Alexandersmap

    Category: Stoicism

    • The Magic of Applied Attention

      “We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.” — Charles Bukowski

      There is a Persian lime tree growing in a large pot on the sunny deck behind my house. This spring there were more than a hundred blossoms on this tree, each developing into tiny fruit that promised a bumper crop of limes. But after a particularly angry thunder storm and torrential downpour dozens of those tiny fruits scattered the deck, their tart potential over before they really began. While mourning the loss of so may limes, I took solace in the dozens of fruit still developing on the tree. It seems the tree had culled itself that it might focus on the ripe potential of the fruit that remained.

      We each bear so much in our lifetime, holding on to things we ought to shed to focus on the essential few. It’s okay to let go of the trivial, that we might nurture the truly important things in our lives. Letting go is painful, but not as painful as diminishing our best work by carrying more than we should.

      Little by little,
      as you left their voice behind,
      the stars began to burn
      through the sheets of clouds,
      and there was a new voice
      which you slowly
      recognized as your own,
      that kept you company
      as you strode deeper and deeper
      into the world,
      determined to do
      the only thing you could do —
      determined to save
      the only life that you could save.
      — Mary Oliver, The Journey

      The night after the thunderstorm, I spent an evening with friends, throwing axes at a target drawn on a wooden wall and building fragile wooden castles in the air (Jenga). There is a unique strategy for each, naturally, being so very different from each other in practice. But there are also similarities. Besides each pursuit using wood, it was the act of applied attention that is common to both. To be good at either you must simply get out of your own head and focus on successfully completing the task at hand. One might utilize this in every pursuit, from writing to navigating any of the essential tasks that fill one’s day.

      We ought to cherish our time together, forgetting the trivial affronts that life throws at us. We ought to find our own voice in a world full of people waiting for us to shut up that they may say something clever. We ought to direct our attention inward, to the ripe potential of our own ideas, calling us to truth and clarity. We know, deep down, that we won’t survive this, but if we give ourselves the time to focus, we may just yet produce something substantial anyway.

    • On Nature and Being… Courageous

      “The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.”

      “If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also, you will have betrayed your community in failing to make your contribution.” — Rollo May, The Courage to Create

      We are humans because we stray beyond nature to decide what to be, and, if we’re truly bold and courageous, perhaps we may even go be it. Just as a tree or a cat are influenced by their environment, determining to a great extent what they become, we too are influenced by the circle we’re rooted in. Yet we have free will and the opportunity to step out of that circle. This is the very nature of being human.

      We don’t always get to choose whether we can step out of our circle. Beliefs and courage alone only determine how we react to our environment, not what the outcome is. Persistence and luck have a say in the matter too. Viktor Frankl survived as much because he was lucky as because he courageously chose how to react to the stimulus he was presented with. The universe has a say in everything, but we have an opportunity to improve our odds by rising to meet the best version of ourselves under the circumstances.

      “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
      ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

      Thankfully, most of us will never face the horrors Frankl faced. Instead we face our own demons, relentlessly chipping away at our foundation, eroding confidence and commitment. This betraying of ourselves is the greatest crime of our lifetime, holding us in circles of our own making. Being bold in the pursuit of who we are isn’t an act of defiance, it’s a lifeline.

      The thing is, we all hear the call of what to be, even if we don’t always know what that looks like. If there’s one thing I’d tell anyone looking for answers, it’s that a “successful” person doesn’t have all the answers either, they only have momentum. We’re all just figuring things out as we go. We might have a direction, we might even have a plan, but nothing is realized without action and momentum. The lesson? Keep pushing the flywheel. Just make sure it’s the flywheel we want to be pushing, because momentum works for us and against us.

      Courage is the urgency of identity, acted upon. There’s nothing more tragic than a person questioning their identity and purpose and holding themselves back from a bold leap. We have an imperative to live as best we can, and contribute our verse. We must summon the courage to step into who we might become, however small a step that might be, and then step further still.

    • The World Lies Waiting

      “Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.“ — Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

      “The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not.” — Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

      When those who have achieved mastery in their craft leave this world, what are we to do but reflect on their work? But something else stirs in their passing: Memento mori. A whispered reminder that we too will slip away one day, work and dreams of what might be be damned. It’s now or never, friend. Carpe diem.

      This is the urgency of living. This is the call to produce that which must be finished in our time. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. But the world deals in reality, not dreams. We must realize the best in us through our actions.

      We must make the most of our days.

    • Let’s Begin

      It’s our time to make a move
      It’s our time to make amends
      It’s our time to break the rules
      Let’s begin
      — X Ambassadors, Renegades

      If you want to feel hope for the future, go to a ceremony honoring High School graduates awarded their scholarships. I was awestruck hearing their accomplishments over the last four years, much of which was endured during and in the aftermath of a pandemic when mental health and questions about the future of leadership in this world were very much on display elsewhere. The future, at least in that room, looked very bright indeed.

      Our stories are constantly evolving. Sitting in that room listening to the brief biographies of those kids, with no stake in the game myself, was one of the most enlightening nights I’ve had in a long time. Surely it made me question my own productivity over the same duration. How do we see greatness and not want to have some of it for ourselves? The thing is, greatness is earned, not taken. We may reach higher still.

      Carpe diem: Seize the day. These words are forever associated with a fictional high school class in another time and place. Isn’t it something when you witness it in real life? It’s all around us, hidden in the quiet resolve of people getting things done. Given the same amount of time in a day, we each choose what to do with the minutes.

      It’s easy to see a group of high achievers and feel optimistic. It’s also easy to question what we’ve been doing with our own time, and perhaps feel a bit of an underachiever by comparison. It’s essential to remember in these moments that comparison is the thief of joy. Let us instead be inspired by those reaching for greatness and help them find the way. Greatness isn’t a destination, it’s a never-ending pursuit of mastery in one’s chosen path. If that pursuit is never-ending, it also means it’s always beginning. As in, here we go again. Shouldn’t that realization excite us?

    • Aware in the Moment

      “Später ist zu spät.“ (Later is too late) — Peter Altenberg

      This morning I’m driving my daughter to the airport. Once again our time together was all too brief. We each pack a lot into our days, which means never enough time in the same attentive moment, but we make the time that we do have matter. None of us is perfect in our efficiency: We all waste time on unimportant things at the expense of the essential. But awareness helps with prioritization.

      Memento mori—Remember we all must die, one day hopefully many years from now. Or perhaps sooner, we simply don’t know for sure. But we ought to embrace that realization and do something about it. If not now, then when? Anything but now is a fool’s game.

      Whatever we are deferring that matters a great deal must be done now. There’s simply no guarantee for tomorrow. What would we do if we knew this was our last day together? We’d up our game, linger in moments, hug harder and be hyper-aware of everything. Let’s all hope for a longer timeline, but live with that urgency today anyway. Be aware in the moment. For it’s all that matters.

    • Buds of Fire

      And in the shadow of our human dream of falling,
      human voices are Creation’s most recent flowers,
      mere buds of fire
      nodding on their stalks.
      — Li-Young Lee, Dying Stupid

      Working through the gardening shed, I found a terra cotta pot sporting hints of old root filaments, betraying its previous occupant from last season. Each life takes their place in line, lives their season and moves on for the next to take their turn. The keen observer sees hints of past lives all around us, ghosts whispering that they once turned their gaze to the sun too. Gardeners know a thing or two about the tenuous hold we have on our time. So do writers and poets.

      May mocks the meticulous gardener. Put your best foot forward and the trees crap all over it, again and again, until you admit you aren’t in control of anything. Life offers lessons for the attentive student. Seasons come and go. So too do we. We are only here for a brief dance with our best intentions.

      Life is change—this we know. Some of those whispering ghosts are us, telling tales of past seasons gone forever, of who we used to be. Sometimes there’s just wisp of filament that betrays our past life, sometimes it’s the whole pot. Still, there’s work to be done in the now. While there’s time in this season, fill an empty pot with something new.

    • The Whisper of the Window Seat

      The more I travel, the more I believe there are two types of people in this world: those who would block out all the noise and retreat into themselves, and those who are actively engaged with everything and everyone around them. This might be best observed on a plane, where the window seat becomes a portal to the universe for those actively looking out the window, or alternatively, closed the entire flight that the traveller may forget that they’re propelling tens of thousands of feet above the earth in an aluminum tube. Take those two travelers and bring them into a room or a garden and I’d bet most would behave similarly.

      I’d like to believe that I’m actively engaged in the world, but still own noise cancelling headphones and resent the person in front of me for reclining their seat. I celebrate the input I seek from the world, yet resent encroachment from that which I don’t. Does that make me complex, or practically engaged? I’m a work in progress either way; with stoicism as a lens for which to see the world.

      Given the choice, would you choose an aisle seat over a window seat? Would you take one for the team and sit in the middle seat? These are choices that say a lot about us. The aisle offers flexibility—you can stand up any old time you want to so long as that fasten seatbelt sign isn’t illuminated. Yet you’re constantly encroached upon by (seemingly) every person bumping into you as they pass by. There’s joy but also despair in the aisle seat, presented to you in a jolt just as you doze off.

      That middle seat must be suffered. You know exactly what you’re in for, and usually, that vision is realized. There’s something very stoic about traveling in the middle seat. Amor fati—love of fate. We accept the universe as it comes to us. All we can do is cross our arms and take the air miles. If you’re lucky, the person in the window seat is a kindred spirit and has the shutter open for you to catch a partial view of what might have been.

      The more I travel, the more I want the window seat. Sure, you’ve got to manage your bladder trips wisely, but otherwise you’re in a place of least possible encroachment under the circumstances with the most opportunity for wonder just an open shutter away. We’ve all got such a short trip in the big scheme of things, why not be open to experience as much as possible? Everything but that reclining seat, anyway.

    • The Promise of Now

      “He was weary of himself, of cold ideas and brain dreams. Life a poem? Not when you went about forever poetizing about your own life instead of living it. How innocuous it all was, and empty, empty, empty! This chasing after yourself, craftily observing your own tracks—in a circle, of course. This sham diving into the stream of life while all the time you sat angling after yourself, fishing yourself up in one curious disguise or another! If he could only be overwhelmed by something—life, love, passion—so that he could no longer shape it into poems, but had to let it shape him!” ― Jens Peter Jacobsen, Niels Lyhne

      Often in the urgency of becoming, we forget to savor moments. It’s an odd thing to say, being an unabashed savorer of moments, to admit that I lose the feel of now sometimes in my quest for a then I may never reach. But now is ours to live, everything else is chasing promises.

      A person in my close circle heard that their cancer is terminal, which means that they’re facing their mortality more profoundly than they had every imagined before. The truth of the matter is they were dying all along—we all are—but he wasn’t focused on the expiration date. When someone hears they’re going to die they immediately wonder exactly when. This is a fair question, to be sure, but perhaps the better question, for all of us, is what will we do with the vibrant and healthy days left for us? Not the bedridden, atrophied and out of time days, but our very best days of those we have left?

      In a way, a diagnosis is a gift, forcing the person hearing it to focus on the urgency of living now. This awareness magnifies what is essential. When all the noise is finally filtered away, what calls to us?

      Go out and live, friends, for our time is so very brief. Dive deeply into the stream of life. Savor the moments and create memories that will make you smile at the sheer audacity of living in the now. Feel this moment, and the next. Be overwhelmed by life, love and passion, for these are the spices of today. Realize the promise of now while it’s here.

    • Through the Darkness and the Light

      And consider, always, every day, the determination
      of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.
      — Mary Oliver, Evidence

      We are change agents, creating new iterations of ourselves with every action. But so is everyone and everything else, which makes change exponential and complicated. There are some things we simply can’t control. One moment we’re celebrating what we’ve accrued and the next we’re mourning what has passed. The moments in between are often confusing and stressful. Mostly, we can only control how we react.

      “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      Life is change, which means accepting the two sides of that coin. Amor fati. There will be obstacles and setbacks. Life is a series of such lessons, learned and forgotten and re-learned again. The lessons are unending, meaning we must learn to endure. We must find a way, despite it all.

      “The nature of the rain is the same and yet it produces thorns in the marsh and flowers in the garden.” — Arab saying (via Anthony De Mello)

      Through everything, there is growth, but isn’t it fair to ask ourselves, what are we growing towards? What are we rooted in, to sustain us in troubled times? What are we reaching for, when times are better? These are our days, through the darkness and the light, to do with what we will.

    • Nothing More Than This

      I could feel at the time
      There was no way of knowing
      Fallen leaves in the night
      Who can say where they’re blowing?
      As free as the wind
      Hopefully learning
      Why the sea on the tide
      Has no way of turning
      More than this
      You know there’s nothing
      More than this
      Tell me one thing
      More than this
      Ooh there’s nothing
      — Roxy Music, More Than This

      Life keeps happening, one day to the next, as we so very quickly make our trip around the sun. It’s easy to wrap ourselves in this—to stress over the passing of time and people and things out of our control. Alternatively, we might simply take the days as they come to us. For things come and go as they will, and after all, there’s no stopping the tide, friends. The best we can do is anchor ourselves in something true.

      Each day offers something. We are each collectors of memories, built to savor and reflect if we give ourselves to such things. Shouldn’t we? For life is nothing more than this: the people and places that make us who we are in our time. We know deep down that it will all scatter one day, but not just yet.