Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • Table for One

      “I can be by myself because I’m never lonely, I’m simply alone, living in my heavily populated solitude, a harum-scarum of infinity and eternity, and Infinity and Eternity seem to take a liking to the likes of me.” — Bohumil Hrabal

      There is a moment in solo business travel where you’re inevitably going to feel the aloneness. It might be choosing that table for one instead of the bar, it might be walking into a large hotel suite ridiculously big enough to emphasize the sole nature of your occupancy, or it might just be not talking to a human being for hours on end. But this is the nature of travel: it amplifies the distance between us and those we choose to be with. The leap for the seasoned traveler is when you recognize alone isn’t lonely at all. It’s just an opportunity to be present with your own thoughts.

      We all seek connection with the larger world, and the opportunity to see associates around the world face-to-face is a uniquely special gift for those of us lucky enough to travel for work. All of these moments add up to a life beyond all that was previously familiar, and they in turn become familiar. This routine adds structure and normalcy to being on the road, wherever it might take us next.

      Alone is a courageous choice of self-selection. Meaningless banter at the bar may do now and then, but deep dialog with ourselves carries us to places we wouldn’t arrive at in the noise of the hive. We must seek solitude to think, and travel offers solitude in spades. Sitting at my table for one last night, I made the most of the opportunity to read a book I’ve been struggling to find time for, to ponder decisions I’ve been deferring for another time, and to savor the moment.

      Our time alone is limited. Eventually we dive back into the mix of friends and family and associates that make our world go ’round. This is as it should be, for it represents a healthy diet of solo and ensemble time. Each should be savored for the growth opportunities they offer and for the celebration of returning to the other soon. Each state is temporary, and each is essential.

    • Everything Half Known

      “In the soul of man,” Herman Melville wrote, in one of his terrifying flights of prophecy in Moby-Dick, “there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.” Cast off from that protected world, he’d gone on, and “thou canst never return!” But the half known life is where so many of our possibilities lie. In the realm of worldly affairs it can be a tragedy that so many of us in our global neighborhood choose to see other places through screens, reducing fellow humans to two dimensions. On a deeper level, however, it’s everything half known, from love to faith to wonder and terror, that determines the course of our lives. Melville’s sorrow lay not just in his restless inquiries, but in his hope for answers in a world that seems always to simmer in a state of answerlessness.” — Pico Iyer, The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise

      Pico Iyer pulls a reader to places they likely hadn’t considered going to in their own lives. He travels to corners of the world I’d never choose to go to myself, taunts me with eloquence I strive for in my own writing, and expands my mind with thoughts I haven’t arrived at yet in my own journey. He takes very seriously the mission of the great writer to change the reader in ways they weren’t quite ready for when they began the book. And he does so with a sprinkling of wonder in lyrical observations we’ve come to expect from him.

      The question is, what are we looking for? What are our possibilities lying in a half known life? What encompasses our soul awaiting answers? We each must reconcile these questions in our lives, wherever our journey takes us. Our lives are not about that which we are sure about, but the larger questions that surround us. The thing about finding answers is that they always lead to more questions still. Thus, our lives, lived with purpose, are a finite inquiry.

      “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms or books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

      Over time, many of us come to terms with the things we’ll never fully understand. Life isn’t about finding all the answers, merely a journey towards enough in our time. Each question and subsequent answer is another step towards becoming. Becoming what, we might ask? And that is our half known, different for each of us, yet very much the same.

    • Measuring Growth

      “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” — Joan Didion

      “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.” ― Thomas Merton

      The gift of writing is not as much about putting all that you want to say on paper or on a screen for the world to read, although that is a motivation of sorts. No, the gift is in the sorting out of what you encounter in the world and finding a way to articulate it better than we might have yesterday. One doesn’t place a Didion or Merton quote just ahead of one’s own thoughts, let alone both, without recognizing that measuring up becomes ridiculous. But this is how we grow.

      Growth is measured against whatever it is we’re reaching for. Slowly chipping away at the French language for years now, I’ve picked up enough to know I’ve made measurable progress, but not enough that I’m not lost when a rapid-fire conversation amongst native speakers surrounds me. But at least I can tell them my name and ask where the toilettes are. Progress, and a clear indicator that more immersion is in order to grow into the language I too casually aspire to master.

      The meaning in the moment is derived from accumulated experience. If our experience is limited, we might not pick up the nuance in a conversation, know the double entendre, the obscure reference or an inside joke that is derived from being out there in the world and just knowing. The trick in living is to put ourselves out there in the mix, and sort things out as best we can. Writing is active processing, documented. Hopefully edited well enough to make it interesting.

      The thing is, we learn to recognize the darkness in the world, but also the light. The tenuous line between the two is where active living takes place. We become more resilient, more informed, more street-smart as we grow, and bring that to new places where we quickly discover how we measure up. The alternative to growth is stasis and atrophy. It’s more fun to grow. Plus we finally get the jokes we missed when we were someone else.

    • Identity and Place

      “You have to pick the places you don’t walk away from.” — Joan Didion

      Life is change. Those of us afflicted with wanderlust amplify our lives with travel and exploration. But eventually, perhaps even relentlessly, we come home again. Whatever that means to us.

      In a few weeks I’ll have been anchored to the same plot of land for 24 years. I’ve replaced everything from the appliances to the light fixtures to the front door. Two babies became adults and, as it should be with nests, moved on when they learned how to use their wings. Everything but the two residents who hold the mortgage have changed. But haven’t we changed too?

      Having a sense of place is essential to our identity, but it isn’t the land or the house or even the collection of books on the shelves that define who we are. Identity lies in the gap between who we were and who we’re becoming. Likewise, place is in the gap between what feels most familiar and what eventually comes after. Identity, and place, aren’t the gap—they fill it.

      So as we look for that which we won’t walk away from in this ever-changing world, we ought to begin by asking ourselves—what fills that gap?

    • We Are Shaped

      “We, I would venture to guess, are the books we have read, the paintings we have seen, the music we have heard and forgotten, the streets we have walked. We are our childhood, our family, some friends, a few loves, more than a few disappointments. A sum reduced by infinite subtractions. We are shaped by different times, hobbies, and creeds.” — Sergio Pitol, The Art of Flight

      What we experience matters a great deal in our lives, for these are the building blocks to a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us. What we experience defines us, making us more inclined to learn more, which in turn prompts us to leap into another unknown. That accumulation of experiences is our sum. Our sum is us at this moment, with more to come.

      What shapes us is most interesting in the context of omission. For what we miss also shapes us. Perhaps explaining why FOMO (fear of missing out) is such a common experience, but more likely just leaving us not fully fleshed out in an area where we sense we don’t have the full picture. We all wonder at what might have been at times, thinking about pursuits cut short, excuses we made about time or money or priorities that created a void of omission that nags us still. Friends offering a quarter berth any time I want to visit their sailboat is a tantalizing draw even as I write this, wondering if the opportunity will ever present itself again. Omission haunts us, even as life fills in around us.

      “We must resist the temptation to drift along, reacting to whatever happens to us next, and deliberately select targets, from activities to relationships, that are worthy of our finite supplies of time and attention.” — Winifred Gallagher, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life

      The trick is to avoid the drift. Put aside the insignificant distractions that relentlessly steal our time and attention and decide what will shape us. Life is short enough, we ought to set our sails in the direction we want to go in, and accumulate the experiences that will define our identity for the rest of our days.

      As our accumulation of experiences grows it naturally builds momentum. It makes us more interesting at cocktail parties, perhaps, but it mostly puts wind in our sails. We become more confident in our ability to handle the unknown, to make it known, and in turn make it part of who we are. When done well, we become deliberate in what those experiences will be. In this way we create our identity while we define our lives. That’s something to aspire to, don’t you think? For it leaves us wanting more, which is a great way to begin each day.

    • The Beautiful Voyage

      When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
      pray that the road is long,
      full of adventure, full of knowledge.
      The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
      the angry Poseidon – do not fear them:
      You will never find such as these on your path,
      if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
      emotion touches your spirit and your body.
      The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
      the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
      if you do not carry them within your soul,
      if your soul does not set them up before you.

      Pray that the road is long.
      That the summer mornings are many, when,
      with such pleasure, with such joy
      you will enter ports seen for the first time;
      stop at Phoenician markets,
      and purchase fine merchandise,
      mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
      and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
      as many sensual perfumes as you can;
      visit many Egyptian cities,
      to learn and learn from scholars.

      Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
      To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
      But do not hurry the voyage at all.
      It is better to let it last for many years;
      and to anchor at the island when you are old,
      rich with all you have gained on the way,
      not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

      Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
      Without her you would have never set out on the road.
      She has nothing more to give you.

      And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
      Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
      you must already have understood what Ithaca means.
      — Constantine P. Cavafy, Ithaca

      There’s a special place in my heart for The Odyssey. It captured my attention in early adulthood and held on tight. I might have sailed away to the Greek Isles in my own odyssey had things gone differently. And so having a heart so set on travel doesn’t surprise me very much at all. In fact, what surprises me is the amount of time I’ve spent in my home port. When you find home you know it, even when the road calls you like a Siren.

      I didn’t have the heart to break up Cavafy’s poem, and offer it here in its entirety for my fellow travelers to celebrate (as travelers do). Perhaps the flow may seem off, as if the entire voyage is top-heavy, but so be it. We must break the rules now and then in our lives if we hope to see what’s outside our box.

      And that’s the point, isn’t it? To see what’s far outside of our comfortable box, and to live to tell the tale. The box will be there when we get back. But we’ll be different, won’t we? We’ll witness things we’d only believed as myth, and things we’d never known existed but will stay with us forever for having been there. We’ll carry the sparkle of faraway places in our hearts that escapes from our eyes as we tell of places we’ve been. Similar sparks escape from the eyes of fellow voyagers who have been to the same place, and a special fire burns brightly when the sparks are shared in other ports of call. There’s a club of understanding that is earned living dreams and encountering what is carried in our souls. If that sounds ridiculous, well, check your sparks for ignition. You may need a tune-up.

      Do you understand what Ithaca means? If not, give it time and room to grow. You’ll find it far from the comfortable routine, just waiting for you to go there. You just might come across me on that journey too, chasing Ithaca and learning more about this voyage every day. So tell me, do you see it now? Isn’t it beautiful?

    • Diligent Awareness (Life as a Poem)

      “The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem.”
      ― Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart

      “Imagine that you’re unwell and in a foul mood, and they’re taking you through some lovely countryside. The landscape is beautiful but you’re not in the mood to see anything. A few days later you pass the same place and you say, “Good heavens, where was I that I didn’t notice all of this?” Everything becomes beautiful when you change.” — Anthony De Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

      It’s easy to say we should live with awareness, but harder in practice. This business of living demands attention, or rather, distracts our attention from much of the things we’d be focused on if we weren’t so damned busy with that other thing. We forget, sometimes, that life is merely what we pay attention to and everything becomes beautiful when we change. Most of us won’t change or become fully aware, but isn’t it pretty to think so?

      Most don’t want to change, they want to live with what they have, while wishing for more, and do it again tomorrow. When someone does we wonder at their boldness, but don’t connect the dots to doing it ourselves. If we are what we repeatedly do (Aristotle), then doing something completely different strikes at our very identity. No wonder so many refuse to cross that line in the sand.

      “How many people do you know who are obsessed with their work, who are type A or have stress related diseases and who can’t slow down? They can’t slow down because they use their routine to distract themselves, to reduce life to only its practical considerations. And they do this to avoid recalling how uncertain they are about why they live.” ― James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy

      The thing is, awareness isn’t about turning our lives upside down, it’s being fully present in the moment. Being open to everything that surrounds us, not just those practical considerations. We aren’t quitting our jobs and living like a hermit in a hot tent when we’re aware, we’re simply inviting more of the universe into our present moment. It seems if we want a more fulfilling life then we ought to fill more of our life with beautiful things.

      I was once a closed young man who thought of poetry as frivolous. Something was missing within me that took years to fill. When you close yourself up the world simply cannot find its way in to fill you. Over time my awareness pendulum has swung wide open. Not coincidently, I write more, listen more, seek more and linger more with the world. When we realize the world exists as a poem, we’re more inclined to dance with its verse.

      “Butterflies don’t write books, neither do lilies or violets. Which doesn’t mean they don’t know, in their own way, what they are. That they don’t know they are alive—that they don’t feel, that action upon which all consciousness sits, lightly or heavily.” — Mary Oliver, Upstream

      We expand into the world we create for ourselves through diligent awareness. Knowing what we are, and who we are, is the job of a lifetime. When we open ourselves to everything, we discover more, and we live a bigger life.

    • Looking Back and Filling Forward

      “When I look back on resolutions of improvement and amendment which have year after year been made and broken, either by negligence, forgetfulness, vicious idleness, casual interruption, or morbid infirmity; when I find that so much of my life has been stolen unprofitably away, and that I can descry by retrospection scarcely a few single days properly and vigorously employed, why do I yet try to resolve again? I try because reformation is necessary and despair is criminal.” — Samuel Johnson, via Daily Stoic

      It’s that time of year again. We hustle through the year and arrive at the end forever changed. We’ve gained insight, lost people from our lives, picked up habits, and either raised or lowered our expectations for what’s next. We aren’t just what we repeatedly do, we’re also what the world does to us and how we react to these things. We are, each of us, works in progress. We ought to take a moment to take stock of where we are, and what we might do with ourselves in this next chapter.

      What went exceedingly well this year? What fell apart despite our best intentions? What’s missing? What is overly present? What can we do to influence a better result in the New Year? These are the usual questions, worthy of our consideration, that generally lead to resolutions and writer’s cramp.

      “Decide what to be and go be it.” — Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise, The Avett Brothers

      The biggest moments tend to be scheduled. We book events and trips and seek our milestone moments. Occasionally we participate in a wonderful moment of serendipity, but the big stuff in life generally happens when we put it on the calendar. Knowing this, we ought to schedule a few big moments for ourselves in 2023. Just as we must make a reservation at a great restaurant if we hope to have an epic meal there on a Saturday night, so it follows that we must book our bucket list moments when, and while, we can.

      The thing is, we don’t just live one epic moment to the next. Our lives are the things that happen in between such highlight moments. So it follows that the quality of our life is directly related to how we fill in the rest of the calendar around those milestone moments. Each day is our lifetime. So we ought to fill each with people and habits that sustain and energize us. We ought to do work that does more than pay the bills. Careers and lives are built on purpose.

      “There’s always a sunrise and always a sunset and it’s up to you to choose to be there for it,’ said my mother. ‘Put yourself in the way of beauty.” — Cheryl Strayed

      Life is more than paying bills and making it to the meeting on time. If the world is filled with beautiful moments, why aren’t we seeking them out more? One of the best habits I ever established was using a one line per day journal and make it a mission to write down something amazing each day. Not every day is amazing, of course, but when we work towards it that stack of days can be a string of magic.

      “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” ― Jim Rohn

      Our best intentions can be derailed by that which surrounds us. Does our circle of friends and family lift us up or hold us down? How about our habits? For these are related, aren’t they? Our circle of influencers and our daily habits will either make us better people or they eventually pull us over the cliff. If we’re surrounded by people with bad habits and a horrible outlook on life, we tend to pick these things up ourselves. Conversely, when we’re around creative people with productive habits, we tend to lift ourselves up to meet them. So what will it be for you and me?

      No matter how old or experienced we are, we each must reconcile our time in our own way, each day. If we want a better life filled with nuggets of joy and moments of adventure we’ve got to put ourselves out there and try many things to find our thing. This all begins with looking back at what our days were filled with and deciding what was fulfilling and what we’ve had our fill of. Taking stock in such a way, we can now gaze ahead deliberately and fill that blank calendar with purpose and hope.

      We are indeed works in progress. Reformation is necessary. But we can find joy in the creative process. What better project is there to work on than our own life?

    • December Bay

      Sunsets must be earned in winter. There are no casual seaside deck conversations with a few pictures between sips of rum. No, you must seek out December sunsets by going to where it falls into the bay while bracing against biting cold winds galloping towards you in a stampede of frothy fury. Still, it makes a pretty picture and another memory.

      Micro-adventures and stolen moments of dancing with life count just the same as big trips and scheduled events. Life is our collection of all such experiences. We ought to sprinkle a bit more salt on our days to make them savory. For our best days are savored, aren’t they?

      Not as warm as it looks

    • Stepping Out on the Edge

      The Edge is the highest observation deck in the Western Hemisphere, and the fifth highest in the world. It juts out of a modern and elegant 30 Hudson Yards building that glitters day and night. If you are afraid of heights, it’s unlikely you’ll ever travel up the speedy elevators that bring you 100 stories above Manhattan, but if you do, you’ll be treated to video stories displayed on the walls of the elevator cab that bring you into the clouds on the way up and on virtual flight back to earth on the return trip. As fun as the elevators are, nothing beats the actual view that greets you when you arrive.

      The observation deck features epic views of the Manhattan skyline, the Hudson River and New Jersey beyond, Long Island Sound and most of the famous sites you’d think of when you think of New York: The Statue of Liberty, The Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, The George Washington Bridge, the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, the Freedom Tower and Chrysler Building are all visible on a clear day. If you time your visit right, you have a great view for sunset. It’s a breathtaking spot, and it’s clearly become very popular as a destination all its own.

      Frankly, if you’re not afraid of heights there is still a moment that gives you pause when you visit. That would be the moment you step out onto the glass floor and look down at the traffic 1131 feet below you. I passed this particular test, but balked when someone told me to jump up and down on the floor. There are a list of things that one shouldn’t do in life, and near the top is tempting fate.

      Also available to fate tempters are the 2+ inch thick glass panels that lean outward from the deck, giving you the opportunity to literally lean out over the edge if you’re inclined to do so. For all the people visiting at the time I was there, there weren’t a lot of people leaning on the glass. Self-preservation is indeed a powerful instinct.

      There is a stepped seating area that climbs up even higher, if you want to sit for awhile and linger with the extraordinary views. When you’ve been to New York City many times, and have spent hours of your lifetime navigating the roads of the Metro New York area, it’s fascinating to see everything from so high up. A glance and turn of the head to look from Sandy Hook, New Jersey to the George Washington Bridge might take you a second or two, or two or three hours to drive it. You feel like you’re flying in this way, and this feeling is amplified as you realize that many of the planes flying up the Hudson River are actually lower than you.

      If you go, try to time it to be there for sunset on a calm day. Have lunch at one of the many restaurants at Hudson Yards and give yourself enough time to savor the views. It’s a trip you’ll remember. The Edge literally puts you out on the edge of a skyscraper, which isn’t as terrifying as that might sound. You almost forget where you are as you soak up the views around you. This is what you’ll remember when you return to earth.