Alexandersmap

    Tag: Aristotle

    • A Dash of Flavor

      If most of life is lived in a steady state of routine, we have the opportunity to add micro-bursts of exceptional living now and then to spice up this dish. Some people take that opportunity whenever a free moment comes along, some embrace routine for their entire journey. Bursts of unique experiences can be quite thrilling. Conversely, routine can be quite fulfilling. Who are we to judge which is best? Maybe the answer is a wee bit of both.

      A couple of senior sisters I know recently took an epic roadtrip from New England to Florida, stopping at bucket list historic sites along the way. These were places they’d always wanted to visit, but kept putting off to prioritize the routine things that came up in their lives. This trip was a burst of adventure that they’ll talk about for years to come. I hope they’re already planning their next adventure.

      I’ve come to terms with not selling everything and sailing around the world. Simply put, I have a lot to do right here and now that compels me to embrace some level of routine that reinforces the productive, creative soul I’ve decided to be. That doesn’t mean I’ve accepted blandness in my life diet. Every day offers the opportunity for more flavor than we’d otherwise consider. Add a dash.

      The rower in me knows how this goes. Most of the race is intense steady state, with a few bursts of all-out effort to pull ahead. You don’t win the race rowing steady state the entire way, nor can you sustain all-out effort for 2000 meters. You must be strategic in where you use your energy, ensuring that you don’t run out of gas before the finish (“fly and die”), while also reaching the end with an empty tank (thus, doing your best). A productive life has similar cadence.

      “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle (or was it Will Durant?)

      Surely, we can do more than we believe is possible in a day, let alone a lifetime. Another lesson from rowing was to just focus on the next stroke, and then the one after that. Dwelling on what is sustainable is a sure way of talking yourself out of doing anything at all. Still, we must use our power budget wisely. Micro-bursts of activity teach us what is possible, while offering a light at the end of the tunnel. Knowing we only have this brief time to do things, why not maximize the moment?

      We can’t have it all, but we can have a lot more than we give ourselves permission to go after in life. Spice up life with a burst of adventure now and then, for it’s good for the soul. It also informs us of what’s possible. Too much spice can ruin a dish, but not enough and it’s bland. There’s that line between chaos and order again, showing us that balance is the key. Just don’t confuse balance with timidity. Be bold.

    • The Practice of Living More

      I’ve become known in some circles as an avid traveler, but don’t think of myself that way. That’s comparison at work, both theirs and mine, fogging the lens of perspective. Wiping it clear, it’s more that I’m an aspiring traveler immersed in a busy life. That’s not quite the same thing, but better for me at this point in my life. Travel is a choice, and so is building a strong sense of place and contribution. We can have a healthy measure of each applying a little balance and flexibility, but we can’t have it all. What will we choose, knowing this?

      “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. — Aristotle

      Aristotle may have also observed that mediocrity is also built on repeatedly doing. We each get our stack of days to work with. Some choices are taken from us, some choices are hidden from us, but most of us in the modern western world have the agency to do with the bulk of our time what we would. Habitualizing excellence seems a prudent use of that time.

      The trick in living a life closer to excellence is in the repeatedly doing part. Arete, or excellence in life, is something to aspire to through our daily action. We pay penance to the gods we serve through our habits and applied effort. Put another way, through our practice:

      “When an activity becomes a practice, it shifts from something that you are doing at a point in time to an ongoing process of becoming.” — Brad Stulberg, The Practice of Groundedness

      The practice of daily living is ongoing, but with an expiration date we either reconcile ourselves with or distract ourselves from. Stoicism is holding on to that realization that this all ends one day and making the most of the time. How we live matters a great deal when we feel the urgency of an expiration date. Continuous improvement and living with intent are a prudent use of that urgency. The practice of living more means working to realize the things we aspire to, while savoring the life we’ve already built for ourselves.

    • Selective Watering

      “Research increasingly shows that what is important doesn’t necessarily get our attention, but what gets our attention becomes important. This mirrors a concept in ancient Buddhist psychology that is often referred to as selective watering. In short, the mind contains a diverse variety of seeds: joy, integrity, anger, jealousy, greed, love, delusion, creativity, and so on. Buddhist psychology taught that we should think of ourselves as gardeners and our presence and attention as nourishment for the seeds. The seeds that we water are the seeds that grow. The seeds that grow shape the kind of person we become. In other words, the quality of our presence—its intensity and where we choose to channel it—determines the quality of our lives.” — Brad Stulberg, The Practice of Groundedness

      We know intuitively to focus on what is important in our lives, but focus can be challenging in this hyper-distracting world. The thing is, most of that hyper-distraction is self-created. We layer on all manner of apps and channels on top of the minutes that matter, and each promises something more fascinating, perhaps, than the sometimes tedious business of becoming we’re currently engaged in. We simmer in the stew of our own distractions while time relentlessly boils away.

      The concept of selective watering is a lovely way to consider what gets to grow in our lives and what we ought to let wither away. Writing this blog every day is selective watering, and so is my long-standing choice to eliminate broadcast news from my information diet. For each of us, our days begin with a series of habits selectively watered over time. We reinforce our identity as we follow through on these habits or eliminate others. Likewise, the beliefs we have about others are based as much on the way we look at the world, our biases, as they are from the acts of another. The seeds that we water are the seeds that grow.

      Knowing this, we can quickly see the breadcrumbs that brought us to this place in our lives. We are what we’ve repeatedly done, to hijack Aristotle, and so here we are; all that and a bag of chips. Assessing our current state, we may love who we’ve become or find that shell rather hollow inside. Either is an incomplete assessment, for we remain a work in progress to the end of our days. And this is our call to action! Active living is deciding what happens next. We ought to be very selective in our watering.

    • Weaving a More Effective Life

      “Habit is a rope. We weave a thread every day, and eventually we can’t break it.” — Thomas Mann

      “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle

      This business of repeatedly doing is leading somewhere, with our destination highly dependent on what we repeatedly do. Such is the way. Mann’s observation rings true as well, for habits become nearly impossible to break once established. Each small choice is another thread—another resounding, audacious statement about who we want to be.

      Our natural inclination is to be a part of something. To build an identity around community or family. This can reinforce positive behavior, or amplify the worst in us. The choice isn’t always ours to decide which pond to swim in, but we may choose whether to keep treading above the surface or drift down into the muck on the bottom.

      When our identity is wrapped up in a community that is slowly drifting away, as people get older or recede from view towards other communities, we also choose how to react to that. People come and go. Our health and work and feelings about the world we live in change moment-to-moment. To be highly effective in life we ought to weave a thread of consistent activity that remains independent of the whims of fate. When the world unravels around us, and eventually it will feel that way for all of us, just how resilient are we?

      “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”— Viktor Frankl

      Life is constantly testing our mettle. We control so very little in the big scheme of things. Frankl’s famous observation reminds us that we do get to choose how we react. We have a say in what we might become in our brief dance with the universe in all its harsh indifference. We still might decide what to be and go be it.

    • Meaning Abides

      “Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.” — Henry David Thoreau

      “If you want to be happy, be.” – Leo Tolstoy

      “Happiness is transient, but meaning abides.” — James Hollis

      We are all in the process of becoming whatever it is we’ll evolve into next. Blogging documents much of my own becoming, along with a few reckless photos of myself that others insist on releasing into the wild. When you document everything, the documenter captures while seemingly avoiding capture. This is a fools game, everything documented speaks, if we listen and observe closely enough. The trick is to listen closely enough to ourselves.

      The three quotes above naturally clung to each other in the course of a few weeks of reading and writing and sorting out life as it comes to you. We must consider the way in which we spend our lives, for the routines and habits offer a path to meaning and, dare we say, happiness. We are what we repeatedly do, as Aristotle reminds us (For those keeping score that’s four quotes in one relatively brief blog post—just what has gotten into this writer??).

      Perspective, of course. And an inclination to write whatever damned way suits the moment, I suppose. But don’t let me stray too far off the point here. The point is, we must spend our days chipping away at the marble to reveal the secret masterpiece hidden within each of us. Like so many of those unfinished masterpieces you see in museums, we too may run out of time. No, that’s not right—we will certainly run out of time. But we must attempt to draw as much of ourselves out of that cold marble as we possible can before we reach the end of our runway and crash into the abyss.

      We must attempt that which speaks to us. Becoming means to come to a place—what will that place be? Let it be meaningful.

    • Eudaimonia: The Act of Living Well

      There’s an ancient Greek word, frequently associated with Aristotle, called eudaimonia. Aristotle meant it as living virtuously. It’s best translated in modern English not as “happiness”, but as “flourishing” or “living well”. Let’s face it, chasing happiness is a fools game (for happiness is an evasive and subjective pursuit, and without purpose, empty), but pursuing eudaimonia—living well—is a lifestyle choice. And it begins with knowing what living well means to you.

      The spirit of eudaimonia, going back to Aristotle, is to make the most of yourself in your short time here. That making the most of yourself business is what you and I have been chasing for a long time, isn’t it? To live virtuously, to flourish in the art of living, to learn and grow and travel and build something better of yourself. To be fit and vibrant and sharp as a tack. To be articulate and passionate and the eager student in this master class of living.

      We are all in the pursuit of eudaimonia, we just don’t use that particular word to describe our objective. Maybe we should. There’s another Greek word, Arete, meaning excellence, that comes to mind. If Arete is the ultimate goal, eudaimonia is the path to get us closer to it. We may never reach the former, but we can certainly flourish and live well and strive to maximize our potential. And isn’t that the point of living in the first place?