Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • Leaving a Mark

      “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” — Anthony Bourdain

      Some travel requires a day or two just to get from Point A to Point B and back again. It definitely isn’t always pretty. It’s a mistake to view travel as simply what you do at your destination. Travel is the whole bundle, from booking a trip to unpacking when we return. It took me years to fully realize this.

      I saw a t-shirt while navigating a gift shop a couple of days ago (some of our most treacherous travel). It said, “Scars are tattoos with better stories”. All travel leaves a mark, and maybe a few scars too. The trick is to find the great stories as they unfold.

      I write this a little sorer from my current travel (not yet concluded), both in the creaky parts and in the bank account, but that’s all part of travel too. Travel (to me) is part of living a full life. Perhaps one may live a more full life not traveling anywhere—plenty of people never leave the immediate vicinity of where they were born and eventually die—but that’s not fulfilling for the nomad. We must move to live, and acknowledge all that we encounter on the journey. It becomes part of our story, scars and all.

    • Transformation

      Don’t just learn, experience.
      Don’t just read, absorb.
      Don’t just change, transform.
      Don’t just relate, advocate.
      Don’t just promise, prove.
      Don’t just criticize, encourage.
      Don’t just think, ponder.
      Don’t just take, give.
      Don’t just see, feel.
      Don’t just dream, do.
      Don’t just hear, listen.
      Don’t just talk, act.
      Don’t just tell, show.
      Don’t just exist, live.
      — Roy T. Bennett, Don’t Just

      Spring is the season of transformation, and it has surely been on my mind. Go to places like Disney World or Las Vegas or anywhere where people don’t know your name and you’ll witness people being transformed into someone else. Look in a mirror or inward and you might just see it in yourself.

      We all want to be some better version of ourselves in some way or another. Transformation is our ticket to making our vision a reality. It doesn’t have to be limited to some Jedi character we turn into with a plastic lightsaber and a cape. It can be a compass heading we steer our lives towards. Decide what to be and go be it.

      To be transformed is simply to shift our belief in what is and what will be into something entirely different. We owe it to ourselves to make that shift more inspiring, and dare we believe, more thrilling. To spring forward towards some exciting new idea of what’s possible. Can you see it? What are we waiting for?

    • Too Silent to be Real

      Oh, there was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run
      When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun
      Long before the white man and long before the wheel
      When the green dark forest was too silent to be real
      When the green dark forest was too silent to be real
      And many are the dead men
      Too silent to be real
      — Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian Railroad Trilogy

      Isn’t it funny how a song firmly sticks in your head when it has no business being there at that particular moment in your life? I’m about as far from majestic mountains and silent dark forests as one can be, and yet this is my ear worm. I can think of far worse. Welcome to my head Gordon.

      I subscribe to the theory that wherever we are, we ought to be there, and I’d like to believe I’m fully present where I am now, doing what I’m doing, no matter what the soundtrack is playing in the background. Presence is simply awareness and appreciation for the world as it unfolds. And here we are.

      Presence (for me anyway) also demands that we are aware of and appreciate all that brought us here. The sacrifices of previous generations that built the world we currently live in, the people in our lives who have surrounded us with love and inordinate patience, the beauty of the natural environment and the courage of those who defend it against those who would exploit it.

      For all the noise in this maddening world, there is still serenity to be found wherever we are. Writing this obscure little blog post that you’ve somehow finished reading (no doubt to figure out the connection between the lyrics and all that followed), I found the silence I’d been looking for. It was here all along, awaiting my attention. Real is what we focus our attention on. So be here, now.

    • Pattern Breaking

      “If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow — you are not understanding yourself.”
      — Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do

      Breaking from routine creates space through disruption. I write this out of ritual, and yet I am transformed by change simply by being somewhere else than I normally am. Perspective changes because there is change all around us. We can’t help but change as a result.

      That is the power of travel, or job change, or simply deciding that the routine that so firmly established our identity is simply not what we want anymore and forcefully inserting a new routine in place of the old. Pattern breaking begins when we lift our head out of the fog of routine and see where we’d rather go.

      Routine, and the rituals of habit that make up our days, deserves scrutiny. Is this who we have become? Is this where we want to be? What has a greater hold on us than our habits and routine? What leads us to something greater than awareness and the willingness to change?

      Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not insisting that you change, or even that I change. The ask here is simply to be aware of where autopilot is carrying each of us. Beyond that, the choice is ours whether the pattern suits us or not.

    • The Imaginative Life

      “Millions long for eternity who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” — Susan Ertz

      We have enough time. We simply don’t know how to use it. I’ve been accused of being a productivity geek in this blog, but that’s not it. I’m more of a life optimization geek (surely a geek either way). To optimize our time does not require a Franklin Covey planner, a slick new app or some self-help book, it requires a creative imagination and the boldness to set a dream in motion. Move it or lose it applies equally well to our creative use of time as it does our fitness.

      To do something interesting with each day is in our power. So be powerful with thy time. And thy time deserves our most imaginative creativity. When we are imaginative with our days, and string enough creative moments together, we build something special.

      We may choose to be as creative with building a day as we dare—but don’t dare take the opportunity for granted. Each day squandered is lost. Each optimized is a stepping stone to a greater life. Just imagine that.

    • Be Yourself

      “La plus grande chose du monde, c’est de savoir être à soi.(The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself)” — Michel de Montaigne, Essays

      If I were to put a name on a boat (I have no boat), a strong candidate might be “Rester soi-même”, or “Be Yourself”. Then again, it would be hard to explain it to people over the VHF, it would be forever misspelled, and really, who am I to tell people following me to be themselves? So even before I’ve bought a boat I’ve changed the name. But it was great while it lasted.

      I talk a lot of boats. It would be great to have one again, better to actually use it to move from points known to points unknown, that they may become known too. The vagabond within nudges for action. The practical boy raised to be responsible and present in the lives of others resists. Which exactly is myself? Usually the one that dominates the conversation.

      The thing is, we get to reinvent ourselves all the time. Decide what to be and go be it. Life is long enough and all too brief, all at once. But only if we act when it’s time to act. Go forth and become what’s next for you. There will never be a better opportunity than now. Simply be yourself.

    • Around the World

      Fly the great big sky
      See the great big sea
      Kick through continents
      Busting boundaries
      Take it hip to hip, rocket through the wilderness
      Around the world the trip begins with a kiss
      — The B52’s, Roam

      This song was always about sex, but the other side of that double entrendre was the possibility of roaming. Travel lust, if you will. Permission to explore the world, with that bubbly, joyful B52’s beat.

      The world isn’t all that easy to roam around, and yet it’s incredibly easy if we take the right steps beforehand. A passport, a hint of a plan, and some money to meet the type of travel we’re heading off on. The risk-averse among us will be quick to add health and trip insurance, reservations and all that. But really, that’s just swimming in a roped-off sea—only roaming as much as we feel we’re allowed to. Swim away from the resort and out into the wild sea.

      Spring fever brings with it a desire to roam again. To escape our winter hibernation and getting back out into the world. But the thing about roaming is we’re either talking a good game or we’re putting our plans in action. Don’t we all want a little more action? So let’s roam (if you want to).

    • Something Much Larger

      “Your passions should fit you exactly,
      but your purpose in life should exceed you.
      Work for something
      much larger than yourself.”
      — Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

      Some days things larger than ourself grab hold of us and dominate our attention. There have been a lot of such moments this year in my life, and I bet in yours too. We must recognize the moment and meet it. Sometimes it’s just our time to get to work on something far exceeding the self.

      What is purpose but striving toward some worthy goal far beyond the selfish goblin endlessly crying “Me! Me! Me!” between our ears? When we stop paying attention to our ego and start looking for ways to contribute to the far-beyond-us, we learn and grow and become more useful for the universe. And in the process, we become something greater than who we were before.

      The answer is simply to work, not whine. See the need and get to work addressing it. But our call to service is only heard when we shut up and listen to those calls for help. It’s amazing what we can see and hear when we stop singing our own tune long enough to understand what’s being said all around us.

    • The First of That Which Comes

      “In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed, and the first of that which comes. So with time present.”

      “Observe the light. Blink your eye and look at it again. That which you see was not there at first, and that which was there is no more.”
      — Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Arundel

      Let’s talk of matters for a moment. What we did with our time that has passed matters, for it brought us here. And what happens here matters just as much for what happens next. So the heart of the matter is an instant of action moving us from what was to what is to what will be (or will be no more). Everything changes—whether we’re aware of it or not is beside the point.

      So it follows that awareness and action are two of the most essential assets in our toolbox. We move through moments either way, but what do we really see? What do we really influence? Putting aside all that is out of our control, it’s largely ours to see and be.

      Memory is our companion on our path to what’s next. We each remember moments from our journey to now as if they had just happened. If we’re blessed with a series of good decisions, many of those memories are pleasing to recall. But we also carry our mistakes with us, nagging us in quiet moments. Memory loves to play our greatest hits, but also our biggest mistakes. It’s all a part of us that brought us here.

      Dreams are lovely things indeed. We each imagine a future full of wonderful. There are no aches and pains and lingering sadness, only blissful discovery surrounded by loved ones. Watch a commercial for a luxury cruise line or Disney World and you’ll see some version of the dream. Marketing people know how to pull dollars out of imagination.

      We ought to remember that we have agency too. To realize an imagined future requires the use of those tools in our toolbox. To be aware of where we are and what we’re trending towards, and to take action to influence a more compelling future. To be aware of time passing by and the opportunity at hand before it slips away forever, joining those regrets in our memory bank. To have awareness without action is to concede our lives to fate. Decide what to be and go be it.

      Tempus fugit, friend. Can you believe another month is over? Don’t blink! Time moves at the blink of an eye, and the future is coming for us faster than we ever could believe. Our task is to become a brighter, healthier and more engaged-with-life time traveler. So grab that tiger by the tail and make it a heck of a ride. The first of that which comes is right here.

    • It’s Our Time Now

      “The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?” — Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

      The end of the Winter Olympics brought with it the usual mixed feelings. On the one hand, there’s a glow from witnessing the pursuit of excellence that inspires and stimulates one’s own pursuit of arete. When we see elite athletes performing at a high level, it’s natural to ask what in the world we’re doing with our own precious life.

      The answer, friend, is the best that we can given the circumstances. We are on our own path of discovery. We are on our own climb to better. We may celebrate the excellence of others, but don’t dare to compare, for we know that comparison is the death of joy.

      The end of the Olympics also releases us from watching them, that we may go forth and do our own thing once again. We are in the business of optimization of the self, first and foremost, because that’s who we’ve got to spend the rest of this lifetime with. So take stock of what’s working and keep moving in that direction, but surely, also make note of what’s not working and begin to reinvent, remove and restore accordingly. For it’s our time now.