Alexandersmap

    Category: Stoicism

    • Living the Second Life

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

      This might be the most Stoic quote ever attributed to Confucius. Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius or Seneca danced around this same concept: Life is short, we only have today, do something with this gift. Words, really, until you truly realize it… and live accordingly.

      I’m well into my “second life”, but for me that hasn’t meant dropping everything and sailing around the world. I have friends doing that and believe me, there are days when I’d like to. But I’m deep into the life I’ve built and living means something different to me at the moment. Last night I watched another close basketball game as my son’s team pulled out an important win. He’s down to his last four regular season games in his college career and it’s not lost on him that one way or another there just aren’t many more opportunities to play left for him. And he’s rising to the occasion, playing meaningful minutes, playing big and being a leader on the court. It meant another late night of driving for me, but I wouldn’t want to have been anywhere else in the world.

    • Fading Tracks Across Time

      Yesterday morning I stood outside, barefoot, on the deck scanning the woods.  A dozen deer were moving silently through, silhouetted by the sun reflecting off the rapidly melting snow.  Unusually warm weather has created this opportunity to stand barefoot for me, and given the deer access to acorns and other edibles that should be locked into a frozen vault for a couple more months.  The deer don’t worry about climate change, only food and safety, and they graze uninterrupted as I walked back inside.

      Late morning we met friends for a walk on the Windham Rail Trail.  The trail changes every day, and today brought slush mixed with large bare spots.  We discussed using micro-spikes, but they would’ve been overkill on most of the trail, with just one section of about 100 meters testing our decision to leave them in the car.  No, this was a day for water-resistant footwear, good socks and focus on where you stepped next.    The week ahead brings more mild temperatures, and it’s likely this trail will be all pavement by next weekend.

      As usual on this trail, there were many animal tracks crossing this way and that.  Wildlife has their own trail system, but crossing paths with human roads and trails is inevitable.  Deer tracks mixed with turkey, squirrels and the other regulars.  But one set of tracks stood out from the rest; like a small child doing handstands across the snow, beaver tracks punctuated the softening snow.  Their front paws are very defined and human-life.  The back paws are more like a ducks.  The combination convinced me it wasn’t a racoon’s tracks we were looking at.  Beaver don’t hibernate, but they usually aren’t moving about that much this time of year.  Looking around there was no apparent evidence of tree damage from beaver, but we were right next to a pond.  Beaver store their winter food underwater near their nest.  Nest building isn’t a winter activity.  So I wondered what the beaver was traveling through here for.  Visiting friends?  Booty call? Or like me earlier just stepping outside to see what was new in the world?

      Yesterday was a big news day with the death of Kobe Bryant.  Social media and traditional media alike erupted in a flurry of reaction.  It’s a jolt when someone so young and vibrant is killed so abruptly.  Stoicism points out that it could happen to any of us at any moment, so live this moment fully.  So many forget that until a famous person or a loved one shocks the system with a reminder.  Living this moment starts with awareness of everything around you, feeling the changes in the air, seeing the deer moving through the woods, seeing the tracks in the snow, and having an extended conversation with people you care about while you navigate a slushy trail.  Life is now, today, whether it’s a Monday morning or a Friday night.  Bryant, and the other people on that helicopter were taken unexpectedly, tragically, but they were living a full life.  If you aren’t fully alive in this moment, fully aware of the magic around you, are you really living?

      As we left the trail yesterday, our own tracks marched along for 3 1/2 miles in one direction  and back again, covering seven full miles of conversation, observation, exercise and being alive.  Many of those tracks were turning to slushy mush even as we took them, and disappeared with the thousands of other tracks that have walked this path over the years.  Our time here is limited, the memories are made now, so what shall we do with this day before it too disappears?

       

    • Excellence Is The Next Five Minutes

      “Excellence is the next five minutes or nothing at all. It’s the quality of your next five-minute conversation. It’s the quality of, yes, your next email. Forget the long term. Make the next five minutes rock!” – Tom Peters

      “It is a simple two-step process: Decide the type of person you want to be. Prove it to yourself with small wins.” – James Clear

      “The work is quite feasible, and is the only thing in our power. . . . Let go of the past. We must only begin. Believe me and you will see.” – Epictetus

      It’s easy to get bogged down in strategy and planning. It’s a form of busywork that makes you feel productive even when you aren’t really moving forward. I’ve struggled with this over the years, and it’s fair to say I still haven’t mastered time. Then again, who ever does? But focusing on the action needed right now, with an eye towards maintaining our overall course, makes a lot of sense.

      Excellence is the next five minutes or nothing at all. The point isn’t to master time, just to win the next five minutes. What we do now matters more than what we do tomorrow. Setting a course is important; we all need to know where the we’re going or what’s the point? But right behind that is meaningful action. The Tom Peters quote is a favorite call to action because it reminds us of the urgency of now. Peters’ quote pairs well with James Clear’s work, and both quotes would be very familiar to stoics like Epictetus. Ultimately we all build off the legacy of those who came before, and hope to leave something meaningful for those who come after.

      I’m posting late today, watching the sun dropping in the west while I write instead of feeling it rise behind me as the morning progresses. I wanted to sit on this post awhile, feeling there’s more to say. There’s always more you can say, and always more to improve upon, isn’t there? But you also need to ship when it’s time to ship, a necessary call to action that keeps us from sitting on our work. And so it is that I’ve checked a few boxes today knowing I could’ve done more but generally happy with what I’ve done with the time I’ve been given today. Let’s call that a small win (and, always, work to go a step further if I’m blessed with the gift of tomorrow).

    • Favorites From a Year of Reading

      This might go down as my favorite year of reading.  I made it a goal to read more the last two years, and the momentum from 2018 definitely carried over into 2019.  Reading inspired my travel to new places and offered side trips of meaning in places I’ve been many times before.  It kicked me in the backside with work, writing, exercise and diet, and it inspired me to be a better version of myself than I previously had been.  I’m still a work in progress, but aren’t we all?  In all I read 23 books cover-to-cover in 2019, and dabbled in chapters of a few more.  Here are my ten favorite books this year:

      Atomic Habits by James Clear was by far the most impactful book on self-improvement that I’ve read in many years.  Strongly recommend this if you’re looking to make meaningful changes in your life.  I’m going to re-read it again in January to get a jump-start on 2020.  Habits that are now part of my identity include reading, writing, walking and drinking water.  Habits that went by the wayside include daily burpees and drinking less.  2020 (every day really) offers a chance to reset on habits, with new possibilities with learning language(s) and a few notable work goals.

      The Gift by Hafiz is a stunningly beautiful collection of poems.  Why it took me until 2019 to find Hafiz I don’t know…  but I’m glad I got here.

      Dream Work by Mary Oliver is another collection of brilliant poetry that it took me way too long in life to discover.  Maybe Oliver’s passing this year put a spotlight on her work, or maybe the student was finally ready.  Either way I’m glad I’ve immersed myself in the world of Mary Oliver.

      To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia by Jedidiah Jenkins is a travel book on the one hand, and a journey of self-discovery one the other as Jenkins wrestles with his religious upbringing and his sexual identity during an epic biking trip across North and South America.  The book reinforces my belief that most people are good while acknowledging some good fortune along the way.  As a bonus, Jenkins pointed me towards one Hafiz poem, Tim Ferriss pointed me towards another, and soon I was reading The Gift (above).

      Awareness by Anthony De Mello is not the kind of book I ever would have picked up, as it feels self-helpy and overly religious at first glance.  And it does have a healthy dose of both things, but this books is an incredible call to action for the self, and backed up with tremendous insight into human nature.  Another book I wish I’d read years ago that I’m glad I got to in 2019.

      How the Scots Invented the Modern World by Arthur Herman is a book I’ve had on the shelf for years that I finally got to in 2019.  Perhaps inspired by my then upcoming trip to Scotland, I burned through the book quickly, learning a lot about the Scottish people who made a massive impact on the world we live in today.  It also prompted me to add a few places to my trip that I might not otherwise have gone to.

      The Map Thief by Michael Blanding poured gasoline on my burning fascination with old maps, and fired me up in another way; as someone who is passionate about historical artifacts like maps and old books, and also in a career based on securing people and assets from criminals like Forbes Smiley, this book was highly relevant for me.

      The French and Indian War: Deciding the Fate of North America by Walter R. Borneman offered me more insight into the place I live than any history book in a long time.  The Northeast corner of North America is where most of this fighting took place, and I took the opportunity to visit many historically important sites in my travels that were inspired by this book.

      Benedict Arnold’s Navy: The Ragtag Fleet That Lost the Battle of Lake Champlain But Won the American Revolution by James L. Nelson is a look at the complex individual that is Benedict Arnold.  And it goes well beyond the Battle of Lake Champlain, with a detailed account of Arnold’s epic raid of Quebec through the wilderness of Maine.  The retreat from Quebec opened up the St Lawrence River to the British, which put Lake Champlain and Lake George in their sites as the critical water route to the Hudson River. Arnold’s fleet delayed the British just long enough to set up the victory at Saratoga (where Arnold played a critical role as well).  I followed this book by reading Valiant Ambition by Nathanial Philbrick, another excellent book with even more detail on complicated life of Benedict Arnold.  Benedict Arnold’s Navy inspired that read, so it gets the nod here in the top ten.

      The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday is, as the title indicates, meant to be read daily, one quick dose of stoic medicine at a time.  After immersing myself in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations in 2018, I felt that The Daily Stoic would be a great way to add a little daily stoicism to my life.  And it became part of my morning routine, where I’d read this before other books.  I’ll continue this habit by re-reading The Daily Stoic one day at a time in 2020 and on into the future.

      So there you go, my top ten favorite reads in 2019.  I’m a better person for having read them all, and look forward to revisiting several of them again and again in the years to come.  I’m a better writer for having read them all (still a work in progress).  And there’s a big stack of exciting books to tackle waiting patiently beside them.  So here’s to some great reading in the year ahead!

    • Better For Having Done So

      2019 was a year of change for all of us, as every year is, but it felt more profound this year. That has everything to do with writing about it. I know people who made changes on a massive scale, and others minor, but change happens whether we choose it or not. In the spirit of self-improvement as we enter the New Year, here are some small changes in routine that offered a profound return on time invested:

      Coffee consumption doesn’t seem like a big thing, but ever since I switched to the AeroPress I’ve reduced my daily coffee consumption, favoring one or two amazing cups to savor over multiple cups of average coffee from a Kurig or drip coffee maker.  I’ve reduced my personal plastic waste significantly as well.  I’d estimate that I’ve subtracted about 500 used K-cups from the landfill just making the switch.  I wish I’d done this years before, both for the reduction in waste and for the exceptional coffee the AeroPress makes.  On a side note, since the London and Scotland trip I’ve increased my tea consumption, switching coffee about half the time for tea, and find it a nice enhancement for my daily steaming hot beverage.

      Reading every morning, beginning with a quick read of The Daily Stoic for a jump start and moving to whatever book I was chewing on at the time, has built a routine and habit streak that has greatly enhanced my personal philosophy, helped me to know more about the history of the place I live and places I traveled to, opened my mind to spirituality and changed my perspective on a few things. I’ve read more and better books in 2019 and chewed through a few brilliant books that mocked me for years sitting on my bookshelf.  Nothing improves the mind like active participation in The Great Conversation.

      Educated travel in 2019 was enhanced by the reading, as you might imagine, but became a mission in itself.  Major trips to London, Scotland and Chicago were enhanced with educating myself about the places I was going, adding things I would have missed and subtracting things that may have been good but replaced with things that were amazing.  But this really became powerful for me in local travel.  Local travel took on new meaning for me with quick side trips to see the Saratoga Battlefield while I was in the Capital Region in New York and Fort Niagara in Buffalo, New York and Fort Western in Augusta, Maine.  I’ve hiked the trails in Ithaca, New York to see the stunning waterfalls in winter and spring, stopped at lonely graveyards to see the tombstone of Revolutionary War heroes and walked in dress shoes on soggy battleground sites deep in the off-season.  Educated travel offers a greater sense of place, and I’m better for having made the time to learn about and then visit these places.

      Writing every day has changed me completely.  The daily cadence, the skills acquired, and the deliberate action in the previous two habits to enhance the daily writing offered far more to me than any other daily routine.  We’ll see where it takes me in 2020, but wherever it goes, you’ll read about it on this blog.

      Walking has always been a part of my life.  I used to walk home from school four miles instead of taking the bus just to get away from the noise and secondhand smoke that was a part of bussing teenagers home back in those days.  When my dog Bodhi got older and passed away in 2019 the walks had decreased in length, and I found myself missing the nightly routine of walking for an hour with him looking at stars.  So I started walking again to get that minimum 10,000 steps, but also to come alive again.  Doing those steps on the beach or the rail trail or walking around the block at a random hotel somewhere became a mission.  I’m currently on a 19 day streak of 10,000 steps per day, managing to get my steps in through the holidays and hopefully for a long time to come.  I know I won’t always have the time to do it with work, but then again, what’s more important than maintaining a base level of fitness?  Walking is easy, and hasn’t caused nagging injuries like the burpees did for me.  When I can’t walk outside I’ll read on the treadmill, magnifying the font to crazy sizes so I maintain good posture.  But I double down on two habits and feel better for having done so.  So I’ll keep moving, and add other activity to enhance my fitness whenever possible.

      Looking at 2020, I’m not looking at resolutions as much as what can I add to my daily routine that will pay off over time?  And the answer for me is language acquisition.  Being bilingual or multilingual is nothing unusual in the rest of the world, but in American we tend to stick with English.  I think I’ve got my head wrapped around that one already.  Nothing improves travel like knowing the local language, and nothing challenges the brain like learning to speak it, so it’s time to get back on track.  I’ve dabbled in French, Spanish and Portuguese over the years, and it’s time to double down on learning two of them.  French and Spanish are the leading candidates, but I have a soft spot in my heart for Portuguese and may explore the language a bit as well.  Let’s see where this takes me.

    • Our Cosmic Dance Together

      “Move on to the next moment, uninfluenced by the previous one… eternal life is now, in the timeless now.” – Anthony De Mello

      It’s that time of year again, when you start thinking about time passing.  It’s not just the end of a year, it’s the end of a decade.  Whoa. Another decade passed by?   So it goes.  Ten spins through space around the sun; our cosmic dance together.  The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older…  Ain’t that the truth.  But so what?  What’s timeless anyway?  Granite?  The ocean?  Khakis? We’re all just spinning around on the same planet as it moves around the sun, and doing the best we can in our moment.

      “All you really need to do is accept this moment fully. You are then at ease in the here and now and at ease with yourself.” – Eckhart Tolle

      The more trips you take around the sun the more at ease you become with yourself.  At least for many of us.  There are plenty of people who grow more insecure with age, as if their entire identity is wrapped up in youthful beauty or athletic talent or the hustle of burning the candle at both ends.  There’s a Twitter debate going on right now about how successful people work 80+ hours per week.  That’s not my definition of success, that’s my definition of serfdom.  I’ve worked in toxic cultures before, and anyone telling you to sacrifice your life for work is toxic. Time is the ultimate currency, why give yours to a con artist with big promises? Better to dance to your own beat, I think. Eventually we all have to leave the dance floor, so why not enjoy it while we’re on it?

      So our odds of seeing 2020 improve by the hour, but if you aren’t learning and growing all you get is a better pair of New Year’s Eve glasses than 2019 offered. I’ve grown a lot this year, and I’m optimistic about the future too. Hopefully we all arrive back at this point on our next trip around the sun better for the journey. Whatever that time brings, I plan on appreciating each moment.

       

       

    • Every Morning, So Far, I’m Alive

      “Every morning I walk like this around
      the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
      ever close, I am as good as dead

      Every morning, so far, I’m alive.  And now
      the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
      and burst up into the sky – as though

      all night they had thought of what they would like
      their lives to be, and imagined
      their strong, thick wings.”
       – Mary Oliver, Landscape

      I’m doing Mary Oliver an injustice not putting the entire poem here, for the full meaning of a poem comes from reading the entirety, but then again I’m pointing emphatically towards all of her work, imploring you to read more.  When I first read this poem, Landscape, it was a gut punch for me.  I’ve returned to it a few times and these lines still grab me, for they perfectly capture the frame of mind I’m in in my own life.  It’s not lost on me that Mary Oliver passed away in 2019, and somewhere along the way that may have been how I found and keep returning to her work.

      2019 has been a profound year of growth and change for me, from stoicism to spirituality to poetry, immersive trips to some places close to home and some bucket list travel to places further away.  There’s friction in me that the writing has revealed, whether that’s mid-life nonsense or creeping unfinished business that gnaws at me, disrupting my day-to-day thoughts.  I’ve become a better person this year, but know there’s a long way to go still.  For as much as there is to be grateful for, Memento mori whispers in the wind, and I can hear it more than ever.  Remember, we all must die…  but every morning, so far, I’m alive.  What shall you do with this gift?  More, I say to myself, and this De Mello challenge comes to mind:

      “People don’t live, most of you, you don’t live, you’re just keeping the body alive.  That’s not life.” – Anthony De Mello

      This isn’t a call to leave all that you’ve built, but instead to be fully alive and aware of the world around you.  Break off from the rest of the darkness and be fully alive.  Thoreau didn’t leave Concord, he immersed himself in the world at Walden Pond but still maintained contact with the people in his life.  But his awareness grew in the stillness.

      “Be it life or death, we crave only reality.  If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business…  Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.  I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.  Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      So I’m doing better at this awareness thing, and this making the most of the time you have thing, and I keep flapping the wings and fly when I can.  Life isn’t just stacking one adventure upon another one, real living is immersion and awareness.  Mary Oliver joined De Mello and Thoreau on the other side of life this year, this very year that I’ve made a few leaps forward in being more alive.  Maybe adding her voice to the chorus of whispers from those who have left us was the tipping point, or maybe I was already there.  But I’m grateful for her contribution nonetheless.

    • All The Mind’s Ghosts

      “The intelligent and the brave
      Open every closet in the future and evict
      All the mind’s ghosts who have the bad habit
      Of barfing everywhere.”
      – Hafiz, The Warrior

      “You’ll see the miracles that happen to you when your senses come unclogged.” – Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      A month ago I had one of those head colds that just gums up the works, making it hard to focus on anything.  I caught it in London, carried it in Scotland and then back to New Hampshire with me.  You carry on in circumstances like that, but you know you’re not playing your A game.  Perceptions, mistakes, past glories, biases and self-limiting beliefs are like that head cold; holding you back and keeping you from doing things for too long or forever.

      I’ll confess I’d never heard of Anthony De Mello until this book was mentioned on a podcast, but it’s one of the most profound books I read this year, and I keep pulling quotes out of it.  They say when the student is ready the teacher will appear, and this year I’ve been heavily invested in my education.  And I think it comes back to the writing.  You commit to writing daily, and sometimes you’re writing about some woman in a kimono or a battle that took place where you stood that day, but other times you mine the mind, clearing away years of crap and dig deep for the good stuff.  Maybe it comes across in the writing, or maybe I’m not there yet, but I feel the improvement and the refinement that comes with daily discipline.

      The rest of that Hafiz poem is worth reading, and I thought of posting the entire thing, but instead added a link to it.  Hafiz put a spotlight on my own ghosts, barfing away in the mind, needing to be evicted.  We all need to clean out the past, stop planning for a future we may not see and live in the now.  Easier said than done of course.  And it doesn’t mean to ignore the past and not learn from it.  Nor does it mean to ignore the future.  To live in the moment is to eliminate the concerns of the past and the worries of the future.  We’re all going to the grave one day, but if we’re lucky maybe not today.  So given the blessing of being alive in this moment, why not make the most of it?

    • The Magic Snow Carpet

      Sunday offered the perfect combination of bright sunshine and cold temperatures to be outside. A walk around the block is nice, a walk in the woods is better, but I opted to meet in the middle and picked a rail trail walk. Rail trails are usually paved, and as the name implies they run straight for miles following old railroad beds. The advantage is good footing with much of what a walk in the woods offers. With early snow last week the rail trail was a highway of packed powder extending for miles, a snowmobiler’s dream for sure, and I’m grateful that they groomed the trail for the rest of us.

      The Windham Rail Trail changes with every season. We’re deep into a New Hampshire winter now, even if “winter” doesn’t officially begin until December 21st. Snow came early and lingers with sustained freezing temperatures. Perfect conditions for cross-country skiers and snowshoeing, and I saw a few of each out on the trail. With the packed powder I opted for micro spikes on my boots and never regretted the choice. Walking for miles on packed powder snow is a similar workout to walking on beach sand, with just enough give to increase the workload but not so much that your progress is stalled; 10,000 steps with a little extra effort.

      Today it all changes, with warm temperatures and rain washing away the magic snow carpet I traveled on. By tomorrow night it will be a slushy mess with bare spots. And then Wednesday brings colder temperatures and new snow and a completely different trail will emerge. The old expression about New England weather saying to wait five minutes and it will be completely different applies especially well to the rail trail. I’m happy to have caught it when conditions were perfect, but I suspect I’d have enjoyed it no matter the conditions. To be outside is to accept the world as it comes to you, a perfectly stoic outlook.

    • Getting There

      “What got you here won’t get you there.” – Marshall Goldsmith

      Indeed.  But knowing where there is is an essential part of making the shift in the what.  December is a great time to think about then and there stuff, but really every morning you should reflect a bit on where you’ve been and where you’re going.  What went well, what went badly, what can change, what must change…  and how do we begin right now, today?

      Personally, I function better with Bullet Journal type lists.  Check things off, move things forward that you didn’t do, etc.  Lists of tasks are easy.  Lists of life goals are a little harder.  The Warren Buffett/Mike Flint 25/5 exercise is harder still, but time marches on and if you don’t reflect on where you’re going you’re going to end up somewhere else with the things you wanted to do undone.  I did this 25/5 exercise a year ago, and I’m going to do it again this week.  Essentially, you write down 25 things you want to accomplish – start a business, write a book, run a marathon…. whatever.  You then circle the 5 most important goals and avoid the other 20 at all costs until you’ve accomplished the circled 5.  It forces you to focus on what your real priorities are, and what the real distractions are to getting there.  It’s challenging because we all want to be good at everything, but in being generalists we fail to achieve our biggest goals.  Hell yes or no.  Essentialism…  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People story of putting the big rocks in the jar before filling the rest with pebbles, then sand and then water…  Whatever you want to call it it’s the act of saying no to many things to enable you to achieve the few big things.  And the few big things are the “there“.