Alexandersmap

    Category: Stoicism

    • Seasonal Shifts

      “If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere,” — Seamus Heaney

      “On the other side of endurance, joy waits.” — Joanna Nylund, Sisu: The Finnish Art of Courage

      I have friends currently afloat in pristine, turquoise waters. I have other friends unsatisfied with the snowpack in their own backyards who hike seemingly every waking moment above tree line to find paradise in fickle and extreme weather conditions. I could be doing either of those things myself right now, but instead I’m holding the center that we may all meet in the middle again one day.

      We do have agency with such things as winter. We may choose to stoke the fire and watch the storms pass by from the comfort of our favorite chair, book in hand and a hot beverage to warm us from the inside out. Or we can dress the part and venture out into the swirling snows and bitter wind, to taste for ourselves the bite of January. If we have the currency of health and the accessories of winter, there’s every reason to fully experience everything winter has to offer.

      The world feels colder and darker than it’s felt in some time. These shifts are seasonal, we tell ourselves. The pendulum will swing back one day to warmer and brighter. Our mission is to toe the line between chaos and order and make the most of our days, whatever the climate. This is stoicism. This is grit. This is Sisu. Whatever we wish to call it, it’s a mindset and quiet resolve to face the day and whatever it brings to us. To hold the line and winter out the worst that we may summer it up again one day.

    • Sisu

      “The exact meaning of sisu is difficult to define. There’s no one word in the English language with a literal parallel, and even in Finnish, sisu stands for a cluster of traits that includes stoic determination, hardiness, courage, bravery, willpower, tenacity and resilience. Sisu is an action-oriented mindset: it comes into play as you take on a challenge seemingly beyond your capacity. It is called upon when adversity and opposition force you to give up and only your courage allows you to hold on.” — Joanna Nylund, Sisu: The Finnish Art of Courage

      I’ve encountered this word, sisu, several times over the last few years. Each time I’ve told myself to write a blog post about it to explore it further, maybe in hopes of internalizing the traits that make up sisu into my own mindset. After all, I’ve been writing about stoicism for years with the same goal—surely some stoic traits have permeated the thick scull of this writer. But writing about sisu felt different because it’s not my word to write about. I’m not Finnish, and the traits that are sisu are something you display, not some clever term the marketing team can hijack.

      “An essential trait of sisu is the lack of a need to talk about it. Any kind of swagger or talking up your bravery has no place in sisu. It’s no good just saying you have sisu if you can’t show it – let your actions do the talking.” — Joanna Nylund, Sisu: The Finnish Art of Courage

      So we aren’t talking about bravado here. Living a life more aligned with sisu feels an internal calling. An aspiration to be bold in the face of all of this crap the world is throwing at us nowadays. This is no time to be soft. This is no time to be wringing our hands and giving up. These are our days to reach for personal excellence (refer to my other favorite word; arete). We can’t very well let ourselves down now, when there’s so much at stake in our lives.

      We know that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Maybe this is the right time to finally embrace the word and simply be more stoic, be more brave and tenacious and courageous. To stoke the fire within and push through the challenges ahead. Then again, hasn’t it always been that time? We must simply rise up to meet the moment, again and again. And knowing what we now know about the word, isn’t that sisu?

    • A Fragile Walk

      On and on the rain will say
      How fragile we are how fragile we are
      — Sting, Fragile

      A woman in town walked out on the pond ice to take a picture of the moon and broke through the thin ice. She fought to get out of the frigid water, and when that failed, to hold on for help. After several minutes of struggle a rescuer had a hold of her and it felt like she would survive. But the ice broke on the rescuer and in his plunge he lost grip on the woman. Exhausted and hyperthermic she slipped under the water to her death. The rescuer, distraught and frozen, was himself rescued. I wondered what her plans were for the Saturday evening she wouldn’t live to see.

      It’s thankfully rare for someone to drown in this pond. A friend with a long memory can only recall two other incidents in the last hundred years. He had walked on the ice himself not far from where she broke through, but knew the ice better. She had simply strayed too far from the safety of thicker ice as dusk turned to dark to see the moon. Were it an hour earlier perhaps more people in the area could have made a difference.

      We all tread on fragile ground. Memento mori. Our duty is to recognize this and optimize the time we have left. Don’t fear dying, fear not living while we may.

    • Like Wind Blowing

      “Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      It is and we are. What matters is we’re a part. We need not make sense of it all, for who can possibly know? What matters is that we are playing our part in the universe in our time.

      This echoes of Walt Whitman’s famous answer in O Me! O Life! which will always be read with the voice of Robin Williams in my head:

      “That you are here—that life exists and identity,
      That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

      Some of us forever dwell on the why. Some descend into nihilism, as if a why matters a lick, for existence itself is folly. And some simply get straight to work, believing action creates a why. The only thing we control is our reaction to the world we find ourselves dropped into. What do we find when we break down the word reaction? Google AI to the podium:

      “The Latin word reāctiō is the origin of both the Old French and Middle English words, which comes from the verb reagō. Reagō is made up of the prefix re- meaning ‘again’ and the word agō meaning ‘to act’.”

      To act again. Like wind blowing through the grass, we stir meaning out of the inanimate and create a life for ourselves. This is what it means to be alive. To play a part infers action, for which we must boldly embrace our agency. Life has purpose or it’s meaningless—we play a part in determining which it will be. Who says we can’t make our part a thrilling page-turner?

    • The Thing Speaks For Itself

      I’m not a lawyer by trade, but I still believe in law and order. In legal doctrine there is a Latin phrase, “res ipsa loquitur” that means “the thing speaks for itself.” We may apply that phrase to many things in the world right now, and shake our heads at how we got here, but ultimately we must begin with what we can control. When it comes to our own behavior, the law is our standard for who we want to be in this world, and order is our routine or system, best seen in the daily habits that make something of our days.

      Bill Belichick has a philosophy that every New England football fan can recite in their sleep; “It is what it is.” Applied to our lives, these two phrases clarify where we are. The good, the bad and the ugly are all laid out for us. It is what it is, and the thing speaks for itself. We may add, “We’re on to Cincinnati”, as Belichick also famously said. For those in the know, that means what’s done is done and we’re only focused on this next thing now.

      But we can’t just flip the script and move on to whatever the next thing is in our lives without awareness of where we are, how we got here and thus, what to change in our way of doing things that will put us in a position for success on that next thing. To change we must know what needs to change. Jim Collins calls this confronting the brutal facts, that we may move from good to great.

      We’re close to the end of the runway on this year. What have we done with the time? No doubt there were some brilliant moments, but also a few stumbles. Which habits held up? What’s fallen by the wayside that needs to be changed or revived? Whatever we’ve done, whatever we’ve become, the thing speaks for itself. So what are we going to do about it?

    • November Pivot

      “Carpe diem, quam minimum credula a postero (Seize the day, and put the least possible trust in tomorrow)” — Horace

      When the leaves are finally all down and the chores are largely done for fall cleanup, there’s a moment of stillness with which to process what’s transpired this year. What went right, what went wrong, and mostly when are we going to do that thing we said we were surely going to do this year since we didn’t do it last year or the years before that. November is a great time to assess and adjust those habits to do something more with today. Put another way, November is a time to pivot to better.

      Why November? Why not simply wait for the New Year? Well, we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow (See: Horace) and if we’re blessed with it, a little momentum rounding the calendar goes a long way. I can celebrate the consistent writing but recognize that it’s not enough, just as casually but consistently using the Duolingo app is helping me read French better but not to speak it or understand it when it’s being spoken to me rapid-fire, a habit (like writing) requires deeper immersion to get closer to mastery. We get what we put into it.

      By November we’ve accumulated a lot of positive or negative energy from our habits. What’s working well for us? What’s fallen off? With 45 potentially transformative days in front of us, beginning with this one, what can we still do with 2024 that we thought might be possible on New Years? What one habit will transform us the most if we were to master it? What one relationship might we strengthen or even salvage simply by reaching out to someone? What life changing step should be our next? We know the answer most of the time, or at least the direction to move in to find it. By all means, we must begin it today!

    • Here We Are

      “A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”
      ― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I

      Those who pay attention know the score. Those who don’t are happy with the distractions the world flashes in front of them one after the other. They don’t want to know the score, they want to be entertained in the moment. Let the world crash down later as long as we all have a good laugh now. And here we are.

      To pay attention is to watch a story where you know the ending but you just hope maybe there will be one of those Hollywood twists that make everything all right. Whoops, the scientists forgot to carry over the extra value! Climate change is magically fixed! Only a clown would believe that, and here we are.

      The only answer is to build a resilient life for ourselves. Live in places that put us in the best position possible for the best or worst case scenario. Invest well financially, but also in our knowledge, our network and in our physical and mental health. Resilience is a way of life, not a lock on the door. It’s seeing how high the flood waters might rise and building ever higher than that. Yes, here we are, but maybe we need to move up and over there.

      The stoics went through their version of all this themselves. That they wrote about it offers us a light in the darkness with which to navigate. We too may be writers and thinkers and live boldly individual lives apart from the whims of a distracted society. We’ll be fine or we won’t, all we can control in the universe is how we react. Amor fati (love of fate). And here we are.

    • Philosophy Was Made For Days Like This

      “Look in, let not either the proper quality, or the true worth of anything pass thee, before thou hast fully apprehended it.” — Marcus Aurelius

      There’s no making sense of any of this. The country didn’t meet its moment. All we can do is try to be a better person today and always, that we may rise above the madness around us. And so the journey turns inward.

      We may navigate away from the worst of the storm and survive to see brighter days. It falls on us to find a place of strength and meaning in this maddening world. We must continue to build more resilience into our lives, that we may weather the storms to come.

      Resilience begins with inner strength and purpose. These are the only things we can truly control anyway, isn’t it? The universe keeps telling us so. The first step must be inward.

    • Leaning Into Constraints

      “When everything is possible, nothing is possible. But when we lean into external and internal constraints by choice, the possibilities, ironically, open up to us.” — Chase Jarvis, Never Play It Safe

      “The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      I have a trip coming up in the near future. There’s no winging it when it comes to which airport I’m driving to, which airline I’m boarding, when the doors close or which seat I’ve been assigned. Likewise, I’m pretty sure I’m on the same page with the pilot about which city we’re flying to. When I arrive I know I’ll have a room waiting for me, a few reservations already made and so on. Constraints can be helpful guardrails for an otherwise unconstrained weekend. Too many constraints can feel confining, too few chaotic. We feel when we’ve arrived at our comfortable medium.

      We function within constraints all the time, often without thinking about it. We are constrained by laws, time, borders, finances… and on and on. But the most persistent constraints are internal. We have an identity that is boxing us into who we are and what we do. We reinforce this with the friends we accumulate around us. Skate your lane, friend, and I’ll skate mine. Together we’ll skate to some distant point in our frozen future.

      Constraints can be limiting. When we get too comfortable we miss out on everything possible that resides outside our current comfort zone. On that upcoming trip I’ve left far more open space in between than scheduled time. There’s a lot to be said for those skip the line tours at the Vatican, for example, but you realize immediately that most of them just put you in a different line, and within a different box than you might have been in otherwise. The lesson is to buy the tickets, but leave room for chance too.

      The thing is, constraints can be highly effective at focusing our attention. There’s nothing like a deadline to keep us on track with a project. When we build the right kind of restraints into our lives, we focus on productive use of our limited time on earth (the ultimate constraint). Being rigid with some things allows us to create the identity we aspire to. Decide what to be and go be it. I write and publish every day, no matter where I am in the world (or within my own head). This blog is surely meaningless in eternity, but it means something to me in the moment.

      What color are we dying our soul? Our habits and routines, our very beliefs in who we are and why we’re here today, will determine the next step on our journey (up, down or sideways). Some useful constraints put us in our place, but they can also move us to a new place. A better place, full of possibility.

    • 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.