Alexandersmap

    Category: Stoicism

    • Holding On To the Precious Few

      “Casting aside other things, hold to the precious few; and besides bear in mind that every man lives only the present, which is an indivisible point, and that all the rest of his life is either past or is uncertain. Brief is man’s life and small the nook of the earth where he lives; brief, too, is the longest posthumous fame, buoyed only by a succession of poor human beings who will very soon die and who know little of themselves, much less of someone who died long ago.”
      ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      In a lifetime we may encounter thousands of people. If you search the Internet you’ll find that the average person meets about 80,000 people in their lifetime. Some of us have met that many people before the middle of our presumed lifespan. But we aren’t here to compete for the most people met in a lifetime, we’re here to make meaningful connections. As the name implies, connections are those people who come into our lives at just the right time with whom we naturally bond with. These are people who transcend the convenience of place and time and become lifetime associates. They are as invested in our well-being as we are in theirs. They are the precious few.

      What forms that bond? Usually something like shared experience, be it the good, bad or ugly. When you go through something with someone that few others would understand, sometimes you become lifetime friends. Then again, sometimes you drift apart never to speak again. Some of the people I rowed with felt like best friends until the diplomas came and I haven’t seen them since. One or the other of us had moved on, and so it goes. Same with old work connections, or fellow soccer parents, or whomever. Something in the moment brings us together, but once it’s gone the bond is gone too. It’s like the Post-It note of friendships: friends of convenience skating that indivisible point of now but not forever.

      And that’s okay too. We can’t very well have 80,000 best friends, or even close associates. We’d simply never have the time to maintain the connection and get anything else done. Most relationships are transactional, and it’s nothing personal, simply pragmatic. We may remember people fondly from our past lives and catch up with them at a reunion one day, or maybe not even that. The few that stick with us are there because they want to be, just as we want to be. Sometimes it’s as simple as that.

      Coming back to that indivisible point that Marcus Aurelius mentioned, we ought to put our full energy into the connections of now. We can’t very well say to ourselves that we’ve got our precious few and that’s enough for me. That next person we meet on the climb to 80,000+ might just be the one who makes all the difference in our lives, or we in theirs. When we make every encounter a moment of connection, we raise the average of our overall experience on this planet. We also find that our few become even more precious as the investment made by both parties naturally increases to meet the place we’ve arrived at in our lives. It always comes back to this: we get what we put into it.

    • Icarus Also Flew

      Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
      It’s the same when love comes to an end,
      or the marriage fails and people say
      they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
      said it would never work. That she was
      old enough to know better. But anything
      worth doing is worth doing badly.
      Like being there by that summer ocean
      on the other side of the island while
      love was fading out of her, the stars
      burning so extravagantly those nights that
      anyone could tell you they would never last.
      Every morning she was asleep in my bed
      like a visitation, the gentleness in her
      like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
      Each afternoon I watched her coming back
      through the hot stony field after swimming,
      the sea light behind her and the huge sky
      on the other side of that. Listened to her
      while we ate lunch. How can they say
      the marriage failed? Like the people who
      came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
      and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
      I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
      but just coming to the end of his triumph.
      — Jack Gilbert, Failing and Flying

      We all have our seasons of triumph and tragedy, hope and despair, but we tend to dwell on the end of things too much instead of celebrating all that was when we never thought we’d touch the ground. In a lifetime we repeatedly rise from the ashes of who we once were to fly again. Icarus, like Sisyphus, is seen as a tragic figure in mythology. And yet he flew. Sisyphus, pushing his rock up that hill, might have caught a glimpse of Icarus from the top as he followed the rock back down to start his next defiant act.

      I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m ready to do something different. It’s a familiar feeling, having been here so many times before in my life. Some people settle into an identity and never leave it, cozy as it feels wrapped around their shoulders. Some people are nomads, shifting with the seasons, restless when change is in the air. Deep down we know who we are. In quiet moments we hear the whisper of change calling for us. No wonder so many reach for distraction rather than face the plunge into the unforgiving sea—the unknown next.

      No, we are not gods, and sometimes our audacity is punished by fate. Still, we must rise to meet the season when life brings change. For life is nothing but change, and we may dare the gods again with our boldness.

    • September Song

      Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December
      But the days grow short
      When you reach September
      When the Autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
      One hasn’t got time for the waiting game
      — Frank Sinatra, September Song

      Labor Day Weekend in the United States is the unofficial end of summer. That in itself isn’t particularly remarkable, but I feel compelled to remark on the fact that it’s now September. In general I love September for the crisp air and epic sunsets that seem to come with it, but that’s tinged with the reality of shorter days and a realization that we never really do everything we wanted to do with summer before it’s gone. Alas, we can’t do it all. We must simply be deliberate about doing the things we most want to do with the time we have.

      There’s a Latin phrase that is often found on sundials, “Serius est quam cogitas”, which means, “It’s later than you think.” We must remember this and live with purpose each day, that we may look back on the season recently passed and feel we didn’t miss the boat. We can’t change seasons already passed, but we can feel the urgency to do something with today. We’re all familiar with that other Latin call to the moment, carpe diem, and ought to embrace it more for the desperate call to pay attention it was meant as. Indeed, we must seize the day before it fades away in our memory with all that is lost.

      Yesterdays carry us to today, either as a stepping stone or a slide into oblivion. I’d rather be climbing, wouldn’t you? Writing saves more of my days than reminding myself to get to it already. Writing anchors me to the moment, forcing me to pay attention to something tangible in the time I have available and do with it what I can. Last week was a series of late, often frenetic posts inserted into spare moments in airports and hotel rooms. Finding something that anchors us to the day makes the day less likely to float away like all the rest. A blog post, a moment shared with people of consequence, a bold act of self-determination and a nod to the time passing by are things we can hold on to.

    • Echoes

      “What we do now echoes in eternity.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      I worry less about productivity than I might project in this blog. Each day I do what I can, provoke something meaningful out of myself and celebrate having carried the torch one more time. The chaos of the world was not mine, my contribution was steadiness and reason. If I’m blessed with another day, I’ll try tomorrow to do it better.

      We must remember that we have a chance to do something meaningful with our time. Our actions influence others, rippling across our connections to people we’ll never meet. This blog post may get a few likes, be viewed a few dozen times and fade into bits and bytes in some data center somewhere on the Internet until the power finally goes out some day in eternity. We may accept the frailty of our voice for what it is and still be inclined to add our verse.

      The doing is the thing. We must do what we can with today before it’s gone forever, like all the rest. For this is our time, friends. If not now, when? The thing about an echo is that it must begin somewhere before it can reverberate through space and time.

    • A Unique Wonder

      I read somewhere that meteor showers
      are almost alwavs named after the constellation from which
      they originate. It’s funny, I think, how even the universe is telling us
      that we can never get too far
      from the place that created us.
      How there is always a streak of our past
      trailing closely behind us
      like a smattering of obstinate memories. Even when we enter a new atmosphere,
      become subsumed in flames, turn to dust, lose ourselves in the wind, and scatter
      the surface of all that rest beneath us, we bring a part of where we are from
      to every place we go.
      — Clint Smith, Meteor Shower

      Walking the pup the other night, I saw a shooting star far brighter and more colorful than the norm, with a very definite tail and distinct blues, greens and yellows in the burn. I thought for a moment that it might have been a stray firework but for the direction it was falling and the distinct shooting star vibe. Was it an elusive fireball or simply a particularly passionate meteor? I think the latter, but it was the brightest and most colorful I’d ever seen. This particular shooting star apparently contained enough copper, magnesium and iron to treat me to that display of blue, green and yellow I’d witnessed. Throw enough science at anything and the magic evaporates. Let’s just call it a unique wonder in a sky full of beautiful.

      I don’t write about the stars so much nowadays, but I still look up most every night and marvel at the universe. If we are indeed stardust then we are staring at our distant cousins out there. Some of us dwell on where we came from, some chalk it up to a Creator and dismiss any talk of science as sacrilege. None of us is really in the know on such things, and the people who shout the loudest are usually the ones who know the least. We all crave answers, don’t we? It’s just that some settle on the answer someone else tells them is true instead of remaining open to other possibilities. Where we come from, if we go back far enough, is infinity. We’ll return there someday soon. What we choose to call that infinity is up for discussion.

      The thing is, we all accept some version of where we came from, it’s where we’re going that we can’t quite understand. We are all shooting stars streaking across the sky to our final days, memento mori and all that. But we may add enough color to our lives to make our journey wonderful, and perhaps inspire others on their own journey too. In our dance with infinity, this brief time is unique to us. Shouldn’t we aspire to as much as we may fit in along the way?

    • Green Grass and Long Conversation

      There’s an old response to the expression “the grass is greener on the other side” that points out that “the grass is greener where you water it.” Being a collector of quotes and poetry, the expression seems to pop in my feed now and then. Today was one of those days, and just before I started to write this blog post. Apparently the student was ready to see it again.

      I begin most summer mornings with a plunge into the pool and a cup of coffee in an Adirondack chair. I know this is a luxury of circumstance and celebrate it for the blessing it is. But I also know that a lot of watering went into this particular grass. To be born at the right time and place is a gift, to use that time and place in such a way that your life is incrementally better each year is a plan well-executed, with a nod to luck and fate for the blessing they’ve bestowed. But it’s simply my moment with these things, nothing more. We must remember that for all it represents.

      Yesterday I took a long walk with my bride and our pup through old neighborhoods she grew up in. The entire four miles was a walking conversation about what was, what is, and what will be. This year marks three decades of such conversations, and we’ve noted the changes in ourselves as much as the people and things around us. Life is change and a bit of selective watering, that we may enjoy our moment in the sun a little more before it’s time to concede it to the next. Memento mori and carpe diem, friends.

      Sitting in that chair, the air a bit cool, I watched the steam drift out of the mug and drift up into the morning sunbeam over my shoulder. The water vapors caught the sunbeam just right and sparkled like fireworks before drifting away to infinity. The days are already getting shorter even as the peak of summer is ahead of us. We may know the fragility of the moment and still look ahead with anticipation. A beautiful life is built on the things that are most fragile, like time and seasons and the people who grace us with this dance.

    • The Occasional Success

      “It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.

      There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” — Mary Oliver, Of Power and Time

      It feels like success is more elusive nowadays. We could all use more wins in this stage in our collective history. A few less setbacks would be great. Just what is happening in the world anyway? Nothing all that good it seems. We must remember to focus on what we can control and acknowledge the rest is up to fate. Amor fati.

      The thing we can control is our reaction to this world boiling away uncontrollably in rage and gases. We don’t have to like it but we have to remain focused on the things within our grasp, like how we greet each other and the example we set for our children. We can choose to be cool and steady, and produce something beautiful in this world.

      Distraction is pulling us down from the heights we might reach. What does success look like today? Small wins have a way of stacking up into something bigger. When the sun sets on this day, on this lifetime, what will we have done with it? The muse will not be ignored, it will simply find someone else who will give it the focused time it demands. Let that be us.

    • Lifestyle Choices

      “You’re a ghost driving a meat-coated skeleton made from stardust; what do you have to be scared of?” — @rat_sandwich

      Funny quote, and doesn’t it resonate? Each of us knows that it’s now or never. We must live while there’s time to do things. That the only answer is to be bold in our lifestyle choices. Do what resonates and forget the rest. Yes, we know this to be true, but are we following through? We’ve got to feel the urgency to fly.

      The thing is, it’s an easy thing to tell ourselves to be bold, it’s a harder thing to be it. But bolder may be reached in a big leap or through increasing our audacity incrementally every day. Before we know it, we’re actually bold, or at the very least, bolder than we once were. This is how we begin to live properly.

      “Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what’s left and live it properly. What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      Bold doesn’t mean to run away from everything, not to me anyway. We may live a larger life without being reckless with all that we hold dear. Bold is a lifestyle choice realized in all of our moments. It takes courage to look our eventual death in the face and choose to dance, now, while we can.

      All that matters are the choices we make today. Yesterday’s me is dead, and today everything changes. This is the only way to grow out of who we once were into who we are meant to be. Who is that person, and what’s the first step to meeting them? Together, we’re writing one hell of a story.

    • To Do, Beautifully

      “My time here is short; what can I do most beautifully?” — As quoted by James Patterson

      This is stoicism in a nutshell. Acknowledgement that our time is limited (memento mori), with the follow on question; what will I do about it (carpe diem) that will resonate most for me and possibly others? That the most successful author in book sales frequently drops that quote serves both the author and those who will hear the call. It’s akin to old friend Mary Oliver’s challenge at the end of her most cherished poem, The Summer Day:

      Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?
      —Mary Oliver

      The question of questions for each of us is what to do with our precious time. The answer is usually to waste it in distractions and deferment. Why set course today when we can keep doing what we’ve always done, assuming a tomorrow? We know the folly of this even as we master the art of procrastination. We must feel the urgency in the question and take the steps that lead to our answer. We aren’t here simply to enjoy the ride, but to love our verse.

      That you are here—that life exists and identity,
      That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
      — Walt Whitman, O Me! O Life!

      So begins another day. We can’t control everything, but we can control this next thing. To step into beautiful, and bring light to the dark. In doing so, we may pass the torch to those who would follow. There is only now to make our mark.

    • About Time

      ‘In headaches and in worry
      Vaguely life leaks away,
      And Time will have his fancy
      To-morrow or to-day.
      — W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening

      I tend to track time differently than I once did. Now I measure time by the length of my hair or fingernails (weeks versus days since my last trim). I don’t generally look at the clock before calling it a night, for what does time have to do with how tired we feel? Nor do I set an alarm to awaken, I simply wake up. In many ways, I woke up years ago to the folly of time, even if I still follow the rules and show up early (as any civilized adult ought to aspire to). In this way, you might say my relationship with time is complicated.

      When we see time for what it is, something inside us shifts. We become collectors of experiences and embracers of moments rather than maximizers of minutes on the schedule. For all my focus on productivity, at the end of the day I only care that I’ve done the essential few things that move the chains forward for me in the direction I wish to go. The rest float away like all the other past initiatives.

      Writing every day forced me to become an efficient writer. There’s no time to waste on things like writer’s block when you must ship the work and get on to other things. Similarly, other things I do every day become automatic for me, that I may check the box and move on to other things. If that sounds transactional, well, so be it, but it doesn’t mean it’s not the most important thing for me in those moments doing it. When we give something our complete attention for the time necessary to complete it, we may surprise ourselves at just how quickly we can do the work.

      One of the people who works for me was stuck on a presentation he had to deliver to the team, simply overwhelmed by how to structure a slide deck and what to talk about. After being his sounding board for all the built-up stress and despair over the unfairness of having to do this in the first place, I made the deck for him in 30 minutes and quietly sent it to him to personalize in his own way, that he might focus on more important things than a peer presentation. When we get wrapped around the pole on the details of things that aren’t all that important in the end, we waste our time. If experience has taught me anything, it’s to quickly create solutions to problems that I may go back to spending time on more important things. Spending time on my employee wasn’t a waste of my own time, it was an investment in his. I’ll take that trade-off.

      The thing is, I recognize the place that he’s in now in his life. Ten years younger than me, with family obligations that can overwhelm you when you’re just trying to get through the day—I’ve been there, done that. My doing his homework for him wasn’t meant to take him off the hook so much as to show him a clearer future. My priority is to develop an employee who can assess the nature of a commitment and allocate the appropriate amount of focus on it, that he may move on to more essential things. Looking back, I’m sure someone did the same for me once upon a time.

      Life always comes back to our operating system. When we ground ourselves in stoicism, we know that time flies (tempus fugit) and we must therefore seize the day (carpe diem). There’s no time to waste on how we feel about the matter. In the end, the quality of our life is measured in how effective we are at navigating the small things that we may accomplish the big things. What’s bigger for us than using our brief time on this earth on things that matter most?