Alexandersmap

    Tag: Carpe Diem

    • Measured in Inches

      “Question yourself every day. Ask yourself: Who am I? What have I learned? What have I created? What forward progress have I made? Who have I helped? What am I doing to improve myself—today? To get better, faster, stronger, healthier, smarter?”
      ― Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual

      Nothing like a bit of Jocko to smack us back into focus now and then. But really, we ought to be accountable to ourselves every day without the assist. We are our own creation, like it or not, and who we are is based on how we react to the world when we wake up each day. Get up and get to work or stay under those comfy covers—the choice is ours.

      We’re two days from Halloween, and the sheer ubiquity of chocolate is testing my willpower. I’m a little too casual with the carbs lately too. As the weather gets cooler and the nights get longer, it’s easy to eat a bit more, sleep more, ride the couch with a snack and something to wash it down with. We are what we repeatedly do.

      Excellence, then, is a habit. It’s discipline and doing what we promised we’d do, again and again until we’ve done that thing. Sneaking Socrates quotes in is an old trick, and I know you’ve seen that one before. The point is, we can’t let up now when there’s so much more to be done. Shake it off and get to work already.

      “Nothing is going to change, unless someone does something soon.” — Dr. Seuss

      So do something. Now. Today anyway. Something that moves the chains towards the goal. Something that takes this inclination for comfort and ease and turns it into sweat equity. Discipline equals freedom from those pesky inclinations. Personal excellence, our old friend Arete, is not for the undisciplined excuse-makers. We inch towards our potential through self-accountability, rigid routines and hard work. Does that sound fun? No? That’s why it’s hard.

      The world already has plenty of people who don’t want to do much of anything. To have the audacity to dream of excellence requires more than big talk, we have to navigate the excuses that will inevitably get in the way with every step. But we know that, don’t we? So get to it already! Today is well underway, and tomorrow is too late. Progress is measured in inches, and so is comfort. The choice is ours.

    • October Skies

      Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondance
      With the stars up above in your eyes
      A fantabulous night to make romance
      ‘Neath the cover of October skies
      And all the leaves on the trees are fallin’
      To the sound of the breezes that blow
      And I’m trying to please to the callin’
      Of your heart strings that play soft and low
      — Van Morrison, Moondance

      The October sky in New England is a wonderful thing. Sunrises and sunsets are full of color that somehow match the foliage as it peaks. There is a crescendo when all of the colors are most vibrant and then it all seems to fade away. And so we ought to put ourselves in the way of beauty, just as Cheryl Strayed’s mother suggested. We are either there for it or we aren’t.

      It all goes so quickly. Autumn foliage sprinkles us with magic and all too soon fades and returns to the earth. Blink and we miss it. The lesson is to get out and see what we can while the opportunity presents itself. And we know that the lesson applies well beyond leaves.

      Tempus fugit. Time flies. Dare to use our time, or risk losing it. Every day may be a love affair with life. As with any love, life will only offer to us what we put into it. It’s up to us to notice the details. We may choose to play an active role in the chores that make each day meaningful and productive. We may dare to ask ourselves in those moments of hopeful scheming, how may we extend this magic just a little longer?

    • Fear (The Little Death)

      “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” — Frank Herbert, Dune

      Fear seems to be popping up a lot in my world lately. Not because I’m afraid so much as the idea of it comes up all the time. We know that once we notice something we see it everywhere. Well, fear was noticed, and here we are.

      What are we afraid of anyway? Death? Memento mori. Whether we’re afraid or not, we will all die anyway. Failure? Life is one failure after another. But it’s also one success after another. Need an example? We all woke up today. Call it a win.

      The thing is, most fear that holds us back from doing something is a dream dying on the vine. String enough dead dreams together and we’ve wasted our lives. Ignore enough fears and maybe we reach summits we’d hardly dare to dream of they seemed so audacious.

      We’re wounded by fear
      Injured in doubt
      I can lose myself
      You I can’t live without
      — U2, Red Hill Mining Town

      What is so important to us that we feel the fear and do it anyway? What is worthy of our courage now? What are we waiting for? We know deep down that tomorrow is too late. Socrates told us that we must seize what flees. Tempus fugit: Time flies. And the opportunities of a lifetime fly with it.

    • Cordwood Sacrifices

      Out of the night that covers me,
      Black as the pit from pole to pole,
      I thank whatever gods may be
      For my unconquerable soul.

      In the fell clutch of circumstance
      I have not winced nor cried aloud.
      Under the bludgeonings of chance
      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

      Beyond this place of wrath and tears
      Looms but the Horror of the shade,
      And yet the menace of the years
      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

      It matters not how strait the gate,
      How charged with punishments the scroll,
      I am the master of my fate,
      I am the captain of my soul.
      — William Ernest Henley, Invictus

      We see where our choices have brought us over time. Or rather, we see if we are aware of our agency. So many learn helplessness as their primary lesson, and not agency. Not mastery of themselves. Mastery of self is a lifetime course. We are all students to the very end. To believe we have already reached mastery is to miss the lesson entirely.

      Everyone knows the final stanza of Invictus, even if they don’t know the poet. Even if they cannot recite the lines exactly. This idea of being the master of our fate and captain of our soul latches on to us like burrs to cloth. We like to think it so, this level of agency.

      Mastery requires choice. Mostly, it’s all that we will say no to that we may say yes to some primary purpose. A yes to what should be a no may be just the thing we desire most after a long day of grinding away towards our primary goal, but that which leads us astray leads us to mediocrity.

      Too harsh? We know the truth of where we are when measured against where we might have been. Choices matter a great deal on our course to personal excellence. I hear the curses mumbled for bringing up arete again. What are we here for but to do our best towards something larger than ourselves? Something godlike in its audacity? We may aspire to greatness while remaining humble servants of this moment we were made for.

      To favor no is to be mentally tough. It’s to decide what our yes will be and get used to stacking no’s one after the other like cordwood sacrifices to our yes. Decide what to be and go be it. Arete is ours to define, and ours to navigate towards through our decisions today.

    • A Win For the Day

      “The vast possibilities of our great future will become realities only if we make ourselves responsible for that future.” — Gifford Pinchot

      I was pondering a different quote than the one above, one by John Wooden, who said, “Make each day your masterpiece.” I think we’d all love to make a masterpiece, but find most days the end product is somewhere closer to good enough. Maybe that’s why there are so few masters in any field. That singularity of purpose is exceedingly rare.

      I believe Wooden meant to raise our personal standard. When we hold ourselves to a standard of excellence, we may not exceed that standard, but we may get far closer to it than we otherwise would have. String enough of those days together and we’re really on to something.

      The thing is, we know most of that talk is great for a motivational poster on the break room wall, but it doesn’t mean a thing unless we internalize it and make it our own. We either raise our standard or we opt for something less for ourselves. Whether that’s comfort or laziness or distraction, something pulls us down from reaching excellence most days. But maybe today we can see some incremental improvement and call that a win for the day.

      When I write about arete, or personal excellence, it’s not some fluffy self-motivational expression, it’s a reminder to try a little harder today. As adults, we must be responsible for our own development and do a little better at the things we do today, and then stretch even further tomorrow. And see where it takes us. It can’t help but be somewhere better than the place we started.

    • The Precious Hour

      “To fill the hour—that is happiness; to fill the hour, and leave no crevice for a repentance or an approval.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

      To win the hour is to advance. To waste it is the proverbial two steps back. We grow forward or we recede backwards into a lesser version of ourselves. Stack enough wins together and we have the makings of a great day—and a great life.

      As time goes, nothing is worth more to me than the first hour of the day. If I don’t use it properly, the rest of the morning feels rushed or incomplete. What is proper? Using the mind before the day steals my attention. Writing and reading something worthy of the precious hour.

      My bride is still asleep when that first precious hour ends. Her productive time is later, when my energy begins to wain. And she’s still going strong well after I’m ready to call it a night. We all have our time when we feel most effective. We all know our limitations, even if we won’t always admit them to ourselves.

      We’ve heard it many times: we each have the same 24 hours to work with. Making good life choices for each may create an amazing day. Making really bad choices can certainly ruin it. We are the sum of our decisions and the discipline we bring to each hour. It will all fly past us if we aren’t more deliberate with how we use the time. Tempus fugit. Carpe diem.

      For me the 13th hour is when I begin to stumble into the questionable. I may eat nutritious food, exercise, do focused and meaningful work and be a good companion to my fellow travelers on this ship of fools we call the present. But then I get mentally lazy, snack on junk food, maybe wash it down with a drink, scroll social media and allow that to stir feelings of anger or envy. All of it wastes that hour, and may leave a lasting impression on the other 23.

      The trick is not just to make the most of our best hour, but to raise the standard for our worst. One good hour won’t make or break a lifetime, but it can certainly put us on the right path. There are 8,760 hours in a year (leaving those leap years aside). That’s way too many to focus on, but we don’t get to skip ahead anyway. It’s fair to ask more of ourselves in each hour to come if we wish to reach a higher level of personal excellence than we reached previously. Raising our average begins with expecting more of ourselves in our best and worst hours. And of course, that begins with this one. Make it precious.

    • Godlike

      “The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”
      ― Helen Keller

      We are not the sum of the best of our days any more than we are the sum of the worst of them. We are shaped by all that we encounter, and we are either frail or toughen in the face of it all. Choose a path to greater resilience, challenging as it may be.

      The thing we forget sometimes on our best days is that we’ll struggle through really bad days too. To press on, learning and growing and finding a way to become that something or someone we set out to be is a hero’s journey. Hero’s naturally run into a few obstacles along the way. It’s not meant to be a casual stroll through the garden.

      To be Godlike is audacious, but also aspirational. It’s a decision to reach closer to personal excellence, our old friend Arete, despite our human shortcomings. We will never get all the way there, and yet we may get closer. So toughen up buttercup—we have places to go and things to do.

    • Where We Have to Be

      “Your comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there.” — Jen Alvares

      Do hard things. It’s the only way to grow beyond the comfortable place we find ourselves in now. Sure, but why move on from comfortable places? For the same reason that we get out of a cozy bed in the morning—because as nice as comfort feels in the moment, it isn’t bringing us to where we have to be.

      And there it is: where we have to be. Something beyond where we presently are is calling, and we must go to it. Every hero’s journey, every odyssey, every bold leap, lies beyond this comfortable place we’ve grown to love.

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

      Comfort has its own momentum. We get swept up in our routine, find ourselves doing the same things over and over again, habitual and familiar: “I’ll have the usual.” “Already have it poured, friend.”

      The thing is, doing hard things also develops its own momentum. Exchanging comfort for harder is a daily negotiation with identity. We are where we are, lovely as it is, but we wish to do and be more than this, and that, friend, is hard.

      Everything we truly want in life has a cost. Comfort has a cost, and so does hard. Decide what to be and go be it. There’s no momentum in stasis: we must get up and get going, now, if we are ever going to get to that loftier place.

    • Solid and Perfected

      “I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings. We do not wish to see children precocious, making great strides in their early years like sprouts, producing a soft and perishable timber, but better if they expand slowly at first, as if contending with difficulties, and so are solidified and perfected. Such trees continue to expand with nearly equal rapidity to an extreme old age.” — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      Some people hit the ground running. They learn and adapt quickly, show promise and then exceed expectations with every step. They make those lists of rising stars and show exactly why they got there. I appreciate the relentless drive they show each day to reach for excellence.

      That wasn’t my path. Forget about being the smartest person in the room, I hadn’t earned a ticket to enter it in the first place. So began a quest to fill in gaps through formal and self-education. Forever a work in progress, we grow closer to our potential through consistent action.

      We are where we are, most of us arriving here through a series of events largely out of our control, the very occasional good choice made at the right time, and a healthy dose of dumb luck. We may not have been labeled a rising star or have the pedigree of the elite, but we’ve all hit the lottery anyway, didn’t we? Arriving here, largely intact despite some poor choices along the way. Lucky us.

      This moment in our life is always and forever our beginning. From here we rise to meet our future. To become more resilient, stronger and wiser is a choice. So is the choice to coast into (or remain in) something easier. Beginning again today, with the skills, knowledge and fitness level that yesterday’s choices earned us, we get to choose based on who we wish to become. Our growth depends on our being rooted in aspirations higher than our current position: To grow into someone solid and perfected.

    • Applied Exuberance

      “He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.” — William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

      “Exuberance is Beauty.” — William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

      I write for creative expression (no shocker there), and also for the realization of a desire to write. To honor Mr. Harding’s proclamation in front of the entire class that I would be a writer one day while reacting to a bit of prose about balloons I’d handed in for an assignment in class. I don’t remember the names of most of my teachers in my K-12 education, but I will always remember Mr. Harding. Years have flown by since that slightly embarrassing, highly thrilling moment. I believe Mr. Harding would be pleased with my development as a human, but he’d likely wonder when I was going to finish the hero’s journey he set me out on that day long ago.

      Journeys happen at their own pace. I’m a late bloomer and an early riser. That means I always feel two steps behind and eager to get a good start to the day to try to catch up to where I perceive the rest of the world already is. Looking around, I know this is largely an illusion, but it’s a useful story to tell myself anyway. I’m farther along in my development than I otherwise would be. Still, there’s so much more to do.

      There’s a trendy movement on social media called “5 to 9 before 9 to 5“ that must be popular for me to have heard about it at all (so intently do I follow trends on social media). It’s simply a clever phrase for what many of us have been doing for years: lean into meaningful productivity early in the day, before the world wakes up and drags us into its agenda. Create, exercise, read, meditate, pray… whatever wins the early hours helps us win the day. The early bird gets the worm. Nothing new here, just great marketing of a great concept I happen to subscribe to. Tempus fugit. Carpe diem.

      The thing is, our days get away from us pretty quickly. The modern world wants us outraged, medicated, subscribed to multiple streaming services and dutifully paying our taxes. We must wrestle back our time if we wish to accomplish anything we truly desire. If we dare to strive for personal excellence (Arete), we must act, and carve out time for ourselves to do it. Exuberance, like excellence, isn’t reached by going through the motions. So we must apply ourselves to the task. Hurry now: for our time is flying by.