Alexandersmap

    Tag: Carpe Diem

    • People, Pets and Places

      “Don’t be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.” — Bertolt Brecht

      “It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” — Marcus Aurelius

      Recently, a colleague from overseas asked for some advice on where to go and what to do for a weekend in Boston. Answering this question is both easy and challenging. Oftentimes we are so caught up in the familiar routine that we forget to explore the things that make a place special. Go to the museums, take a walk through the Public Garden or the Esplanade, and definitely try the oysters, I told her, but it reminded me that I ought to take my own advice and step off the usual loop more often myself.

      If we crave anything in our average days, it’s more boldness. But to be bold in the face of an abundance of adequate choices a good life throws our way seems ungrateful—when life is good, why be so audacious as to turn it upside down? Does taco Tuesday really ever get old? Only when we question it. At that moment, we realize there can be more to a random weekday than the same thing we had last Tuesday.

      One might think taking the dog for a walk is mundane. I beg to differ! Every walk with a dog is a perspective changing event. Lately we’ve been walking the dog in a new place every weekend. Different beaches, woodland walks, rail trails. Every place is different for the dog, and different for us when viewed through the eyes and nose of an eager pup. In every walk we experience something new ourselves, and expand our lives in the process. It’s why we opted to adopt a rescue dog in the first place, because life is larger when we wrap more people, pets and places around ourselves.

      When viewed through the lens of a brief life, our choices in the everyday feel more essential. We can’t celebrate wine o’clock all day without flushing our vitality down the drain, but we can surely seek out the exclamation point in an otherwise mundane moment. Try a different walk or visit that museum we recommend to others but never seem to get to ourselves. Maybe even skip the tacos for once and try a donburi bowl. Sure, it’s not as alliterative, but it offers a whole new taste for Tuesday. The whole world awaits the adventurous spirits who venture out into it. So be bold in those choices today.

    • Hopeful Endeavors

      “Hours are like diamonds, don’t let them waste” — The Rolling Stones, Time Waits for No One

      “Remember that your real wealth can be measured not by what you have, but by what you are.”
      ― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

      I sat with this blog post a beat longer, deciding for just a moment to finally stop using this particular time to write and instead do something else with it. It’s an eternal theme of where and when to use one’s time. Who’s to say this is the best use of either of ours, dear reader? Yet it could surely be used in worse ways. How do we spend the wealth of our precious time? Surely, time waits for no one, and it won’t wait for me… or thee.

      The answer, I believe, is to spend our time becoming. When becoming we are investing in a future self that is somehow better than the current version, assuring something of a better future. Investing is a hopeful endeavor in ourselves. It’s fair to then ask ourselves, what are we doing with our hours, and will spending them doing this improve my lot? To throw away time is one of the greatest of sins against the self, isn’t it? Yet we all do it.

      Looking back on the breadcrumbs that trace my journey to here, I see who I am and who I once was. I’ve become a better version of myself than the character I was then. But I am by no means a finished product. No, I’m a work in progress just as you are. We may be hopeful in our endeavor to become something greater than who we are now, even as we recognize that some things are best left in the past. We aren’t getting any younger, but we may still find hope in our personal growth, whatever that means to us.

    • A New Day

      “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

      Emerson wrote a version of this quote as advice to his daughter in a letter. Over time it evolved into this bite-sized quote that makes the rounds in our sound bite world. It’s a lesson for the writer, for our long form thoughts will eventually be boiled down to their very essence by the reader (if we’re bold enough to assume we’ll be referenced at all). Life is short: get to the point.

      The older I get, the less I worry about blunders and absurdities. We’re simply humans doing our best in a complex, hurried and harried world. Try as I may, I still post blogs that are incomplete, with typos or words that clearly don’t belong in the sentence. If I catch it the same day I’ll fix it, but plenty of older posts have mistakes that will linger for as long as this platform exists. So it goes.

      Today is a new day, full of possible adventure and meaningful leaps forward on our quest to become what’s next. It’s possible there might be a blunder or two along the way. Most every one of them can be an opportunity to laugh at the situation and get right back to living a bold life. The only real choice is to get out in the world and see what’s possible. We must be zealous when we’re writing our own history. Someday when we’re gone we’ll be summarized in a few concise words as well. What are we writing for those who will remember us? Carpe diem, friend.

    • Keeping the Old at Bay

      And I knew all of my life
      That someday it would end
      Get up and go outside
      Don’t let the old man in
      Many moons I have lived
      My body’s weathered and worn
      Ask yourself how would you be
      If you didn’t know the day you were born
      Try to love on your wife
      And stay close to your friends
      Toast each sundown with wine
      Don’t let the old man in
      — Toby Keith, Don’t Let the Old Man In

      I haven’t been a skating exhibition in years. Why would I? I didn’t know any active figure skaters, or at least I didn’t know I knew any active figure skaters. It turns out I did know one, and so we went to watch her skate last night. What I saw was women and men of all ages skating in synchronized acts of skill and grace. No Olympic-style jumps at this event, just large groups of people gliding across the ice not hitting each other. I was likely the person in the arena with the least knowledge of the sport and found it enjoyably unique. It turns out you don’t have to travel to faraway places to place yourself in an environment foreign to you—just step into someone else’s world for a few hours.

      We’re all getting older, friend. Given that reality, we must keep the old at bay. Do things that challenge the mind and body and spirit. Stretch in new directions while we’re limber enough to reach without injuring ourselves. Take Thoreau’s advice and rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventure. We aren’t getting any younger than this. Toby Keith, whispers his lyrics from the grave: Someday it will end. Memento mori. So don’t let the old man in.

      You can laugh when your dreams
      Fall apart at the seams
      And life gets more exciting
      With each passing day
      And love is either in your heart
      Or on it’s way
      — Frank Sinatra (Carolyn Leigh/Johnny Richards), Young at Heart

      They say that people who retire early age quicker than those who work well into their senior years. I say it’s not about the work, it’s about having a reason to get out of bed in the morning. What stirs the imagination? We ought to be leaping out of bed to go do that. Stack new experiences one atop the other and see where it takes us. Get off the phone, step away from the computer screen and dance with the world.

      Sure, we all have obligations and responsibilities. We have deadlines and commitments. Just now I got a notification to check in for a business flight. The work seemingly never stops, but if we aren’t careful we won’t notice our best years have slipped away without doing those things we most want to do. Watching those people skate around on the ice, some of them old enough to be the grandparents of some skaters who preceded them, was a great reminder to get up and get out there. Carpe diem.

    • Words That Will Last

      Now I’m a reader of the night sky
      And a singer of inordinate tunes
      That’s how I float across time, living way past my prime
      Like a long lost baby’s balloon
      So I hang on to the string, work that whole gravity thing
      But when my space ship goes pop, back to the earth I will drop
      Into the sea, or the limbs of a tree
      Or the wings of my love
      And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do
      Maybe invent me a story or two
      I’ve got coastal confessions to make
      How ’bout you, how ’bout you?
      They say that time is like a river
      And stories are the key to the past
      But now I’m stuck in-between here at my typing machine
      Trying to come up with some words that will last
      It’s so easy to see that we live history
      And if I just find the beat, I know I’ll land on my feet
      I always do, hadn’t got a clue
      Does it come from above?
      — Jimmy Buffett, Coastal Confessions

      On those occasions where I debate the merit of Jimmy Buffett to the catalog of great lyricists, I generally point to Coastal Confessions or A Pirate Looks at 40 as examples of a writer tapping into magic. As a person trying to tap into magic now and then myself, I appreciate a great poem disguised as song. We’re all trying to find words that will last a beat longer than the average sound bite, aren’t we?

      Lately I’m caught up in refining my habits and routines, that I might be more efficient and such. This betrays a desire to do work that matters with the urgency of a quarterback who’s seen that this game is all about clock management. We can be the most brilliant player on the field and it won’t matter a lick if we run out of time before we complete the drive. The thing is, even when we do everything perfectly, sometimes the kick goes wide right. The universe has its own say in how things play out. Memento mori, Carpe diem. Amor fati.

      This blog remains a line of breadcrumbs between where I started and where I am today. The path ahead is only hinted at. Breadcrumbs have a way of being swallowed up in time. I’m not naive enough to believe any of these words will last as they are published. In the end, it’s the ripple, not the splash that lingers. A splash is immediate, the ripple may touch people who were never aware there was a splash at all. The thing is, the world is full of people trying to make a bigger splash than everyone else. That leads to a confused sea state, with ripples coming from all directions. Best to set our own course and invite others along for the ride. I’ve set my own course for the coast of somewhere beautiful.

      Speaking of confused sea states, I’ve just lumped a few analogies into one short blog post. What else is new? Some of these themes have repeated over and over again. That’s inevitable with a couple of thousand blog posts, but it’s mostly just me reminding myself to keep going with it. The story is still being written, after all. We can’t control the result but we can manage the clock a bit, and discover that we love the game.

    • Time Will Have His Fancy

      ‘The years shall run like rabbits,
      For in my arms I hold
      The Flower of the Ages,
      And the first love of the world.’
      But all the clocks in the city
      Began to whirr and chime:
      ‘O let not Time deceive you,
      You cannot conquer Time.
      ‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
      Where Justice naked is,
      Time watches from the shadow
      And coughs when you would kiss.
      ‘In headaches and in worry
      Vaguely life leaks away,
      And Time will have his fancy
      To-morrow or to-day.
      — W.H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening

      January seems to be the time for planning out the year in neat blocks of time, priorities and action steps. It’s fairly easy work to define what must be done, it’s harder to actually do it. The execution of a plan is always the trick, isn’t it? Yet broken down into small enough steps, we somehow find the task more manageable. It seems there’s always enough time for the things that matter most, should we build our lives around our priorities. But time has other plans for us, should we lose our way.

      Lately in my work I talk a lot of urgency. We ought to feel it in our bones, and do something about it now. It’s cliché for a reason, for it matters a great deal in said execution of plan. It’s a call to arms, really—a reminder that time flies and the wishes of today are the regrets of tomorrow. We must therefore seize what flees, as our old friend Seneca reminded us.

      Later in Auden’s magical poem, he writes of wondering what we’ve missed. Wrestling with the eternal, we realize that we are not. We are but a moment’s sunlight, fading in the grass, as Chet Powers wrote and The Youngbloods made famous. It’s an unfair practice to dwell on that which has slipped from our grasp if we use the tally to embrace a helpless state of low agency, but when we use these moments to learn to be bolder in our choices now they may be just the catalyst we need. Feel the urgency yet? Carpe diem, friend. Tempus fugit.

      All this is nothing but a stack of words until we do something with our time. Be bold. Be audacious. Decide what to be and go be it. Today will slip away just as all the rest have. Yet we may still do something with the hour at hand.

    • Pick Your Moment

      “Pick your moment and the sea will do what it can for you, however small the boat and however unpracticed the helm. The wind was steady on the beam, and as it says in the old Gaelic song, it felt as if Freyja ‘would cut a thin oat straw with the excellence of her going.’

      This moment of ecstatic ease is the significant historical fact. Anywhere that can be reached on a calm day will be reached. What matters is the invitation, not the threat, and if there is an opening, people will take it…

      The peopling of the Shiants is only one fragment of an endless chain. That is why this crossing of a potentially alarming sea, at a moment which is picked because the weather is kind and the spring is coming, because the tide is running with you and the sun is out, when you can see where you are going and you have everything you need, is one of the deepest of all historical experiences. Don’t imagine the past as a place full of catastrophe and horror. This is its colour: a chance fairly taken, a sense of happiness in the light of spring. The Minch is laced with the wakes of ancestors and this wonderful, easy-limbed stirring of Freyja on the long Atlantic swell is a stirring of the past. I smile in the boat now and open my face to the warmth of the sun and the shining of the sky.” — Adam Nicolson, Sea Room

      “While you see a chance, take it.” — Steve Winwood

      When shall we leap? When is that moment when we look around and say, “It’s now or never” and go beyond our norm? We each have these moments in our lives when we see the gap and decide it’s not all that far of a leap after all. Perhaps we’ve closed it with growth. Perhaps we’ve built a strong enough foundation that it’s not so much a leap as it is a natural next step. Perhaps. But there’s still that gap… until finally we close it. Or perhaps we reach our limit, never to be closed. What will it be?

      The breathtaking beauty of Nicolson’s prose was masterfully set up in story-after-story of tragedy at sea. Of “the Stream of the Blue Men” that is the unpredictable and unforgiving Minch sinking boats and taking the lives of leapers for centuries before. We know of places like this—places that will take the lives of the unprepared and unlucky alike. Mountains and oceans, whole continents full of wild things. Flight and now space. Frontiers are meant to be conquered, as they say. The gap between who we are and what we’ll become are meant to be closed. What matters is the invitation, not the threat. This is the way we progress. Just pick your moment.

      But don’t wait forever. The gap is our game, but the clock is our nemesis. We aren’t getting any younger, friend. Tempus fugit: carpe diem. We ought to leap when the leaping looks good.

    • The Audacity to Give It a Go

      I want a life measured
      in first steps on foreign soils
      and deep breaths
      in brand new seas
      I want a life measured
      in Welcome Signs,
      each stamped
      with a different name,
      borders marked with metal and paint.
      Show me the streets
      that don’t know the music
      of my meandering feet,
      and I will play their song
      upon them.
      Perfume me please
      in the smells of far away,
      I will never wash my hair
      if it promises to stay.
      I want a life measured
      in the places I haven’t gone,
      short sleeps on long flights,
      strange voices teaching me
      new words to
      describe the dawn.
      — Tyler Knott Gregson, I Want a Life Measured

      I’ve gotten out of the habit of traveling on a whim to whatever comes of the search, “waterfall near me” and “historical site near me”. Lately I’ve been tied to the desk more, with the puppy guarding me awaiting any indication that it’s time to go out and play. The thing is, shouldn’t it always be time to go out and play? We ought to build more adventures into our days.

      Yesterday, I had the beginnings of such an adventure, finding a trailhead near a meeting I was attending. Near a place I’d been a hundred times and never heard the whisper for the din of highway traffic and places to go. A trailhead that promised waterfalls and crisp, slippery December walking. I wore the appropriate footwear and got myself to the trailhead hoping to see at least one of the two waterfalls on the trail. I ran out of time and saw neither, but got a quick hike in anyway. I’ll consider it recon for the next time I’m in the area. Adventures partially fulfilled are better than no adventure at all. The audacity to give it a go is itself a measure of a larger life.

      What stirs us? Reaching the waterfall or the act of reaching out for it? Surely both, but any adventure begins with beginning. When we seek out more adventure in our lives, we generally find it. Every step out into it is an invitation to go further still. And even on those days when we have to turn back towards what is expected of us, the conspiracy of the adventurous spirit remains, whispering “try again another day”.

    • 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.

    • Adding Treasure

      “Why be saddled with this thing called life expectancy? Of what relevance to an individual is such a statistic? Am I to concern myself with an allotment of days I never had and was never promised? Must I check off each day of my life as if I am subtracting from this imaginary hoard? No, on the contrary, I will add each day of my life to my treasure of days lived. And with each day, my treasure will grow, not diminish.” ― Robert Brault

      I took a walk with the pup late last night, hoping to see the Geminid meteor shower. Most magic in the sky is inevitably obscured by cloud cover, so when we’re lucky enough to have a crisp, clear sky and a meteor shower we ought to get out the witness it. It proved to be a walk filled with exclamation points punctuating the celestial dance. Like days, every walk is different. A few are special.

      We ought to seek out that specialness in every day. It’s likely hiding in plain sight. As with everything life-amplifying, a bit of awareness surely helps. Knowing the Geminids were happening got me out of a warm house on a cold evening at a time when I’m usually fast asleep. Likewise, a bit of research before traveling to a new place nets all kinds of treasures worthy of a side trip, treasures that will whisper to us in the quiet moments until we experience them, and then whisper delightfully forever after: “We really got to experience that!”

      Awareness is essential, but so is engagement; we ought to talk to the people sitting next to us, we ought to find the local scenic vistas, we ought to dance when the music kicks up a notch. and yes, we ought to miss out on a bit of comfort now and then to try bold things. The time will flow right by either way—shouldn’t we do something more with it?

      “Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.” – Henry David Thoreau

      The mindset of steadily adding memories instead of subtracting days is a wonderful way to filter exactly what we’re going to do with this day at hand. We can’t possibly stop the flow of sand through the hourglass, so maybe taking a walk on the beach and forgetting about that hourglass altogether is our best move. When we steadily accumulate magic in our moments life becomes something memorable. Go be deliberate and adventurous—for that’s where the treasure is.