of bliss, or anger, or apathy. Distraction isn’t active participation in your own life, it’s chasing our tail around in circles thinking it’s progress. By contrast, becoming is an active word, full of hope and frustration, bliss and setbacks. That’s life in a nutshell. One crazy combination of states, experienced one after the other, to the end. We ought to view that with the adventurous spirit of an explorer, don’t you think?

    • Begin Today With the End in Mind

      Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
      Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
      When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
      Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

      When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
      When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
      No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
      When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

      Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
      And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
      Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
      When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.
      — Mark Strand, The End

      When you think about the little joys in life, what comes immediately to mind? Are those joys as vivid as Strand describes in The End? As a collector of sunsets and stories told in clouds, and an avid gardener who coexists with felines, I confess this poem resonated with me. Or maybe it’s just the stoic in me. For we must collect our joyful bits begins today, always with the end in mind.

      Surely, life isn’t all joyful bits. We know this all too well, don’t we? But as Viktor Frankl said reflecting on days much darker than most of us will face, we choose how to react to the stimulus we encounter. We are what we focus on next. We ought to acknowledge the darkness but celebrate the light. Be the mirror that reflects beauty and generosity back at the world. We might just illuminate the life of someone else floundering in the dark.

      Knowing we reach the end one day ought to compel us to do more with this day. Be active with the day we’ve got. See and be engaged in the scene. And dance until the end.

    • A More Resplendent Life

      “Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.” — Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

      Most every year I travel to New York City in November for work and get to experience the city just before the holidays. The Christmas tree is up in Rockefeller Center but not yet lit up, the temporary stands are lined up along the Thanksgiving Day parade, and the general buzz around the city is anticipatory. Having done this a few times, I know what to expect, appreciate my opportunity to reconnect, and treat every moment like it’s the last time I’ll have a November visit here. We just never know, do we?

      Filling our time on earth with glory is a deliberate act. It requires more than casual interaction with life, and perhaps more than appreciating the moment itself. It requires a regular dose of Memento mori to fully arrive at Carpe Diem. Perspective leads to action.

      Glory is the wrong word, I think. Written in another era. Less modern. I like splendid or magnificent more. But the point is to live a more resplendent life, not to fixate on the trivial. We ought to look around more and see what the gifts are that the universe presents to us. And in seeing for the first or last time, to savor and shine brightly in our days.

    • Creating Irreplaceable

      “Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.“ — André Gide

      [Quick aside: I’ve used the two quotes in this blog before, but feel there’s more to be said about them. Perhaps more still, even after this post. Forgive the repetition. We are what we repeatedly do?]

      It’s fair to ask ourselves, as we begin each day enabled or encumbered in our routines, just what it is we’re up to. Where exactly is this day bringing us on our journey? For that matter, what is the destination anyway? Big questions, to be sure, but life is full of big questions deftly dodged. When we avoid answering our deepest questions how can we possibly expect to reach our potential? We can’t succumb to distraction when we’re creating irreplaceable.

      A few weeks ago a friend planted a seed in my brain about finally hiking the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim. I’ve contemplated doing this for years, and deep down I knew it was going to slip away like so many other dreams. Until I decided to realize that particular dream. Now don’t get me wrong: it’s still unrealized, but it aligns with my identity, lends itself to other life goals, and is attainable with applied focus, time and effort. For better or worse, I’ve also just announced that intent to everyone who reads this blog, breaking a rule about announcing what I intend to do instead of informing about what I’ve just done. But sometimes you need to add peer pressure to reach your goals in life.

      A year or ten ago, I began hinting at a novel I was writing. I had no business writing a novel when I first started talking about writing one, because I didn’t believe I had any business writing it. Naturally the novel never was written, but the desire to write it remained. So I started blogging every day as a step towards writing better, applied daily through my commitment to post something every day. My blog posts are written the day they’re posted, which is why the time is variable, because I finish it when I finish it. You might add that the quality of the post is also highly variable, but the point is to ship the work, ready or not.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
      No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your identity.
      This is why habits are crucial. They cast repeated votes for being a type of person.”
      — James Clear

      We all wonder what the future will bring, but don’t always see we’re building it with each action. We have more agency in our lives than we give ourselves credit for, and often overthink things instead of just taking another step. That which is irreplaceable cannot be realized without consistent effort. We must choose our direction and do the work to realize it. Fate decides the rest.

    • Ebb and Flow

      “When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom” ― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

      Life isn’t always the highlight reel moments, for we’d quickly grow bored with epic living day-after-day until we meet our infinity. No, the mind and body need challenges to hone, and rest to recover, each in their time. We need our rainy days and Mondays to rest up for all that this world may offer us should we rise to meet it. Some days are ripe and full of wonder, others are relatively inconsequential, save for the urgency of maintaining our chain of days. To live to fight another day, if you will.

      Ann Morrow Lindbergh was married to the most famous man in the world when she wrote the words quoted above. She was also an accomplished aviator herself, which is somehow lost in the shadow of history as her husband took the spotlight. Yet she achieved a bit of immortality herself, didn’t she? Knowing something of their lives, I don’t aspire to be like the Lindberghs, but they do serve as a clear example of the ebb and flow of life.

      Relationships hit their high marks and low moments. Work, travel, health… each rise and fall in their time. We become resilient in weathering the storms life throws our way, and we embrace with vigor the good times for having persevered through the bad times. We all have these dalliances with light and darkness, don’t we? What do we learn from them?

      This too shall pass, we all learn in our lifetime. This applies equally to the good times as the bad. It’s fair to ask, what are we flowing towards, and what are we receding from? We are what we put our focus on, and each of us must develop resiliency and independence to survive and grow. And when we fill our lives with people who lift us up, the ebbs are more sustainable, and the flows just may be magical.

    • 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.

    • Shaking the Perception of Sameness

      “You start earning a million dollars, and you get all the stuff that comes with it. On week one, when you get a nice house with a nice shower, and a nice car, that feels good. But by week two or three, that’s just your shower. That’s just your car. It’s just your house. You’ve stopped noticing all the great things about it. This is a bad feature of human psychology for all the fantastic things in life. Even the best things in life, we will wind up getting used to.” — Laurie Santos, The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish: #139 Laurie Santos

      What do we get used to? We relish that first cup of coffee in the morning, but by the second we’re simply maintaining our energy, akin to filling up the tank in our cars. There’s magic in the ritual of making and savoring that first cup, isn’t there? So why does the novelty wear off so quickly on subsequent cups?

      Now take out the coffee analogy and insert any other thing that we begin to take for granted in our lives. The place we live, the car we drive, the people we hold most dear. At what point does routine dull our appreciation for the things we cherish the most in our lives? And more importantly, how do we break ourselves of this mindset?

      That’s what the Stoics were pushing themselves towards when they reminded themselves that the entire game is temporary. Memento mori, Carpe diem, Amor Fati… not just clever Latin phrases to throw around at parties, but a way of living with awareness. A way to focus on the now and appreciate where we are. Stuff is temporary, people come and go from our lives, good fortune can turn bad and back again in an instant, and through it all each moment remains a blessing.

      We humans get caught up in our annoyances, setbacks and frustrations du jour, but perhaps the worst thing that can ever happen to us is to simply getting used to living the way we do. Same job, same friends and family, same lunch… there’s just no savoring when we’re focused on sameness. Like salt sprinkled over an otherwise bland meal, a good shake of Stoicism offers us the opportunity to savor. For this is our big night out, and we ought to celebrate it for the special occasion it is.