Alexandersmap

    Category: Writing

    • We’re All Carried Along

      In the middle of the night
      I go walking in my sleep
      Through the desert of truth
      To the river so deep
      We all end in the ocean
      We all start in the streams
      We’re all carried along
      By the river of dreams

      — Billy Joel, The River of Dreams

      Some people seem to remember every dream. Some of us remember precious few. Is it the sign of intelligence to remember? Is it a sign of peace of mind to forget? Who’s to say?

      This is post number 1919, a river of words placed just so, to join the countless other words swirling through space and time for as long as there’s an Internet and a pale blue dot. Words are our dance with infinity. And I have to re-read most posts to recall what I was saying at the time. That my words are deeply familiar to me is reassuring, but I’m not that person who remembers everything. I’d be a terrible actor, trying to remember his lines. Yet I can sing an old Billy Joel song I haven’t heard in years and largely get it right.

      Memory and dreams are funny things. Is this too few active brain cells or too much focus on focused on this day and what’s to come? I’m not sure, but I’ll live as deeply as this dream carries me, and keep writing about it, carried along with the current of time to the ocean of infinity.

    • Talkin’ to Myself

      Talkin’ to myself and feelin’ old
      Sometimes I’d like to quit
      Nothin’ ever seems to fit
      Hangin’ around
      Nothin’ to do but frown
      Rainy days and Mondays always get me down
      — The Carpenters/Adam Williams, Rainy Days and Mondays

      Rainy days and Mondays never really drag me down. Sure, we’ve had way more rain than we should this season, while others aren’t getting nearly enough of it. I can fret about climate change but I don’t usually care that it’s raining or sunny on any given day. Likewise, I don’t worry all that much whether it’s a Monday or a Saturday, as each is a gift. The key is whether you feel in control of your days or whether you feel someone else is controlling them. We can’t control the passing of time or the weather, only our reaction to it. The jury is still out on whether we collectively have the fortitude to do anything about climate change.

      I saw a friend the other day who parroted the dangers of “mass murderers swarming crossing the border and descending upon innocents across the country”. I didn’t have the energy to get in a debate with him, having learned during the last two elections in the United States that people are going to believe what they believe and you just can’t force an alternate story line upon a zealot. It made me sad to see another one gone though, reminding me of that closing moment in Invasion of the Body Snatchers when you realize someone you once believed in had switched over to the dark side. Sometimes you just want to scream. But like the weather, this is a reaction we can choose or opt out of. Instead I focused on what we had in common.

      The quality of our lives is always going to be about who is controlling our time and our belief system. When we accept that some things are out of our control, we learn to work with what we can. Amor fati. Our beliefs, on the other hand, can be developed independently of what those around us may believe. We may yet become who we want to be in this life, and we ought to have faith in others to find a way forward too.

      Lately my posts have been all over the place in both content and when they’re published. It’s a sign of a complicated life, perhaps, or maybe it’s just the time bucket I happen to reside in at the moment. Either way, it’s documented and best viewed through the lens of time. What I’m sure of is that I’ve often wanted to quit, but just keep writing anyway. That’s how life works too. Just keep showing up and doing the work and things usually work out in the end. Nothing to be down about at all, really. Just one soul in a wild world, talking to himself.

    • Beyond Meaning

      “Life has no meaning; it cannot have meaning because meaning is a formula; meaning is something that makes sense to the mind. Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made. Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning. Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.” — Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      How we process things in our lives determines how happy we are with the sum of it. Writing is an essential way to process it for me. Deep reading does wonders for me too. But I don’t use activity for processing. Perhaps you’ve found the secret to multitasking activity and combined it with processing, if so kudos, but for me it’s never really worked. There’s something to be said for long walks in the woods or an empty beach, but such activities help empty my restless mind, these things rarely help me process anything important.

      And so I write, and read, and singularly process what I can. And share it in this blog and other communication threads for those inclined to follow the breadcrumbs. So maybe my someday great-grandchildren can sort out who this character was in his day. And maybe you, dear reader, somewhere in this world and in your time, may find something insightful too. Or maybe it gets trapped forever in the anonymous amber of the Internet. The things we ponder in this world…

      The thing is, if life has no meaning, we waste time trying to find it. We ought to just live, and fill that lifetime with purpose and wonder and love. That’s something beyond “the meaning of life”, yet it’s meaningful to the living. That’s you and me and some imagined reader of ancient blogs “someday, when”. We are here, writing our verse, as best we can. So make it compelling. Make it fun. Make it a story worth reading about. The rest will take care of itself.

    • Significance Transcends

      “History is, above all else, the creation and recording of that heritage; progress is its increasing abundance, preservation, transmission, and use. To those of us who study history not merely as a warning reminder of man’s follies and crimes, but also as an encouraging remembrance of generative souls, the past ceases to be a depressing chamber of horrors, it becomes a celestial city, a spacious country of the mind, wherein a thousand saints, statesmen, inventors, scientists, poets, artists, musicians, loves, and philosophers still live and speak, teach and carve and sing. The historian will not mourn because he can see no meaning in human existence except that which man puts into it; let it be our pride that we ourselves may put meaning into our lives, and sometimes a significance that transcends death. If a man is fortunate he will, before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children. And to his final breath he will be grateful for this inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and lasting life.” — Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History

      We are the sum of all that has come before us, with a mission to process and pass along this wealth of knowledge and contribution to future generations. When we talk about the Great Conversation, we rightly wonder what our own legacy might be. We must feel the urgency to contribute. We must lean into Walt Whitman’s response to this very question: That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. Walt wasn’t just writing prose, he was struggling with the same things we struggle with, with fewer notifications and cat videos. We’re simply links in the chain, anchored to the work of those who came before us.

      Lately I’ve seen the momentum that comes from steadily pushing the flywheel for years. The writing is easier, conversations seem more productive and meaningful, and a deeper and richer connection to the world has led to growth and understanding. We simply begin to realize that we’ll never have it all figured out, we cannot live forever and so we’ll run out of time before we grasp everything we hoped we might, and with the startling realization that our significance in the universe isn’t all that big. Yet we may still transcend this lifetime anyway, simply by being actively engaged in our time.

      When we feel the connection to the countless generative souls who made us who we are, we may feel compelled to rise to the occasion of our lifetime as well. There is magic in showing up every day and doing the work. Our verse is ours alone. Just as we thrill at discovering a magical verse from a distant voice, our own verse may one day delight a future treasure hunter. Doesn’t it deserve its moment in the sun?

    • Unhurried and Wise

      “Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      I logged on to a Software-as-a-Service account I use for work thinking I’d quickly check a box that was nagging me. Upon login I was prompted for a mandatory password change, adding another box to check instead of eliminating one. So it is that even the quickest tasks lead to more tasks, and the whirl spins our heads just when we think we have it all figured out.

      Some of us aspire to be unhurried and wise. Certainly, during the pandemic we all examined our priorities. Many pivoted to more meaning, while others leaped back into the familiar trap of distraction. I was somewhere in between, with an inclination to seek waterfalls and summits balanced by a series of compelling shows streaming on too many services to count that I simply had to catch up on so I could keep up with the conversation. I never quite met my objective on either count, but don’t feel compelled to finish any of them at the moment. Checking boxes is a game, and there are times in our life when we grow tired of games.

      When we make time for nature and poetry in our lives, we aren’t being frivolous, we’re seeking the essential. To do this properly is to eliminate distraction and focus on where we are now. Some of us become masterful in adding one more thing to the list, thinking it will be the one thing that will fulfill us or at least make the day complete. This is a form of frenzy, which is never an attractive state. Better to shorten the list than shorten our state of awareness and calm. The goal of life should never be to rush through it.

      If I aspire to anything in this stage of life, it’s to move closer to unhurried and wise. By all accounts I’ve got a long way to go in both respects, but there’s no rushing to unhurried, and there’s no shortcut to wise. It begins with shorter lists and lingering longer on the quietly beautiful magic around us. Some tasks are inevitable, but they should never be at the expense of what has a right to be in this moment.

    • Doing If You Want To‘s

      “If you want to be a poet, write poetry. Every day. Show us your work.
      If you want to do improv, start a troupe. Don’t wait to get picked.
      If you want to help animals, don’t wait for vet school. Volunteer at an animal shelter right now.
      If you want to write a screenplay, write a screenplay.
      If you want to do marketing, find a good cause and spread the idea. Don’t ask first.
      If you’d like to be more strategic or human or caring at your job, don’t wait for the boss to ask.
      Once we leave out the “and” (as in, I want to do this and be well paid, invited, approved of and always successful) then it’s way easier to.”
      — Seth Godin, Are you doing what you said you wanted to do?

      Well, if you want to sing out, sing out
      And if you want to be free, be free
      ‘Cause there’s a million things to be
      You know that there are
      — Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out

      We complicate things with the stories we tell ourselves. We envision what a writer ought to look like, or an actor or leader or whatever we aspire to be. Instead of just slipping on the role for size and doing it. Just do it, as Nike famously coopted as their slogan. How many do just that? Don’t let it slip away, do some version of it now and grow into the rest.

      I write this blog fancying myself a writer. I wear plenty of other hats as well, so I try to write before the world wakes up and tells me I’m supposed to be something else now. Most of the time I give the world what it wants of me, but for a little time every day I simply write. If the posts are late in the day or seem a bit compressed and scattered, it’s usually a sign that I was running late, compressed and scattered myself. But I still put it out there as a humble statement that yes, I do in fact write.

      There’s a million things to be, you know that there are, but there’s usually a very short list of things you simply have to be to feel you’re on the right path. Doing those if you want to’s is the only way to feel like the world isn’t passing you by. Most of the universe barely recognizes that Seth Godin or Yusuf Islam put out similar statements, let alone me, but each of us knows that we showed up and shipped the work. We each grow into our identity with the things we do now. Sometimes that’s enough.

    • To Live an Interesting Life

      Walking a young puppy informs. She grows timid as she gets further and further from what is familiar to her. Furtive glances back and a look up at at me coaxing her along are the routine for those first steps. But then something interesting happens: she becomes more excited about what is unfolding in front of her and pulls at the leash instead of being pulled. It’s all I can do to keep pace.

      To live an interesting life means to skate that line between comfort and discomfort, but also to stretch that line and venture beyond. As we stretch ourselves we don’t just grow, we become: interested, engaged, more substantial in our perspective and thus interesting to others. To be interesting requires we grow as people, experiencing all that life throws at us and finding a way through it all.

      To live an interesting life, we ought to find and embrace the joyful moments along the way, savoring the best life offers while honoring our commitment to ourselves to take on challenges as they’re presented to us, to embrace the suck, as it were, when necessary, and to see things through until the end. There’s a natural balance we find in an interesting life, as we find our stride. What is stride but finding rhythm or cadence? It’s a feeling of confidence that develops through both joy and adversity.

      I wonder sometimes, is a blog a narcissistic endeavor or documenting our way through life? It’s whatever we put into it, isn’t it? If someone at a cocktail party is going on and on about themselves, how soon before you call an audible and bow out of the conversation? On the other hand, when that person is interested and engaged in conversation with you, aren’t you more likely to find them interested as a result? I feel this applies equally well to writing as it does to conversations. Perhaps you agree?

      We cannot live an interesting life without first being interested in life. When we are, we find the courage to step beyond our comfort zone and try new things. Pretty soon it’s us pulling others along to new adventures. We don’t get to choose what happens to us in life, but we can choose how we react. Be interested. The journey unfolds from there.

    • Useful in the Doing

      “We, I think, in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism. Our young people have thought and written much on labor and reform, and for all that they have written, neither the world nor themselves have got on a step. Intellectual tasting of life will not supersede muscular activity.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Experience

      This I know to be true: sweat equity in any endeavor is the best way to invest in ourselves, to say nothing of the endeavor. When we labor for something more than ourselves we have a stake in the game. There’s no better way to live in this fragile moment than to be invested in it.

      Lately I’ve noticed a tendency to publish later in the day than I used to. This is largely a symptom of filling my mornings with more purpose. I expect that my schedule will settle back into a normal routine soon enough, hopefully not at the expense of purpose but by leaning into structure. Time will tell, but I know I will be rolling up my sleeves and doing my part for as long as my health allows. May that be far longer than the norm.

      As I write this, I’ve walked more than 30,000 steps today in service to things bigger than myself. Is that cause for celebration? Of course not, but it signals a well-spent day. We are placed on this earth either to occupy space or to be useful. Give me useful.

    • The Beauty in Useful

      “Why is art beautiful? Because it is useless. Why is life ugly? Because it is all aims and purposes and intentions…. The beauty of ruins? The fact that they were no longer of any use. The sweetness of the past? Being able to remember it, because to remember the past is to make it the present again, and the past is not and cannot be the present — the absurd, my love, the absurd.” — Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

      “My father said to me, ‘Be useful.’ Useful not only to yourself, but useful to your neighborhood, your country, the world. It entails everything.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger, from Men’s Health

      If art is beautiful because it’s useless, does that same criteria apply to a lifetime? What make life beautiful anyway? Is it spontaneity and happenstance or structure and purpose? Doesn’t a lifetime require a bit of both?

      When we systematize our lives we are adding routines that sustain us and increase our effectiveness. Routines don’t have to mean our lives are routine. If a purposeful and intentional life is an ugly life to Pessoa, I would argue it shines a light on our lives, making them more beautiful. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all. A painter may find rigid conformity to accepted rules ugly and confining, while an architect or structural engineer finds great beauty in the very same rule.

      We are, each of us, mere memories in the making. What will make our lives beautiful is largely up to us, and it may inspire others. Usefulness is a ripple across time and space. It magnifies our presence into something tangible. Whether we swim in a small pond or a vast ocean, we make a ripple. Done well, a lifetime can be quite beautiful indeed. And isn’t our lifetime our most essential work of art?

    • Never Perfect, Always Delivered

      Some habits seem to go on no matter what. Others fall by the wayside at the first sign of trouble. If habits define who we are and where we’re going, then a good habit ought to be next to impossible to break, while a bad habit should be made as fragile as we can make it. Were it only so easy.

      The very existence of this blog relies on the habit of writing every day. That writing has been challenged over and over again since it became an essential part of my routine, yet it keeps on rolling. But some days it feels like the wheels will come off, either today or soon enough. Everything ends someday, right? Even the most deeply-rooted of routines. So it goes.

      But not just yet.

      “Too often, we fall into an all-or-nothing cycle with our habits. The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all.” ― James Clear, Atomic Habits

      These daily blog posts have never been perfect, but they are an essential part of this writer’s identity. Whether a thousand people read it or nobody but the proof-reader (who doubles as writer), this is what I’ll do while I can do it. Never perfect, but always delivered with the best effort I can muster in the moment. Consistently putting it out there was always the point.

      So here it is. Again. Thanks.