Alexandersmap

    Tag: Carpe Diem

    • 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.

    • Soundtrack Memories

      In the last few days, a trio of musicians have passed away. They say these things happen in threes, and there you go. Jimmy Buffett, Steve Harwell from Smash Mouth and Gary Wright all passed away within a couple of days of each other. Each is a part of our soundtrack in their own way, and certain songs remind us of special moments in our lives when it was playing. Memories are funny things, and songs, like scents, bring the past back in waves.

      Well, I think it’s time to get ready
      To realize just what I have found
      I have lived only half of what I am
      It’s all clear to me now
      My heart is on fire
      — Gary Wright, Love Is Alive

      There always seemed to be a Gary Wright song playing for awhile there. Especially Dream Weaver but Love is Alive wasn’t far behind. Together they’re an integral part of the life of anyone who listened to popular music in the 70’s. Gary was a musician on George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass album, which seems appropriate to bring up at the moment. We keep seeing examples of it, and our lesson is clear: Memento mori, friend. Carpe diem…

      So much to do, so much to see
      So what’s wrong with taking the back streets?
      You’ll never know if you don’t go
      You’ll never shine if you don’t glow
      Hey now, you’re an all star
      Get your game on, go play
      Hey now, you’re a rock star
      Get the show on, get paid
      And all that glitters is gold
      Only shooting stars break the mold
      — Smash Mouth, All Star

      Smash Mouth was a shooting star at a time when the entire music industry was swirling with exciting new music. I’ve often thought I’d use these lyrics one day, I just didn’t anticipate it would be at the death of their lead singer. The thing about shooting stars is that they burn out quickly. Harwell’s lifestyle apparently led to his early demise at 56. I know someone trying to kill themselves with alcohol and had a cousin who did. Alcohol can be a demon that grabs ahold of its victim and drags them down to depths unexpected when they start dancing with it. I feel for his family and friends.

      Most mysterious calling harbor
      So far but yet so near
      I can see the day when my hair’s full gray
      And I finally disappear
      — Jimmy Buffett, One Particular Harbor

      Jimmy Buffett had twenty years on Harwell, but it still felt like he passed way too soon. His impact on my own soundtrack is obvious, as I’ve inserted him into three blog posts in the three days since I heard that he’d passed away. Each of these musicians filled some part of our lives, and by extension the lives of those who live on the periphery and catch the tune as they’re making their own memories. Music and memories are viral in that way. The music lives on, as we all say, but the world feels a bit emptier today than it did just a few days ago. Each of them filled the world with song. Doesn’t it fall on us to pick up where they left off?

    • The Right Time

      I spent a lifetime
      Waiting for the right time
      Now that you’re near
      The time is here, at last
      It’s now or never
      Come hold me tight
      Kiss me my darling
      Be mine tonight
      — Elvis Presley, It’s Now or Never

      What is your five year plan? Do you have one? Or should we simply live in the moment? Is there purpose in the moment or only intent? Intent can cause all kinds of problems if it conflicts with purpose. Some say that five years is too long a period of time, entire cultures (looking at you, Japan) may think it too limited a scope. A long view is seeing the forest for the trees and setting the compass heading, while a short view is the immediacy of successfully executing this next step. It’s equally fair to say that we must know our general direction or we’ll walk in circles as it is to say it doesn’t matter where we were heading if we stumble and fall off the cliff.

      The lens of a lifetime is simply too broad a focus because there are only so many things we can focus on at any given time. Given this, it’s better to set auto-pilot whenever possible so we can get back to the business of now. 401(k) plans are helpful because you set it and forget it. We can say the same about healthy lifetime habits like exercise and flossing. Such tasks are best left to auto-pilot, but we can’t very well live our life on auto-pilot, for one day we’ll look around and find we’ve missed everything that mattered.

      Using the lens of time buckets becomes a way of understanding what our priorities ought to be in this particular phase of our lives. We only have so many years to do physical things, only so many years to be a parent, only so many primary earning years… it all adds up to a lifetime of only so many years. Within that lens of time buckets, our reason for being, raison d’etre, becomes more focused. Asking big questions about the entirety of our lives is impossible to answer, because we change so much over our lifetime. My raison d’etre at 20 was entirely different from my raison d’etre at 40. Looking ahead to someday 60 or 80 (if we’re so bold as to believe we’ll reach it), you see the reason changing dramatically over and over again. Sure, family and friendships will matter at any age, but a purposeful hike of the Appalachian Trail is rapidly shrinking down in relevance. It’s fair to say it’s now or never for such a life goal.

      Waiting for the right time seems counterintuitive when we become hyper aware of our own mortality. Memento mori naturally leads to carpe diem, doesn’t it? It turns out it mostly doesn’t. Most people just live their lives as best they can. We can’t do everything, but we can surely try to do the most important things within the context of the time bucket we’re currently residing in. The time is always here for something. Prioritizing the really essential things for this time lends focus and urgency to the moment, enabling us to seize the day.

    • Searching for the Marvelous

      “Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension.
      But I am not always in what I call a state of grace. I have days of illuminations and fevers. I have days when the music in my head stops. Then I mend socks, prune trees, can fruits, polish furniture. But while I am doing this I feel I am not living.” — Anais Nin

      “The secret of a full life is to live and and be open to others as if tomorrow they might not be there as if you might not be there. This eliminates the vice of procrastination, the sin of putting things off, the missed communions.” — Anais Nin

      I’m often accused of talking to everyone—this is often true—for in each of us there’s a story worth discovering. Every now and then you discover magic, sparked by interest. These are the high moments I believe Anais Nin was seeking as well. She seemed a woman I’d have loved to have met. Forget for a moment her fame for writing erotica, she just seemed so damned interesting. We must each find the fascinating things about living and bring it to the world. When you meet someone equally compelled to discover, the space between us erupts in wonder. You don’t have to take your clothes off for that to happen.

      There are moments when I feel the infinite meaning, when I feel the marvelous. You sense these things all around you when you’re attuned to discovery. It might be something as exhilarating as travel or as commonplace as gardening: I’ve found it in waterfalls deep in the forest and in the crashing surf seen from high on a cliffside trail in western Portugal. These are to be expected, and the compelling reason why we seek out such places. But I’ve also found it hiding in plain sight in my backyard garden, in the scent of tomato vines on a hot summer day. It’s all around you when you look for it.

      The trick is to be open to experiences. Find possibility in the circumstance we’ve stumbled into. These occasions are fleeting at best, and gone in an instant. To be fully alive is to tune in to everything around us and savor its sweetness in its season. For this is also our season, and we may never pass this way again. Carpe diem. Let’s not waste another moment.

    • Being Frugal With Sand

      When the goal is to seize the day—Carpe diem— then being busy is the natural state. To do everything we wish to do in a lifetime requires our full attention. But the thing about attention is it is quickly stolen away by all of life’s distractions. Focus is thus essential to prioritizing the most important things. We know when we’re being pulled away from the meaningful and important, and when we’re deeply immersed in it. What we lean into makes all the difference in how we feel about those grains of sand moving through the hourglass.

      There’s no doubt that one kind of “being busy” can be viewed as a distraction from other things we ought to be tackling. But there’s also a kind of “being busy” that is living an active, meaningful life. One key indicator is the phrase itself: When we say we’re very busy, it’s usually the distracted kind of busy. When we’re deeply engaged in meaningful activity, we don’t think of ourselves as being busy so much as making the most of our time.

      Taking stock of the year as we close in on the halfway point, we might be amazed by all we’ve done with the time. I hope so, for isn’t that the point? To augment our days with joyful activity at the expense of all of the trivial pursuits that the universe throws at us has always been our underlying mission.

      It’s one thing to be aware, it’s another to be absorbed by the trivial. How many grains of sand would we trade for things that don’t matter in the end? We must be frugal, even as we must be active. Our lives depend on it.