Alexandersmap

    Tag: Carpe Diem

    • Creating Outcomes

      “There is some risk involved in action, there always is. But there is far more risk in failure to act.” — Harry S. Truman

      The funny thing about taking action is that it often leads to more opportunities to act. We become action-oriented, and notice opportunities to act more often than someone who is sedentary and usually looking for opportunities to rest. Ultimately we go in the direction we set our compass to, seeing what we see while creating outcomes that lead to even more outcomes.

      That term, creating outcomes, is high agency stuff. It’s an action-oriented approach to living that suits us. We all know that we’re here for a short time (memento mori). If you read this blog with any regularity you’ve certainly heard me mention that with some frequency. This is not a death-focused mindset, it’s life-focused. Awareness leads to action. We only have so much time—don’t dare waste a moment of it!

      What is an outcome but a destination separated from us by a gap we close? We see the target, determine the action necessary to reach it, and do the work to bridge our here with our potential there. Having reached an outcome, we naturally look towards the next interesting destination, and so on. This is a growth mindset, and it’s a world apart from believing we have no control over our lives. Decide what to be and go be it.

      All that said, I see even as I’m actively bridging gaps that there are other gaps yet to bridge. The only thing to do is figure out how to create those outcomes too, then get after it with urgency. For the clock is ticking and time flies (tempus fugit) and we’re deep into our one precious life, so what are we waiting for?

    • Doing Something Different

      “You can’t put limits on what you’ll do. You have to be open to new ideas and new ways of doing things if you want breakthroughs in your life. As you travel the path of mastery you’ll find yourself continually challenged to do new things. The Purposeful person follows the simple rule that ‘a different result requires doing something different.’ Make this your mantra and breakthroughs become possible.
      Too many people reach a level where their performance is ‘good enough’ and then stop working on getting better. People on the path to mastery avoid this by continually upping their goal, challenging themselves to break through their current ceiling, and staying the forever apprentice” — Gary Keller, The One Thing

      This will surprise a few people in my life, but I’ve paused my alcohol consumption for a couple of months as part of a change in my daily regimen. Admittedly, summer is an odd time to put a pause on drinking, when the spirits flow as free as the warm vibes, but then again, what better time than now for anything we want to try? So I’ve paused drinking for June and July, with a clear date in mind in August when I’ll likely be having a few celebratory beverages. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

      I’m a strong believer in not saying what you’re going to do, but simply demonstrating who you are by doing it. My last drink was four days ago, and despite ample opportunity to indulge since, I’ve stayed on track. We’ll see how I do when the sailing friends return, but by then I’ll have a little wind in my own sails. But why stop instead of moderate? Because I’m not pausing the alcohol consumption because I feel I have a problem with it, but to demonstrate to myself that I’m steering this ship.

      I’ve also changed a few other things that don’t get the attention that alcohol does. The reason is to pursue a desired health level that hasn’t been achieved through the average of my days in the last few years. We are what we repeatedly do, as our friend Aristotle reminds us, and thus excellence is a habit. What we do now is the foundation for who we’ll be then, and my foundation needed a bit of strengthening. Our lives are forever about the paying the price of admission: Pay me now or pay me later. Our good health must be payed in advanced.

      The bottom line is that I’m not satisfied with good enough, and so more is required of me. Because a different result requires doing something different, and when is there a better time than now to give it a go? Not drinking for a couple of months is the tip of the spear, with other lifestyle changes behind it. So pass the ice water, I’ve grown a bit parched. The path to personal excellence demands a lot of us, which is why so many never get around to it.

    • A Day of Vigor

      A wise man will know what game to play to-day, and play it. We must not be governed by rigid rules, as by the almanac, but let the season rule us. The moods and thoughts of man are revolving just as steadily and incessantly as nature’s. Nothing must be postponed. Take time by the forelock. Now or never! You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Take any other course, and life will be a succession of regrets. There is no world for the penitent and regretful.” — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      As this is published, we’ve reached the sixth month of a pretty crazy year. Tempus fugit: time flies. We’ve learned that many things are out of our control. So what? What have we done with that which we do control? We know the score when we look in the mirror. But this is no time for regret or doubt about the future, for today is the start of something new. Every day is supposed to be, isn’t it? We can only do our best with this one.

      I’ve used Thoreau’s quote three times now in the blog. Each time I’ve been a different person, having accomplished something substantive or facing different challenges that made me who I was in the moment. We are all different with each passing day in our lives. As Heraclitus once observed, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

      Life changes us, but we in turn may change the circumstances of our lives. We must get after our dream today or release it from our vision of the person we wish to become. Our work must begin today, and always thereafter. We aren’t meant to be feeble in our one chance. It isn’t going to get any easier, so instead we must grow tougher. Bolder. More vigorous. For doesn’t today deserve more vigor than we gave yesterday?

    • A Day Among Days

      “Yesterday nobody dreamed of to-day; nobody dreams of tomorrow. Hence the weather is ever the news. What a fine and measureless joy the gods grant us thus, letting us know nothing about the day that is to dawn! — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      I caught up with a neighbor yesterday. It seems that he quit his job a year ago to write and I never realized it. He simply did his outdoor chores, came and went and never talked about what he did the rest of the time. Now he’s going back to a job and debating whether to publish his writing or to

      remain anonymous. I encouraged him to publish even as I failed to mention in our conversation that I’ve published something every day for years. Who’s the anonymous one?

      The same day a business associate encouraged me to apply for a VP position in his company. I didn’t say no, but I definitely didn’t say yes either. Am I a creative person if I chase titles? Does my work suffer if I don’t explore all of my options? A day writing is similar to a day climbing the corporate ladder: what we produce determines the value we perceive in the time spent. Just what defines personal excellence for us anyway? There’s your value.

      Each day greets us with questions like these. And honestly, aren’t they really about what to do with our brief time? Whether we rise to meet the moment or let the opportunity slip away comes down to a combination of mindset and routine. Thus, our attitude, habits and grit determine the day. Stack enough together and we build a life. As we greet each new day with the tools we have at our disposal, we ought to remember to see this one like a tree in the forest: a day among all our days, but unique just the same.

    • This Little Spark

      “You’ve got to be crazy. It’s too late to be sane. Too late. You’ve got to go full-tilt bozo. ‘Cause you’re only given a little spark of madness, and if you lose that, you’re nothing. Note, from me to you. Don’t ever lose that cause it keeps you alive” — Robin Williams, Come Inside My Mind

      What keeps us alive is more than air and water and food. What keeps us alive is adventure and mischief, discovery and creative output, deep thoughts and thrilling moments. Aliveness is captured energy in the moment before it moves on to the next vehicle. We’re all just batteries holding on to energy for some amount of time before we concede it to the next generation. We ought to use that little spark for exhilaration in our time.

      Batteries are drawn down in time, but they can also be recharged. I’m plunging into cold water again. Two days in a row, and for as many as I can string together until the water warms up enough that it’s no longer a cold water plunge. And my goodness, how I’ve missed the adrenaline high though all of this orange-tinted darkness of the world. To hell with the darkness. We must do the things that bring us energy, and hold the line for light and being.

      As Robin Williams once reminded us in a memorable character, carpe diem! Seize the day! We only have this one go at things. So go! We can all do our own version of full-tilt bozo, making memorable in this gift of a life. What’s the alternative? We’ll rest soon enough.

    • Floating Off the Edge

      “Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.” — Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

      May your hands always be busy
      May your feet always be swift
      May you have a strong foundation
      When the winds of changes shift
      May your heart always be joyful
      May your song always be sung
      May you stay forever young
      — Bob Dylan, Forever Young

      I rewatched The Last Waltz last night, secure in the knowledge that I could turn up the volume as loudly as I wanted to with my bride on the other side of the country (she may still have heard it playing). I was struck by how young each of the performers were. Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Neil Diamond, Emmylou Harris, and even Director Martin Scorsese—they all looked like kids because really, they still were. And The Band, every last one of them gone now, all were at the height of their productive youth. How quickly it all flies by… Tempus fugit.

      That film was the amber of that moment for them, and they’re locked in time. So it was fitting for Dylan to sing Forever Young, and for Scorsese to provide the amber. The Band knew what they were walking away from—the grind of the road, true, but also their youth. There’s lingering sadness at what was left on stage revealed in conversations with each member, especially Rick Danko. No, we aren’t Peter Pan, forever young and living the life of adventure, we all must grow up one day. And so it is that each of the performers have aged and faded away one-by-one. Memento mori.

      Why did I rewatch this film? Maybe it was the music, or maybe to have my own look back on a different time. An industry friend passed away this week. He was twenty years my senior and cancer took him away with a mind as sharp as someone twenty years my junior. Age is just a number—health and vitality are our true currency in life. The body or the mind will surely fail us all one day, so be bold and dance today. And while we’re at it, turn up the volume as loud as we dare. Carpe diem.

      “We’re all in the same boat ready to float off the edge of the world” — The Band, Life is a Carnival

      Maybe I write to capture my own moments in amber, or maybe I’m just leaving breadcrumbs of where I’ve been. We all have our body of work and our faded photographs (or increasingly, lower resolution JPEG’s) that whisper of who we once were in the height of our own productive youth. The trick is to keep producing, to keep dancing, and to lock some particularly shiny moments away in amber while we can, until one day this boat floats off the edge to join all the stars in infinity.

    • Moments of Clarity

      no baby, if you’re going to create
      you’re going to create whether you work
      16 hours a day in a coal mine
      or
      you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
      while you’re on
      welfare,
      you’re going to create with a part of your mind and your
      body blown
      away,
      you’re going to create blind
      crippled
      demented,
      you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your
      back while
      the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
      flood and fire,

      baby, air and light and time and space
      have nothing to do with it
      and don’t create anything
      except maybe a longer life to find
      new excuses
      for.
      — Charles Bukowski, air and light and time and space

      I heard from the daughter of an industry friend. He doesn’t have long now, she told me, and is spending this time in hospice with family and friends. I reached out knowing this, and to offer a few words that I know will reach him through her. In such situations, we must say it now, or know that it will be never. These moments of clarity are profound when someone reaches the end of their life, but we must remember we’re all just a step behind them ourselves. Memento mori. So for gods sake, carpe diem already!

      We have so many excuses available to us to avoid telling someone how we feel, or to defer exercise and writing and creating beauty in a world insistent on growing darker. But it grows darker precisely because we defer the call of creating. This is our verse, after all, and it could all end today for us. What will we leave behind as our beacon of truth and courage?

      We must put all that energy used to create excuses aside and finally listen to the muse before our opportunity fades away forever. Produce something beautiful. For all the chaos and distraction, there will not be a better time than now. We’re going to create now, or know that it will be never.

    • The Total of Our Doing

      we are always asked
      to understand the other person’s
      viewpoint
      no matter how
      out-dated
      foolish or
      obnoxious.
      one is asked
      to view
      their total error
      their life-waste
      with
      kindliness,
      especially if they are
      aged.
      but age
      is the total of
      our doing.
      they have aged
      badly
      because they have
      lived
      out of focus,
      they have refused to
      see.
      not their fault?
      whose fault?
      mine?
      I am asked to hide
      my viewpoint
      from them
      or fear of their
      fear.
      age is no crime
      but the shame
      of a deliberately
      wasted
      life
      among so many
      deliberately
      wasted
      lives
      is.
      — Charles Bukowski, Be Kind

      We have all lived out of focus at times. Sometimes the good days make up for the bad. Sometimes. Like pulling an all-nighter to finish a paper we’ve procrastinated on, sometimes we pull focus out just in the nick of time to move the chains forward in our lives. But sometimes we wait a beat too long and the opportunity is lost forever. The lesson of course is to focus, but instead we blame it on fate or bad luck or the immigrants who moved in down the street who got straight to work.

      The answer has always been in focus. What kind of a life do we want to have? Why are we distracting ourselves with all of these things that pull us away from focusing on achieving that? What small, measurable step might we take right now to move us closer to the dream?

      The total of our doing keeps pace with wherever we are in this moment. How does it look so far? Stop being so outraged at the state of the world and do the things in our control. Look around and focus on the essential. To do otherwise is to waste more of this life that is already flying by so very quickly.

    • The Company We Keep

      “All we have experienced is so much gone within us, and there lies. It is the company we keep. One day, in health or sickness, it will come out and be remembered. Neither body nor soul forgets anything.” — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      We know that we are the sum of our experiences to this moment, so why do we short our experiences garnered today? We must live as if we were dying, as that song once suggested to the hungry masses. How many listen to a call like that? Maybe tomorrow, after we finish bing watching The Office again. Haven’t we learned yet that tomorrow’s never come? Memento mori...

      These are days we’ll remember—if we make it memorable. Those of us who write in a line per day journal know the coldness of not having much to write about on any given day. On days like that, as the evening gets dark and cold, I take the pup for a walk and look for planets amongst the stars, listen for owls and coyotes in the distance, inhale the crisp air and remember that I’m alive another day. So many of our days are there simply to connect the memorable ones together. But they all count just the same.

      Reading a journal entry from Thoreau written on this date in 1837, I thought of all that was to come for him. His own thoughts were on the sum of who he was to that point. We all write our future from the perspective of our experiences and observations thus far. Expanding the palate with progressively more adventurous moments that lead us to a shift in identity. We all have the kernel of our future within us, wrapped around our past. Our past life is the company we keep, whispering to us about all that we might discover if we just step beyond the sound of our own voice.

    • Remember Your Dreams

      Take it all in
      It’s as big as it seems
      Count all your blessings
      Remember your dreams
      — Jimmy Buffett, Jimmy Dreams

      We who try to reason with an unreasonable world can get pulled into distraction before we know it. We know that distraction steals our lives away as quickly as a murderous thief. The time given to distraction will never be returned to us. Focus on the future. Remember your dreams.

      Just writing this, I thought maybe I’d link to a video of Buffett singing the song I quoted, which led me to YouTube, which promptly threw a hundred distracting options at me that could easily have taken this productive moment from me in exchange for trinkets of frivolity. It happens so quickly, so easily, that we hardly notice it anymore. And before we know it our dreams are deferred to a tomorrow that will never come.

      We must be bold to dream big, but then we must be disciplined to realize them. Be present. Be aware. Be alive and vibrantly focused on the things that matter most in this time and place. These are days we’ll remember—the madness in the world assures that, but we must make it our mission to write the script ourselves.

      To be alive and aware of what we’re doing with the time puts us ahead of the masses of minions watching curated videos all day. We may leverage that time advantage to realize a dream or two in our allotment of days. There is no other reasonable alternative but to be bold and leap into life.