Alexandersmap

    Category: Exploration

    • Becoming Rich With Memories

      “The business of life is the acquisition of memories. In the end that’s all there is.” — Mr. Carson of Downton Abbey

      “You retire on your memories. When you’re too frail to do much of anything else, you can still look back on the life you’ve lived and experience immense pride, joy, and the bittersweet feeling of nostalgia…. Making deliberate choices about how to spend your money and your time is the essence of making the most of your life energy.” — Bill Perkins, Die With Zero

      We all talk of how the time flies by, but perhaps we ought to focus on how many great memories we accumulate in that span. If we’re living well, experiences are acquired and flipped into memories with the turn of the calendar. We may not become financially wealthy, but surely we might accumulate a lifetime of memories worthy of our time. As the quote above points out, in the end, isn’t that all there is?

      What are memories but the realization of deliberate action? As much as I love a good spreadsheet, I know deep down that working in them isn’t creating memories that will last a week, let alone a lifetime. But I may just remember the conversation I have with someone important in my world a lot longer. I may recall the thrill of peering over a cliff at an angry ocean in Portugal and smile someday when I’m too old for such things. I expect I’ll still smile at the recollection of my kids realizing the amusement park ride they insisted on going on was going to be a lot scarier than they’d bargained on when they begged to go on it. This is the accumulated wealth of memories.

      Perkins’ book challenges us to stop accumulating savings and start spending our money while we’re healthy and fit enough to actually do the things we promise ourselves we’ll eventually do, someday, when we retire. As if we can do at 65 what we might do at 25 or 35. Do it now. There is no tomorrow, and if there is, we won’t be able to pull off some of the things we believe our bodies and minds will be capable of someday when.

      I’ve watched too many people in my life hear the news that they won’t make it to retirement. Cancer seems to be the most common thief of dreams, but maybe an accident or a heart attack steals everything you’ve ever planned for “someday when” away from you. Your life is now: accumulate the memories that will make you richer then. It’s the best return on investment we can have with today.

    • The Traveling Stoic Meets a Flight Delay

      “Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.” — Henry Miller

      There’s no better time to practice stoicism than during business travel using the uniquely out-of-your-own-control limbo of domestic flights. Short delays become long delays, longer delays become cancellations, soon you begin to feel that creeping realization that we’re all just pawns on a chessboard. Who dreamed up this hellscape anyway?

      Amor fati. This is the moment when a deep breath and stepping outside ourselves clarifies. After all, enjoying life, even the grind of travel going badly, begins with knowing it’s all a game. If the why isn’t compelling enough to stay in this particular game, change the game. This applies equally well to the long term as the short. Life is altogether too brief to linger longer than absolutely necessary in the inconsequential.

      Walking helps more than visiting the bar. Seeing how many steps you can get in pulling your carry-on throughout the limits the airport sets for you is a more productive game than sampling the drink menu. Seeing how other people react to the same challenges you’re presented with is interesting, but who wants to live constantly comparing yourself to others? It’s better to take a walk, removing yourself entirely from that part of the chessboard to see how the game is going elsewhere. This offers an immediate change of state, both in what you pay attention to and the changes a bit of exercise offers.

      The things you see in an airport terminal when you have the time to wander can be fascinating…. Or at least interesting enough to make you forget where you could have been otherwise. The thing is, we are here, now, in whatever circumstances life throws at us. So buckle up and enjoy the ride.

    • Where Would You Linger?

      A question came up over dinner with close friends and active world travelers: “Where do you want to go?” for which there are naturally a full evening’s worth of answers. I think that we had the question wrong all along. Perhaps “Where would you linger?” might have been more enlightening. The value isn’t in seeing a place, it’s immersing yourself there long enough to get to know it. And, just maybe, for the place to get to know you too.

      Would you choose to stay in a place long enough to learn its ways and figure out the language and tendencies of the locals? How else would you get to know it? An Instagram photo taken at the same spot everyone else takes there’s is nothing more than evidence that we were ever there ourselves. Is that enough? It says nothing of the experience of being there, let alone how we interacted with that place. Seeing hoards of people charge in to take the same selfie before heading off to the next photo op informs. It’s okay to be the tourist, but isn’t it better to stick around to enjoy the quiet with the locals when the last bus or cruise ship departs?

      The frenetic, “sampler pack” travel, favored by many, and realized through a bus tour or a cruise, is a good example. Being part of a group that drops in for a few hours, sees a few things, buys a souvenir and ships off to the next place, allows you to see many things you otherwise might not see on a tight vacation schedule. And this has some merit. That sampler pack is designed to check boxes and quickly give you a very general lay of the land. When you only have a few days, isn’t it (sometimes) better to fill it with as much as possible? The underlying message is that if you love a place you can always go back to it. How many do?

      Is modern travel inherently designed to allow people to keep up with others at a cocktail party? That may be too narrow and cynical a view. Shared experience bonds us in some ways, if only on a surface level. It’s a starting point from which we can go deeper if we wish to. Travel means something different to each of us, but the underlying fear of missing out (FOMO) seems to drive much of the industry. After all, bucket lists are real, and life is short, and available PTO is even shorter. So by all means, we should go see the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon and the Colosseum while we can. Checking boxes in such a way fills bucket lists… but is it fulfilling?

      When I think back on the places I’ve been in this world, I think about the things I missed the first time around and feel a longing to return. With every trip, there’s a lingering feeling of a place not fully realized on the first go-around. It’s natural to want to return again. Do we wonder how we’d feel if we’d simply stuck around longer?

      Great questions prompt great conversation, but also reflection. As with travel, a great question can open us up to all sorts of possibility only partially answered over a few drinks. Great questions linger even after the evening is over. Instead of always wondering “what’s next?”, we might try “what of now?”, and see where it leads us next.

      After dinner and all the talk of places nearly (but never fully) exhausted, the question shifted to, “So, what are you doing this weekend?”, which prompted my response of not very much at all. Isn’t it funny that all the wanderlust revealed in a few hours together ended with such a statement? I think it points to quietly favoring savoring: A designed lifestyle choice, not general apathy towards getting out there in the world. A sense of belonging derived from being present and realizing the full potential of ourselves in that place and time. That’s what filling a bucket really means.

    • The Beauty of Our Discoveries

      “I hadn’t done drugs since sniffing Lady Esquire shoe polish when I was fifteen. I didn’t need to. I felt the pinch of wonder. I felt everything sharply, the people we met, the sensation of being in a body, of eating and drinking. I knew there was darkness in the world, but I was sure it would not overpower us; rather, we would let ourselves be overpowered by the beauty of our discoveries as we traveled through this world.” — Bono, Surrender

      A lovely expression, this pinch of wonder, and something I wish we all shared. Too many seek distraction and escape over wonder, but let that not be us. When we lean into the life of an explorer, every encounter becomes an opportunity for illumination. Understanding of the world and our place in it can be a slow dawn for those of us not living the rock star lifestyle, but life doesn’t have to come at us in bold strokes for us to find the color. We simply have to be open to it.

      A friend texted over the weekend, thrilled with the travel they’ve witnessed through my photographs, and wanting more. I confess to wanting more myself, even as I look around at the work to be done right at home. We never really finish building a nest, we just fly further and further from it in our quest to see what all the fuss is about. Not being a wealthy rock star, time and money remain considerations for strategic trips abroad. We simply can’t do everything, and really, why would we want to? Life isn’t about chasing the illusive, it’s about building something tangible: understanding, purpose, momentum… beautiful.

      What washes over us when we encounter such things as beauty and magic? Do these encounters feed the fire for more exploration, or do they finally offer satisfaction? Are we ever really satiated? As if enough beauty and magic could exist in a world such as this? I believe we find something in ourselves that was aching to reach the surface in such moments, something beyond our present selves, something drawn from us as we’re pulled towards that which we seek. Magnetic momentum, if you will, pulling us from our shell into the world.

      Bono uses his fame to build a better world, framed with understanding and empathy. It’s a noble pursuit enabled by the thrill people feel to be around someone larger than life. We might do the same, perhaps not to the same scale, but with the same zeal. We might each be ambassadors, not judges. We might be builders creating something better with each encounter. In a way, that’s a rock star way of looking at life: amplified and actively strumming, making our soundtrack. The beauty of our discoveries arranged into a life well-lived.

    • The One and Only Cribstone Bridge

      On the rocky coast of Maine there’s a bridge like no other in the world. Its formal name is The Bailey Island Bridge, but its more descriptive name is the Cribstone Bridge. What makes it unique is its beautifully complex simplicity. It’s basically stacks of cut granite, piled just so one atop the other to form the foundation for a concrete bridge. The magic is in its strength and open design that permits water to flow freely through it. This stack of granite extends 350 meters across an active tidal waterway in Casco Bay, Maine, and has withstood surf, ice flows, boat wakes and a steady flow of vehicular traffic since it was completed in 1928, with only one major repair between 2009-2010.

      There’s truth in the expression “they don’t build them like that any more”. Time tells, and the bridge has proven itself built to last. Anyone who’s played Jenga can appreciate the complexity of a bridge like this. Stacks of granite slabs bear the load, while shrugging off the ocean tides, nor’easters and the harsh cold of a Maine winter. As a critic of mediocre civil engineering projects, I take a bow to this gem of a bridge, showing generations of Civil Engineers what’s possible with a bit of creative genius. It seems I’m not alone in my appreciation, as the bridge is recognized as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, and also on the National Register of Historic Places.

      I wasn’t seeking out this bridge, but I encountered it on a drive out to Land’s End, quite literally a point of land at the end of the road on Bailey Island. I suppose that makes me an accidental tourist of sorts, but these are the kind of encounters that inspired me to start blogging in the first place. Will the Bailey Island Bridge inspire a return to more deliberate regional exploration in this blog? Time tells.

    • Reading and Writing and All the Other Things

      “I write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It’s greed, plain and simple. When my characters join the circus, I’m joining the circus. Although I’m happily married, I spent a great deal of time mentally living with incompatible husbands.” — Anne Tyler

      “I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.” — Anne Tyler

      We read fiction to escape: to be someone else in another place, if only for a little while. We write fiction to explore: to create something bolder within ourselves that we might not otherwise explore, and drop these characters into the places we might not dare to go in a normal lifetime. To take a walk on the wild side without too much damage. Each of us seeks something more in this world in some way. Fiction offers safe passage to extraordinary places.

      This blog doesn’t dabble in fiction, although this writer has. There’s a distinct separation there, between fiction and non-fiction, and between creative output and daily observation. My name isn’t even Alexander, which may lend to the confusion. Certainly it doesn’t offer optimization of the brand. But so it goes. The motive isn’t to develop a brand, but a deeper understanding of the world and my place in it.

      Sometimes we want to explore other lives, represented in fictional characters who come to life in the pages of a book. Sometimes we want to explore the meaning in our own life, and optimize our potential in this brief go-around. If I’m sure of anything in this daily ritual, it’s that I’m a better writer and a better human for having consistently done it. Writers develop characters, and we also develop our own character. Those richer and bolder lives aren’t just on paper, after all, they’re within us too.

      This business of reading and writing is a lovely part of who we are, but let’s face it: Most of our life is made up of all the other things. When done well, we develop a deeper perspective and sense of place through our active participation in words, but also through our engagement with the world. We must step outside our comfort zone in small ways that lead to bigger and bolder things. Just as a snowball grows as we nudge it along, so we grow as we accumulate skill and confidence through repetitive action. As with the snowball, at some point it grows beyond our capacity to push it, and it is then that we must seek the help of others. We must develop the awareness and courage to ask for help when we find our pushing isn’t quite enough.

      When you stop to think of it, we’re each the authors of our own lives. Those characters we develop are often us. Just as they stretch and grow, so too do we. All the other things that make up a life are derived from our imagination and the courage to step out into the unknown. It shouldn’t just be fiction.

    • Which One Stirs?

      “I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.” — Hermann Hesse, Demian

      We all listen to whispers—hints and suggestions and guidance from deep within. We usually don’t act on most of these. Perhaps some seem reckless, or frivolous. Perhaps we don’t like the stretch out of a comfort zone. But now and then we do stretch, and sometimes even leap. The whisper is all we hear at times like this.

      The question isn’t what whispers to us, for there will always be whispers, the question is, which one stirs? We ought to do more of that. Naturally, we already know this. Do you wonder why we ever hear anything else? Or why we choose not to listen to our very own whisper more often?

    • The “I’m Glad I Did” Lens

      “Go live your life. Live it fully, without fear. Live with purpose, give it your all, and never give up.” Effort is important, for without it you will never succeed at your highest level. Achievement is important, for without it you will never experience your true potential. Pursuing purpose is important, for unless you do, you may never find lasting happiness. Step out on faith that these things are true. Go live a life worth living where, in the end, you’ll be able to say, “I’m glad I did,” not “I wish I had.” — Gary Keller, The One Thing

      Without being reckless, what would you have done differently yesterday? How about this year? Who would you spend time with? Where would you linger a beat longer? Where would you have gone if not for the place you stayed instead? What work would you have applied yourself to, worthy of your precious time? In other words, what do you regret leaving off the table in this brief life?

      Perhaps, choose to do it today. Perhaps reach out to that person. Perhaps, linger in the moment when it arrives instead of rushing off to the next urgent thing. Perhaps, book the trip today, while there’s still precious time. Live through the lens of “I’m glad I did” and defer “I wish I had” instead. Be focused. Be intentional. Be bold.

      There is the idea of deathbed regrets. We are all on our deathbed, whether today or a hundred years from now. We ought to feel the urgency in that realization and do something with our time. Through what lens do we view the world? Choose the “I’m glad I did” lens. We probably won’t regret it.

    • A Visit to Brimstone Hill Fortress, St. Kitts

      On a steep and imposing chunk of rock with the mountains at her back, Brimstone Hill Fortress continues to watch over the Caribbean long after the strategic reasons for having a fort here at all have faded into history. Today St. Kitts and Nevis, and the other island nations nearby, are destinations for fun in the tropics, but three centuries ago these islands were strategically valuable producers of tobacco, cotton and especially sugar and its byproducts, molasses and rum. The conflicts between England and France were played out in the North American colonies and in small islands like St. Kitts. While most soldiers considered being stationed in the tropics a death sentence due to the high mortality rate (from disease, alcoholism, etc), it was nothing compared to that suffered by the original inhabitants and the slaves that built the fortress. Each were decimated as the history of this place evolved. Visiting the castle after playing tourist for a few days, the contrast between the joyful destination of today and its dark history was sobering.

      They say that history is written by the victors. This is largely true, but with enough time and clues, you find enough evidence to piece together a more complete story. The English and French united to massacre thousands of Caribs (kalinagos) in 1626 at a place aptly called bloody point, not far from Brimstone Hill. Once they’d eliminated the native population, the English and French divided St. Kitts between them, with the English taking the middle of the island and the French the rest. This tenuous peace between colonists would last until 1713 (the end of Queen Anne’s War).

      Brimstone Hill Fortress was built by slaves between 1690 and the 1790’s. The slaves were brought from Africa in a continuous loop that began the slave trade of tobacco, cotton and sugar for captured and enslaved people. This highly lucrative trade created generations of wealth and tragedy. The fortress is an early example of the polygonal system, which created fields of fire to ensure that all sides were covered from assault. The sheer height of the fort ensured it would be very difficult to attack from the ground, while offering the prominence of the high ground to fire canon balls up to a mile away. This was state-of-the-art technology for the time. The volcanic stone was mined and cut into a formidable fortress, using lime quarried from lower in the mountain.

      During the American Revolutionary War, the French (allied with the American colonists) invaded St. Kitts and laid siege on the fortress from January and February of 1782. A siege is the kryptonite of a fortress, as the inhabitants face a dwindling supply of water, food and ammunition while the attackers wait them out. Eventually even the strongest fortresses capitulate, and the English surrendered and marched out with full honors. A year later the English were back again when the Treaty of Paris restored the islands to them.

      Today the Brimstone Hill Fortress is a Unesco historic site and remarkably well preserved. Many of the original canon line the fort, awaiting an assault that will never come. Today’s assault is from tourists seeking out the spectacular views from the fortress, stirred with a sobering history lesson. It’s absolutely worth the trip up the narrow, winding road on a clear day. A walk out to the outer walls confirms exactly why they built the fortress here—you can see forever in all directions. Including the past.

    • Tropical Rewind

      Hey, stop talking, think I can hear the sea.
      And did I tell you the sound of the surf
      Makes strange things happen to me.
      — Del Amitri, Here and Now

      There’s nothing better than an off-season beach, save perhaps an off-season beach in the tropics. Celebrating a quiet beach is best accomplished in the early morning light, when magic happens in the universe, but only witnessed by those who make the pilgrimage. The advantage of a tropical beach is in the warm breezes and even warmer ocean water. An off-season beach in northern climates has all of the beauty, but is served with a frigid sting. Such things matter when you linger in a place by the sea.

      Walking the beach in St. Kitts well before the dancers of the night before ever thought to awaken, I had no souls to keep me company but the sea birds, a stray dog and an inquisitive cat. Warm tropical breezes offered a different experience than the norm for me. It’s an experience you can certainly get used to very quickly. This explains why so many move to the tropics. But we all know that everything loses its magic if you get too used to it. At least that’s what I told myself as I walked back from the beach to face reality once again.

      [Postscript: This post was written but never made it out of international waters. The streak of writing is alive, the streak of posting is subject to interpretation.]