Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • Reading Good Books

      “The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.” ― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

      This year, speeding right along as it does, is reminding me that the reading has slowed considerably. When the year is done I’ll have read fewer books than I did a year ago, but on the whole better books. Foundational books, pointed to by authors I’ve admired in quotes and breathless recollection. Some history, some philosophy, some great fiction and some regional travel books too. But very few of what used to be called dime store novels—those books that were cheap, popular and formulaic. It’s not that they aren’t fun to read now and then, it’s that they keep me from reading something better.

      To keep improving we must continue to find and consume the most nutritious ideas we can feed our minds. But we can’t stop there, for ideas left adrift are doomed to float away on a sea of words, forever lost in the noise. We must write about the things we encounter, re-read key passages to understand and then make something of them. To become a better person we must raise the average—our average.

      To be an avid reader, we need to have a lifestyle that supports reading. Comfortable chairs in well-lit spaces are wonderful, but it’s more than where we place our bottom—it’s how comfortable we are in that space to open up a portal to another world right there and then. I can read just as easily in a cramped middle seat in coach as I can in a leather recliner in warm natural lighting. To immerse ourselves in anything we’ve got to feel comfortable enough in the act to take the plunge. The people who surround us are more essential to this than any architectural detail. The driver’s seat in our automobiles are a great place to read architecturally, until we start driving and must pay attention to more important things (perhaps someone can mention that to the people with their noses in their phone zipping along in the high speed lane?).

      Once we’ve established a supportive reading environment, we ought to continue raising the bar on what we read. I’m a big fan of a few e-book writers for the page-turner fiction they write, but like sugar I’ve learned that a little goes a long way while a lot will have negative consequences. A healthy ratio of nutrition balances out the empty calories. Better choices in reading material lifts us to places unseen previously. Our view expands as we rise higher and higher up the stack of books.

      It’s too soon for a best books of the year summary, for there’s still a few strong candidates on the shelf awaiting their turn. But looking back at the year, I’m pleased with the best of the books I’ve read for the life-changing impact they’re having. The very best books, no matter the genre, lift us up in this way. The magic in reading is finding the gold. Sure, we may stumble upon a gem on the surface now and then, but to find the richest content we’ve got to mine deeper.

      It’s true that not reading is an art in itself. A useful filter we ought to apply more often in favor of better choices. Choosing to read, but digesting better reads. Tempus fugit: time flies. So read the great stuff first. Perhaps it will be that gem we’ll want to ponder and write about ourselves.

    • So Much to Admire

      I know, you never intended to be in this world.
      But you’re in it all the same.

      So why not get started immediately.

      I mean, belonging to it.
      There is so much to admire, to weep over.

      And to write music or poems about.

      Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
      Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
      Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
      Bless touching.

      You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
      Or not.
      I am speaking from the fortunate platform
      of many years,
      none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
      Do you need a prod?
      Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
      Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
      and remind you of Keats,
      so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
      he had a lifetime.
      — Mary Oliver, The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

      Whispers from a poet, reminding us of the urgency of the moment. Tempus fugit… time flies. Go out and live boldly. Observe and be stirred—get right in the mix. And create something meaningful that might stand on it’s own. It’s a formula for living often repeated here, in this blog about doing all of these things. My daily reminder to not waste a second on the trivial, shared with those who wish to go along for the ride.

      The thing is, when we read the stoics, when we immerse ourselves in poetry and philosophy, in nature and travel, and most of all in the audacious act of heightened awareness, we too begin to live. Less of our own time is wasted. We become hungry for more and more experience, with a burning desire to share it with all who will listen and see for themselves. By opening the senses we let the magic in.

      “Ignorance is not bliss; it’s a missed opportunity.“ — Adam Nicolson, Sea Room

      There’s a price for ignorance paid in unfulfilled wonder and delight. There’s so much to do still. So much to admire. Like that of a poet no longer with us, it’s a whisper (or a shout) to make now count. We’re just part of the choir, singing our part, reminding the congregation to dance with the miracle of life with all the enthusiasm we can muster.

    • The Better For It

      “Love what you do. Get good at it. Competence is a rare commodity in this day and age. And let the chips fall where they may.” — Jon Stewart

      “The artist uses the talent he has, wishing he had more talent. The talent uses the artist it has, wishing it had more artist.” ― Robert Brault

      Over time we become proficient at some things at the expense of other things we might have done instead. We simply can’t do everything in this world, and when we try we dilute our potential to master anything. Focus matters a great deal in becoming competent at anything, let alone to master that thing.

      Lately when I click publish there’s a wave of purposelessness that washes over me for just a moment. The dialog goes something like this: “I’ve completed the blog for the day, the one nagging thing that drives me out of bed that must be done is done… so what now?” And that’s usually when the noise of the world fills the void and my purpose becomes clear once again. Do the things that must be done that have been ignored that you might do this other thing. The fog lifts and I get to it.

      Sometimes the noise of the world keeps me from writing the blog until later in the day. Those are days of great discontent, as if I’m being held back from something essential. Now don’t get me wrong—what is essential to me is mostly noise to the rest of the world, if heard at all, but it’s another rung on the ladder towards better that I must climb. The talent uses the artist it has, and I hate disappointing it with lackluster effort.

      When we love what we do, we keep doing it with an earnest focus on something beyond competence. We owe it to ourselves to reach for excellence in whatever we’re doing in this moment. We can always be better, until one day we can’t be. The race for mastery has an expiration date that we’re charging towards faster than we might believe. Shouldn’t we love the work enough to put our best out there right now? If we’re blessed with tomorrow we’ll be the better for it.

    • Worthy of Becoming

      “What makes a man beautiful? Isn’t it being an excellent man? And so, if you wish to be beautiful, young man, work at this, the acquisition of human excellence. But what is this? Observe who you praise, when you praise many people without partiality: do you praise the fair or the unfair? ‘The fair.’ Do you praise the moderate or the immoderate? ‘The moderate.’ And the temperate or the intemperate? ‘The temperate.’ Therefore, you know if you make yourself a person like those who you praise, you will know that you will make yourself beautiful: but so long as you neglect these things, you must be ugly, even though you arrange all you can to appear beautiful.” — Epictetus, The Discourses

      We all aspire to something. Beauty. Power. Wealth. Fame. What we might become prods us along, becoming our why. This blog was born out of a desire to be a better writer, to express through a keyboard all the things I’d deferred in favor of other aspirations. That I stick with it is telling, for it betrays who I wish to become with every post.

      There’s been a steady improvement in the writer (perhaps also the writing) as change is documented, great works are read, routines are attempted. That he remains imperfect speaks to how far he had to go. He rarely speaks in the third person so this must be a very serious point. Or tongue-in-cheek. One never knows with this writer… and by that I mean one always knows.

      The thing is, the progress is there when we go look for it, when we have an aspiration worthy of pursuit. When we pass that magical ten thousand hour milestone, we believe we might just be mastering something but have learned just enough to realize we’ve got so very far to go. We never master anything, we only pursue excellence from a higher plane. But isn’t the view that much better? Just look at how far we’ve climbed!

      Any hiker will tell us this is a false summit. It feels like we’ve arrived but soon realize that it isn’t the summit at all, simply a small rise before we descend again to begin the next ascent. This can be crushing for the undisciplined, or simply a part of the climb for those who are more resilient. The trick is to stop looking around and start climbing again. Just good enough isn’t what we aspired to when we began this journey.

      Since we can’t possibly climb every summit in a lifetime, we must choose what we’ll aspire to master and what we’ll choose to be average or poor at. We ought to choose to fail at the things that won’t matter in the end that we may put all of our energy into developing within ourselves that which is truly beautiful. Arete—personal excellence, is our true summit, and thus worthy of the climb.

    • Where the River Meets the Sea

      And inside every turning leaf
      Is the pattern of an older tree
      The shape of our future
      The shape of all our history
      And out of the confusion
      Where the river meets the sea
      Came things I’d never seen
      Things I’d never seen
      I was brought to my senses
      I was blind, but now that I can see
      Every signpost in nature
      Said you belong to me
      — Sting, I Was Brought To My Senses

      Nature is a highly effective lens from which to see the world. When we look at the complexity of even the simplest of things—say a leaf or a snowflake, we begin to see the truth of our place in it. We may feel small, but we ought to feel equally complex and an essential part of the universe. We are billion year old carbon, after all, brought together in this moment to dance with the present.

      There’s a part of me that feels a natural end to this blog on the horizon. There’s a part of me that sees it continuing for as long as I do, for the clarity it brings to my days. It brings me to my senses, such as they are, and raises the game by forcing me outside of my own head again and again. Why stop now? And so every day, eventually, there’s one more blog post to ponder or dismiss awaiting the universe.

      All these ideas flow into the larger ocean of ideas that is the connected world. That there’s some turbulence there is natural. That ideas settle and are often diluted in a vast ocean of thought and opinion is inevitable. That we are a part of the great and infinite conversation is essential and assured so long as we click publish and let our thoughts swim.

      Thank you. See you again tomorrow?

    • The Truth Is

      And you know that when the truth is told
      That you can get what you want or you can just get old
      You’re gonna kick off before you even get halfway through
      Why don’t you realize, Vienna waits for you?
      — Billy Joel, Vienna

      Today I deleted an old manuscript. The truth is, it was never going to get finish where it was, and it was holding me prisoner. Stephen King once said to kill our babies, and so one more dance with the muse has turned back into bits and bites to be used by someone else on some other project. Or perhaps it will be my phoenix, rising from the ashes after incineration. I don’t know… I’m just happy to see it go.

      One day perhaps the blog itself will end in just such a way. Here today, gone tomorrow, like a distant memory of that paper once written in school that felt essential in the moment and less so as the years go by. There are days when I wish it so, but push on anyway. For the other writing to have the elbow room it needs to grow, perhaps it’s the final solution. After all, you can get what you want or you can just get old.

    • A Splash and Ripple

      One day you finally knew
      what you had to do, and began,
      though the voices around you
      kept shouting
      their bad advice —
      though the whole house
      began to tremble
      and you felt the old tug
      at your ankles.
      “Mend my life!”
      each voice cried.
      But you didn’t stop.
      You knew what you had to do,
      though the wind pried
      with its stiff fingers
      at the very foundations,
      though their melancholy
      was terrible.
      It was already late
      enough, and a wild night,
      and the road full of fallen
      branches and stones.
      But 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

      We become what we focus on and apply ourselves to. People and pets in our lives demand and deserve the best of us in the moment. There is a stack of unread books demanding attention just to my right, and work equally insistent on my attention just to my left. Directly in between is the Mac I write on. What we do with our time determines so much of who we become. Yet there’s only so much time. Even as I write this I can hear the last of the oak leaves (there never is a true end to oak leaves) falling onto the lawn. The time it takes to clean up those leaves is an investment in nominal physical fitness, but also a mental cleansing. It turns out I need the leaves to pay penance for this plot of land I center my life around. It’s a bullseye of my identity in an indifferent universe.

      The scale whispers something else entirely: What have you done? What are you going to do about it now to fix this? It turns out that clearing leaves isn’t quite enough to balance out the chocolate and wine and that extra serving of stuffing. We are all slaves to our habits, and become what our master demands. We must break free of the worst habits while there’s still a chance to escape the default of less for the potential of more.

      Lately the world seems to occupy ever more and more space of mind. Do you feel its pull? To do anything in our time, we must eventually shake off the noise of our world and move to our own calling. We ought to have the audacity to believe we have a place in whatever the world will be. Something will come of all this, for simply by going to it we are transformed. Now and then, that transformation reaches the attention of others. A ripple begins with a splash. And a splash begins with a leap into the unknown.

      Becoming requires motion: a vivid expression of what we believe might be, realized. We must move away from what we once were to what we envision our future self to be. What have you done? What are you going to do about it now to fix this? Filling the gap between the two end points is our lifetime mission. The more we make of our lives the bigger the subsequent splash and ripple.

    • In Service of Better

      Many months ago I dropped what used to be Twitter from my life. I missed it immediately, not for the political extremism but for the carefully cultivated feed I’d developed over the years I had it. Sometimes I still miss that, because the alternatives aren’t all that great yet. But I keep pressing on with Mastodon and Threads and added an annoying email subscription notification that will go away soon I promise, and keep putting content out there for incremental growth numbers. The question I keep asking myself is why? Why have any social media link at all? Why gather email subscriptions at all? To increase followers seems a bit of an ego stroke. But engagement fuels consistency. We just can’t confuse the subscribers for the work.

      “A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.”― Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit

      The question is, which tree are we tapping on? Is the end result going to be fulfilling or will it just be an empty hole that we honed from time we’ll never get back? Why keep publishing every day when I could use that time for other creative work? Unless you’re an author putting your name and work out there for the masses to find, or selling something else you’ve built, then the end game of a blog shouldn’t be about accumulating a massive following. The end game is the development of the person creating and publishing it every single day.

      “There’s a practice available to each of us—the practice of embracing the process of creation in service of better. The practice is not the means to the output, the practice is the output.”
      ― Seth Godin, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work

      The thing is, the writing has always been about cracking the shell of complacency off and having a go at a soufflé. Inevitably we get it wrong now and then. Inevitably we wonder why we’re doing it at all. But within us there’s someone who wants to reach mastery at something in this brief go-around. We know when we’ve done well, and we know when we’ve checked the box to live to fight another day. Both matter a great deal. The trick is the consistent push towards better.

      When I start thinking about the effectiveness of platforms and email subscriptions, I know I’m straying into a minefield. When I question why I post a blog every day instead of simply writing, I know I’m tapping on the wrong tree. It’s always been about mastery, and the long and often frustrating road to getting there. Discipline, focus and time applied to honing a craft you have the audacity to believe you ought to be honing. Don’t stop me now, for I have a ways to go. Still, it’s a hell of a journey.

    • Strokes of Virtue

      “Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But, if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast… We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar.” ― William James, The Principles of Psychology

      On Sunday my bride and I walked fifteen miles around Newport, Rhode Island seeing all that we could in the time we had. We might have driven from place-to-place, we might have chosen a ride service. Then again, we might have simply plunged into the many indulgences Newport offers in food and drink and leisure. But we walked instead, burning more calories than we ate, getting out in the crisp and cold air to navigate city streets and coastal boulders alike. We certainly didn’t leave Newport without enjoying some of its many restaurants and bars, but the central part of our experience was walking.

      The trick is to keep it going. Keep doing the things that bring us to a place of better fitness, greater resilience, deeper connection and richer experience. Most of us have work to do and commitments to keep that prevent brisk walks about town every day, but we can still carve out the time to do something meaningful each day. We can be actively engaged with the world simply by consistently stepping out into it—further and further with every step.

      We are a collection of habits and circumstance, spun around the sun once a year for however long fate gives us. We must rise to meet our better self. To be more resilient in the face of hardship, we must earn it with the things we do each day to be more fit, financially sound, emotionally intelligent, street smart, book smart and with the proper collection of trusted allies. What we do with our time matters deeply, if not to the universe, then surely in how we perceive our place in it.

      The quality of our life lies in our compounding habits. To be healthier than we might otherwise have been, we ought to exercise more and eat better. Even writing that I felt the cliché ripple across the keyboard with a shudder, but we know the universal truth in it, don’t we? When we inevitably get sick or have an accident, that resilient and healthy body of ours will make us more likely to rebound than we otherwise might have been. And we know it to be true that good fitness and nutrition habits allow us to be more resistant to things that a weaker body might succumb to.

      The power of teams comes into play in how we live, for that which we lack ought to be filled in by having the right team around us, just as we fill in a void that they may have. Without the right partner in my own life, I might have opted for an Uber ride back after the first ten miles, but we pressed on and saw nooks and crannies of the city we wouldn’t have seen otherwise, talking about life all the way, while burning calories and locking in memories we’ll reflect on in future days. The people we row with will either propel us to a better future or sink us. Choose carefully and see just how far you can go together.

      Writing this blog every day, I’ve come to see the changes in myself over the last five years. It’s a way to track activity, reflect on what I’ve read or experienced, and to cajole myself beyond complacency. There must be urgency in our days, and the blog is my way of reminding myself to take stock of where I am and get back to it already. I’m surely no ascetic, but I do strive for greater discipline and consistent improvement in all aspects of this brief dance with you. After all, we’re on the same team, aren’t we? Let’s see all that we can in the time we have.

    • Lighting Our Own Torch

      “Work is only a part of life. But work is life only when done in mindfulness. Otherwise, one becomes like the person “who lives as though dead.” We need to light our own torch in order to carry on. But the life of each one of us is connected with the life of those around us. If we know how to live in mindfulness, if we know how to preserve and care for our own mind and heart, then thanks to that, our brothers and sisters will also know how to live in mindfulness.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

      Monday’s seem to sneak up a bit more quickly lately. The weekends fly by in a swirl of activity, then suddenly it’s Monday morning again. How we react to that depends on what our relationship is with our work. Then again, how we react to getting up any morning is directly related to how we feel about our life anyway. Rising to meet the day is more attractive when we live a life of joyfulness and awareness. Don’t we owe it to ourselves to reach that place?

      I lingered with the sunrise this morning, not to delay writing but to meet the day properly. A bit of frisbee with the pup, a cuppa to clear the cobwebs free, and full awareness of the light show happening above me as the world turned to meet the sun. The point of living is to be fully alive in these brief moments stacked like dominoes along our timeline. Those dominoes behind us have fallen away, all that’s left is the stack standing in front of us. Just how long that stack is is anyone’s guess. The pup and I felt satisfied with the one just fallen behind us.

      What is work but a series of dominoes stacked in our timeline? Each of those dominoes will fall behind us eventually, but what direction are they carrying us in? We either work out of a sense of obligation to others or we follow the call to contribute something more. The latter is often harder to hear—more a whisper than a scream (that screaming sound you hear is a thousand souls commuting to jobs they deeply resent). Whispers of work to be done are meaningful clues to the life we ought to be living.

      When those dominoes fall behind us, do they land with a hollow thud or do they resonate as time well spent? We each have our share of hollow moments, but we ought to work towards a life that reverberates. To light our own torch is to choose a life of resonance and meaning. That’s something to work towards.