Alexandersmap

    Tag: Carpe Diem

    • 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.

    • Eyes Open

      “There seemed to be endless obstacles preventing me from living with my eyes open, but as I gradually followed up clue after clue it seemed that the root cause of them all was fear.”
      ― Marion Milner, A Life of One’s Own

      When we think about it, most everything we imagine to be the worst case scenario is never going to come true. For every tragedy in the news, there’s a million ordinary days unfolding at the same time. For every unfortunate accident on the path to adventure there’s a thousand souls transcending their limiting beliefs. To live in fear is to handcuff ourselves to a previous version of ourself that will never experience everything the world could offer. Choose to be more audacious.

      The thing is, we all keep paying our dues, deferring the audacious for one more day of ordinary. The end game is we’ll run out of time if we don’t do it while we’re healthy and bold enough to try. In the end, that’s what we ought to fear: running out of time to finally live that un-lived life. While there’s still time. We must open our eyes and see the truth in those old Stoic guideposts: Tempus fugit. Memento mori… Carpe diem.

      There’s still plenty of ordinary in my days, and in moderation that’s okay too, but we ought to listen to that voice inside us calling for more and step to it more often. Friends and fellow bloggers Fayaway once posted an image that speaks to this wrestling match between the ears. I’ve kept this as a reminder to myself to push aside timidity more often in favor of boldness. To live a full life we must learn to fully live life:

    • A Dream Won’t Chase You Back

      If you got a chance, take it, take it while you got a chance
      If you got a dream, chase it, ’cause a dream won’t chase you back
      If you’re gonna love somebody
      Hold ’em as long and as strong and as close as you can
      ‘Til you can’t
      — Cody Johnson, ‘Til You Can’t

      In America, this week is always distracting. There are so many moving parts before Thanksgiving: Ingredients to purchase and prepare, people to check in with traveling from near and far, furniture to plot out in anticipation of rooms filled to capacity, cleaning (so much cleaning!), and for some of us, work to reconcile before the holiday break. This week is a hectic, wonderfully stressful mess that some of us love more than any other in a year full of blessed weeks.

      We build the life we most want, don’t we? But we can’t control everything, we must be open to the changes the universe presents to us. Who won’t be at the table this year who was there last year? Who won’t be at next year’s table? It might just be us. The underlying message is to do what must be done now. That could be rightly viewed as the overall theme of this blog for most of the last five years. Tempus fugit. Memento mori. Carpe diem.

      Most of us postpone the call or the question or simply beginning what is so much more important than what we’re doing otherwise. Most of us waste time. Henry had some advice for such moments:

      As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
      The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
      — Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      We ought to feel the urgency of Thanksgiving every week. Perhaps we’d be exhausted and collapse on the couch eventually, but then again, perhaps we’d condition ourselves to living a larger life—full of love and a wee bit of conflict, anticipation and conversation, and something sweet to cap it all off with before you clean up yet again and look ahead to the next big thing. We aren’t here to kill time, we’re here to make the most of our time together before we lose our place at the table. By all means, seize it (because it won’t chase you back)!

    • Break Up the Habitual

      “We need habit to get through a day, to get to work, to feed our children. But habit is dangerous too. The act of seeing can quickly become unconscious and automatic. The eyes see something—gray-brown bark, say, fissured into broad, vertical plates—and the brain spits out tree trunk and the eye moves on. But did I really take the time to see the tree? I glimpse hazel hair, high cheekbones, a field of freckles and I think Shawna. But did I take the time to see my wife?
      ... The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes. This is true of chocolate and marriages and hometowns and narrative structures. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we’re not careful, pretty soon we’re gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack.
      … I open my journal and stare out at the trunk of the umbrella pine and do my best to fight off the atrophy that comes from seeing things too frequently. I try to shape a few sentences around this tiny corner of Rome; I try to force my eye to slow down. A good journal entry—like a good song, or sketch, or photograph—ought to break up the habitual and lift away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought to be a love letter to the world.
      Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.”
      — Anthony Doerr, Four Seasons in Rome

      A long quote, but honestly I could plug the entire chapter of this delightful book in here and call it a day. This is a song I know well. We are creatures of habit, and a good habit will save us as much as a bad habit may be our ruin, but this often puts us on autopilot with our senses. There’s a fine line between being fully aware and being overwhelmed. A bit of focus on the task at hand is just as essential as being aware of everything around us. Situation awareness can quite literally save the day for us, but awareness of every situation can make us completely useless.

      Still, so many of us miss the details for the routine. How much of a drive do we ever remember? What of the miracle of commercial flight? Most people simply resign themselves to the screen in front of them for the duration, never glancing out the window at the world of wonder just outside. What of home? Do we ever immerse ourselves in something we once gazed at lovingly, like that picture we once cherished and now barely see? How many marriages end in just such a way?

      We know the Latin phrase: “tempus fugit carpe diem” (time flies so seize the day). Seizing isn’t just an action statement to go out and do bold things, though surely that’s a big part of it. It also means being fully aware of the world around us while we’re living this day. Well before the Romans began creating such memorable phrases, that old Greek sage Seneca had his own take on this, saying “As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all, and make it your own possession. We must seize what flees.” Indeed we must.

      Doerr seized his day moving to Rome for a year, grabbing the opportunity of a lifetime just as he and his wife were navigating the challenge of raising newborn twins. That’s quite a one-two punch to anyone’s routine. His call to leave the familiar comes from his own experience in doing just so. But even under such extreme change in his and his wife’s lifestyle, he found routine he had to break through to find full awareness. What of us?

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

      At a party of the weekend I was introduced to someone as “a blogger” and was asked what I write about. I write about everything, I explained, but didn’t go much deeper out of… habit. We rise to meet our moments or we simply go through them. Writing is a form of heightened awareness of the moment. So is photography, for that matter. I tend to be the unofficial photographer at family events and during travel because I see opportunities either to capture or create the moment. In the end, moments are all we have.

      This blog is a call to arms for myself as much as it is a collection of observations and thoughts. Tempus fugit, sir, so carpe diem. Pay attention to the moment, friend, but do note the days gone by on this journey too. We waste so much of it, don’t we? We must be aware, and be productive with our days while we have them. Make each day new all over again.

    • Every Leaf is a Flower

      “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” ― Albert Camus

      Today is one of those foggy mornings I especially love in autumn, when the colors of the trees become mystical in their oranges and reds and yellows, muted by the mist but not to be denied. We could learn a thing or two from the autumn leaves about the urgency of the moment. Here we are at the peak of our brilliance: time to shine! Carpe diem indeed.

      For every valley there is a peak, but we forget sometimes that valleys are where forests and gardens thrive. Valleys are where the timeless rivers flow. Valleys can be beautiful too. To spend our days celebrating the beauty of the season we’re in seems the only way to navigate the changes a lifetime brings.

      The question of whether we have peaked ourselves sometimes crosses our minds, but the garden is a good reminder that there are many peaks in a lifetime. Simply persist through the decline of one and embrace the next ascent. A bit of fog now and then matters little in a lifetime of love and growth.

    • In September

      I saw you standing with the wind and the rain in your face
      And you were thinking ’bout the wisdom of the leaves and their grace
      When the leaves come falling down
      In September when the leaves, come falling down
      — Van Morrison, When the Leaves Come Falling Down

      The puppy is having her first autumn, and in New Hampshire no less. She’s entered a place of magic and grace, playing for a short time only, beginning with the last of the harvest and ending with the chill of Halloween. These are the days. She spends them chasing squirrels and the falling leaves. I spend them seeing the world with a new perspective once again.

      Life is change. Autumn offers change in abundance. We dance with it or go about our business as always, but we ignore it at our peril. Blink and you miss it, as they say. That goes equally well for the years flying by as it does for the foliage. The peak in most of New Hampshire is in early October, before things brown out and the leaves come falling down. The season is over before we know it, so don’t blink: step out into the world fully aware of the gift.

      Our own seasons are playing out as well. We must celebrate the days as they greet us, forever embracing our place in the world. Puppies awaken with a zest for life, and shouldn’t we too? The leaves whisper their advice as they return to the earth: dance with our season of magic. Carpe diem.

    • Nothing Gold Can Stay

      Nature’s first green is gold,
      Her hardest hue to hold.
      Her early leaf’s a flower;
      But only so an hour.
      Then leaf subsides to leaf.
      So Eden sank to grief,
      So dawn goes down to day.
      Nothing gold can stay.
      — Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay

      Halfway through another month as I publish this, and I shake my head at the magic I’ve missed doing other things. But there are always other things. We do what we can with the time we’re given.

      Memento mori is a statement of freedom. When we understand that we have an expiration date, we go out and live our lives uniquely focused. Carpe diem. There should be nothing more to it than this.

      And yet there are things out of our control that must be addressed as they hit us squarely. Life is an ongoing reality check. The world is not perfect, there are storms brewing, and no matter how well we plan the party sometimes it just rains. Amor fati: Love of fate. As The Police reminded us in a song, “when the world is runnin’ down, you make the best of what’s still around”.

      But this is the deal we made entering this world: We are young and vibrant for just so long. We grow and become what we can in our season and then we hand the reigns in the next season. Nothing gold can stay.

      There is freedom in knowing the truth. It’s a calling that we answer every day. To live with urgency and purpose, gratitude and joyfulness. This is our poem. This is our song. This is our life.