Alexandersmap

    Tag: Arete

    • Sagacity

      “It is only with prudence, sagacity, and much dexterity that great aims are accomplished, and all obstacles surmounted. Otherwise nothing is accomplished.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

      Having wisdom without purpose makes us worthy of nothing but trivia night at the local pub. What is the use of being wise if we don’t then use our accumulated sagacity to navigate the complexities of life with greater efficiency and tact? If purpose is our fuel, and action our engine, then wisdom may be thought of as our navigation system.

      We age, acquire knowledge, and fill our cache with street smarts. It’s easy to believe that we have it all figured out. But in a time with so much foolishness in the world, sagacity clearly isn’t a given. Just because our average lifespan increases doesn’t mean that wisdom is keeping pace. To be learned, we must be inclined to learn.

      With that in mind, I’m trying to use my time to advantage. When I tell people that this book isn’t going to read itself , I mean it. Reading isn’t the only way to gain wisdom, but it’s a proven path to greater insight. When we graduate out of the classroom, our path to wisdom is only just beginning.

      In order to finish what we start, we’ve got to persist in the activity to its conclusion. It’s appropriate to then ask ourselves what we’ve learned from what we just traded some of our life to obtain. Each great lesson advances our wisdom, each wasted opportunity stalls our advance.

      As with everything, reaching our potential is largely dictated by what we say yes or no to. We cannot control everything in life, but we do have the agency to choose how sagacious we might become. Rather than hoarding wisdom, sagacity may be a gift we offer to help others rise above the din of dim wit that passes for clever nowadays.

    • Declaration

      My declaration
      will be
      absolute.

      An arrival
      in the here
      and the now.

      Then
      there will
      be little else to do.

      I will have become like
      the madman running
      to see the moon
      in the window,
      the hawk
      I saw tracing the cliff edge
      above the river.

      I will be the man
      I have pursued all along
      and finally caught.
      — David Whyte, Mortality My Mistress

      Declarations are nothing without action executed to conclusion. We must learn to keep our promises to ourselves and others, and to back up our words with results. We are where we are because of our actions, not because of some declaration.

      There is a growing awareness that may reveal itself through the accumulation of years. We grow wealthy given time and compounding interest. Call it wisdom or call it experience, it’s collected through deliberate action and an inclination to be present with life as it unfolds before us.

      Not all who grow old grow wise, any more than gathering years mean that we have gathered experience. Gathering is itself a deliberate act.

      Not all who age grow old. Youthful vigor is derived from receptivity multiplied by energy. We are as alive as we allow ourselves to be, no matter our age.

      If an arrival infers place, a declaration suggests direction towards something more. We may savor place while aspiring for more. At least that’s the mindset I have as I arrive at this place with an eye towards the next. Today, we are as fit and wise and wealthy as yesterday has made us. This is nothing but currency to spend as an investment in the present and future person we wish to be.

    • Each Hard Thing

      “Unless the lake was actually frozen, I would go out on it.” On winter days, he adds, “The first four kilometres are hard because you can still feel your hands. After that it gets easier, because your hands are numb.” — Oliver Zeidler, Reigning Olympic and world champion in the men’s single sculls, article “What Makes a Champion?” from Flow

      Ever wonder at how hard it is to row a single scull against elite athletes for 2000 meters? Row 2000 meters on a rowing ergometer for time and see how you feel. It dents your soul in hurts so much. So I laughed when I read Zeidler’s quote, because “numb” applies to more than overcoming the cold. Elite athletes push aside levels of discomfort that sideline the rest of us.

      I write this fresh off a kettle bell circuit that made me question my own sanity. I made it through the workout, rested long enough to manage typing, and began typing this blog post. My rest involved reading the article quoted from above. We tend to be most open to positive action when we’ve already done something good for us. The opposite is also true, of course, so avoiding one bad habit helps us avoid a string of other bad habits.

      And this brings me back to doing hard things. Each hard thing done makes it more likely that we’ll do another hard thing, and another, and soon we’re surprising ourselves with all that we’ve accomplished in a day, a week, a year… and onward to a lifetime. That’s one reason I tend to write and publish every day, because it feeds the next hard thing I want to get done. What have we done today to make us proud of our effort? There’s still time to add something to that list.

      Ironically, the kettle bell exercise that makes me feel most alive is called a gravedigger. It will get your heart rate up quickly, and reminds me of the rhythmic swing of rowing, without the cold hands. That workout was fresh on my mind when I read the interview with Zeidler, and surely influenced my decision to seek it out in the first place. Reinforce the positive, whenever possible. Momentum ensues.

      We probably shouldn’t aspire to numbness in our lives, but pushing through discomfort to perform at a higher level is a worthy aspiration. Today’s discomfort is tomorrow’s excellence. And why wait any longer than that?

    • Once Devoted

      “So, preferring death to capture, I accomplished the most astonishing of deeds, and which, more than once, showed me that the too great care we take of our bodies is the only obstacle to the success of those projects which require rapid decision and vigorous and determined execution. In reality, when you have once devoted your life, you are no longer the equal of other men, or rather other men are no longer your equals; and whosoever has taken this resolution feels his strength and resources doubled.” — Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

      As I march through a thousand pages of The Count of Monte Cristo, I wonder why I used this book for years as nothing more than a way to lift my laptop up a couple of inches for a better Teams shot. I know the answer already; I simply wasn’t ready to read it then. Now I am and I use the time to devour it. In reading, I mine golden nuggets like the quote above, to ponder and write about.

      Most of us barely scratch the surface of our potential, but the truly great among us reach levels hardly imagined by the average. And thank goodness for that! Who are the average to determine the heights to which the great may reach? Do we wonder at such things as personal excellence nearly enough, or are we content to just be what we’ve always been? Just who are we to wallow in average when arete whispers to us, “Just ahead, if you’ll only keep going beyond this present level.”

      Perhaps we may agree that purposeful action elevates us beyond the norm. We may disagree on whether we ought to be chasing such dreams, when things are comfortable enough as they are. It’s okay to be average, it’s okay to settle; it’s just not excellence. The point is, there’s still time to exceed our expectations of ourselves. At least for now. There’s still time to do and dare, but dare not wait a moment longer.

    • As Best We Can

      “I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.” — Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

      It’s been a while since I’ve quoted Henry. I think it was the bumper crop of acorns that prompted me to revisit his work. When you live amongst the oak trees, you experience the full gamut of seasons with them, from catkins to acorns to stubborn leaves that hold on long after the maples and ash trees have gone bare. The oaks were here first, and (hopefully) they’ll be here long after I leave this place. I am but a steward of the land in my time.

      We know that time is flying rapidly along, because we experience the fruits of our own seasons. My catkin season is long past, I’m gathering as many acorns as I can before the harvest is over. With any luck, my own leaves will hold as an oaks, and not a swamp maple’s. Time will tell.

      The lesson, of course, is to learn to live according to our nature, but also in harmony with nature. Those who thrive in a lifetime do so with vigor, but also balance. So it is that I got back to my kettle bell workouts, and read in earnest, and yes, write this blog to keep growing and flourishing as best I can. We all ought to strive to deeply root ourselves with a sense of place and time and see just how far we can stretch ourselves towards the light. To exist otherwise isn’t really living at all.

    • With Urgency and Focus

      “Do that thing that honors life.” — John Kenney, I See You’ve Called in Dead

      I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating. I have people in my life who question me for writing about death. I remind them that Memento mori is not a morbid fixation, it’s a call to action. We must acknowledge our ending in order to begin living fully, with urgency and focus.

      John Kenney’s book is delightfully funny with an underlying sadness that washes over you in alternating waves. It’s a lot like life in this way. We fully savor joie de vivre precisely because we experience darker moments in our lives. How can we know the good if we never experience the bad?

      If I repeat myself, it’s simply a reminder to do more of the things that honor life. We are each blessed to be alive for this brief window of time. Optimizing that which makes us most alive seems prudent given the certainty of our eventual expiration. Dance with life, even as we accept the reality that the music will end.

    • Raising Standards

      I saw some old friends at the farm stand. We used to see a lot of each other, back in the days before, well, you know… Anyway, I still adore them as people. They may or may not think well of me, charming as I believe myself to be. But who’s to say? The only way to know what someone really thinks about you is how often they reach out to be a part of your life. Otherwise, what are they but apart from your life? We all get busy. It turns out we’re busy becoming less attached to one another.

      The most profoundly tragic thing about the world today is the amount of people walking the earth who are largely alone with no capacity to do anything about it. Too many people walk through life without the skillset to talk to other people (which really means being able to listen to other people). I get some grief in the family for talking to strangers, but what is a stranger but a person we haven’t talked to yet? I believe the world needs fewer strangers.

      Six years ago we lost a real character in our family. Since it was in the middle of a pandemic, the opportunity to say goodbye wasn’t available for most people, so that character didn’t have the sendoff he would have had otherwise. We honor him by working to meet the standard he set for us as citizens of the world. We dishonor him by drifting into a lesser version of ourselves than we would be if he were still around. To me, that’s a measure of the person he was, that you wanted to be a better person because he wanted that for you.

      I write a lot about personal excellence (arete) in this blog. I’m under no illusion that I’ve reached it yet. We’re all works in progress, and that goes for the inner self as much or more than the outer self we show to the world. Those old friends at the farm stand are still friends, even if we don’t talk all that much anymore. The least I can do is be the kind of person that they would want to be around more often. To not only hold the standard, but raise it. Isn’t that the proper way to honor those we’ve lost, or those we’ve lost touch with?

    • In Magnificent Glow

      “I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.” — Jack London

      Happy Labor Day for those who observe it. We might use this occasion to confirm that the path we are on is a sound one. We might even dare for more in our lives than the answer to that very American question, “So what do you do?”

      I was challenged recently about purpose. Specifically, what will I do one day when I retire. If our careers are widely thought of as our purpose and identity, it follows that when we retire (or otherwise lose a job) both purpose and identity would take a massive hit.

      Perhaps. Then again, if your purpose and identity were never quite wrapped around some job or title, then maybe we will be just fine without some resume filler with dates attached. Maybe there’s far more to us than a string of career milestones.

      Do we aspire to be ground to dust in some job du jour, or follow passion to its logical end? I tell you, we must embrace the brevity of life! Not celebrate it, mind you, but know deep within that this is it, and we must then do with it all that we may in our brief dance. Memento mori…. So carpe diem the heck out of each day.

    • Discipline and Delight

      “Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.”

      The quote above is attributed to Abraham Lincoln. I won’t spiral down the rabbit hole debating whether that’s true or not while the truth lies there awaiting attention. The truth of the matter is that we humans often wrestle with short term pleasure versus long term rewards. Our days are each some version of that famous marshmallow experiment in which we must choose between gobbling up the treat right in front of us or abstain for a future reward of twice the treats. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, right? Most people choose the treat in front of them.

      The choice isn’t really about whether to choose discipline over delight, but whether to choose to delight in a long term over a short term pleasure. Every temptation offers its version of “pay me now or pay me later”. Indulge in that ice cream now, just don’t complain about the pants being too tight later. Washboard abs may (or may not) be worth the price of saying no right now when our taste buds are screaming “Yes!”

      Constantly deferring one’s desires is a recipe for a dull life. It may be okay to say yes to that treat now, if we remember that there is some price for it right down the road that we must pay. Life isn’t a freeway: There’s always a toll. We ought to be happy to pay it if we really want something.

      There’s a story we tell ourselves about who we are and who we will become. Is what we want now consistent with that storyline or drawing us off the path? Should we be on that path in the first place? Decide what to be and go be it.

    • Delight Is in the Details

      “The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.” — William Morris

      Our level of interest in the details of life dictates how much we get out of it, and yes, how much we are delighted in the living of it. Case in point, I am as interested in the proper capitalization of the title of this blog post as I am with the view out the window I find myself next to as I write this near a bay alive with choppy fetch, bouncing boats and hunting birds soaring above.

      Why should we care about every little detail? Because it’s the stuff of life! More precisely, the stuff of our life. This, friend, is it. And making something of it is our purpose. Indeed, the devil is in the details, so draw delight from the lot of them. That is the recipe for an expansive life.

      We are each collectors of days, with a stack of them making up our lifetime. Within each day in turn are a collection of moments and minutia that are the stuff of life. Paying more attention to that stuff allows us to appreciate all that we have or have held as uniquely ours. Gratitude and delight follow closely behind awareness of all that is.