Alexandersmap

    Tag: Giacomo Leopardi

    • Places to Go, Places to Be

      “Don’t you know that we must always have a place where we never go but where we think we’d be happy if we did?” — Nicolas de Chamfort

      “He who travels much has this advantage over others – that the things he remembers soon become remote, so that in a short time they acquire the vague and poetical quality which is only given to other things by time. He who has not traveled at all has this disadvantage – that all his memories are of things present somewhere, since the places with which all his memories are concerned are present.” — Giacomo Leopardi

      A conversation just yesterday reminded me of the places I used to go and the person I used to be. I was that character in Up in the Air, collecting air miles and hotel points, skipping the regular line for the high roller service. In Ottawa one day, Miami the next. I actually had a TSA Agent so familiar with me that he’d ask where I was going this time as I made my way through the screening process. Those were the days.

      I don’t miss them. Sure, I miss the air miles and finding interesting places. This blog started because of those interesting places I’d stumble across in my travels. I could sniff out a waterfall or an historical monument with the best of them. And I do miss that part of my travels. I just don’t miss the gap between home and away. Instead of the rhythm of business travel, I’m immersed in the rhythm of home life. And with it, a sense of place redevelops. I’ve been here before, but my perspective has changed.

      There is still travel. There will be more waterfalls soon enough. The passport will likely fill with stamps again. Not as frequently, but filled just the same. New borders to cross, new languages to attempt, new people to remember one day when we reminisce. That is the beauty of venturing. But we can’t forget the beauty of returning back to the place we ventured from. A home port has its own appeal, should we linger long enough to remember.

      The thing is, we have places we want to go in this lifetime. Some of us wear our heart on our sleeve about such places. But we’ve also got places to be. And being is the whole point of living. To be present with where we are now, and to be in this moment fully alive and aware, is to capture something of it that we will one day remember. So stop hustling about, dreaming of the next. Be here now, and have a look around. For it will all change one day just as we ourselves will.

    • All That Is Not Us

      “No one thing shows the greatness and power of the human intellect or the loftiness and nobility of man more than his ability to know and to understand fully and feel strongly his own smallness. When, in considering the multiplicity of worlds, he feels himself to be an infinitesimal part of a globe which itself is a negligible part of one of the infinite number of systems that go to make up the world, and in considering this is astonished by his own smallness, and in feeling it deeply and regarding it intently, virtually blends into nothing, and it is as if he loses himself in the immensity of things, and finds himself as though lost in the incomprehensible vastness of existence, with this single act of thought he gives the greatest possible proof of the nobility and immense capability of his own mind, which, enclosed in such a small and negligible being, has nonetheless managed to know and understand things so superior to his own nature, and to embrace and contain this same intensity of existence and things in his thought.” — Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone di pensieri

      The encapsulation of the vastness of the universe within our minds indicates connection to something larger than ourselves. That awareness is spiritual in its own right, and one may build upon that with belief. Discovery is our path. Instead of telling ourselves stories we may seek a deeper understanding. We are connected to the universe, perhaps only in thought or recycled billion-year-old carbon, but perhaps in far greater ways that we haven’t yet grasped. Life is a span of figuring it all out, knowing we won’t reach the end with all the answers.

      This year I’m discovering Giacomo Leopardi. You might ask, what’s taken me so long? Or you might ask, who the heck is Giacomo Leopardi? Friedrich Nietzsche called Leopardi one of the four or five masters of prose in the century he was alive, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walter Savage Landor, Prosper Mérimée and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. That’s heady praise from a notable deep thinker, and a homework assignment for the avid readers amongst us. Surely if this blog continues for the foreseeable future there will be more quotes from each of these characters.

      The mind may shrink or grow depending our willingness to exercise it. We may simply believe what others tell us or go find out the answers ourselves. Awareness leads us to discovery, which draws us out into the vastness of all that is and ever will be. The universe is calling—it’s been trying to reach us our entire lives. It we aspire for anything in a lifetime, it ought to be to reach beyond ourselves to seek greater connection with all that is not us.

    • Extending the Joyride

      “Death is not an evil, because it frees us from all evils, and while it takes away good things, it takes away also the desire for them. Old age is the supreme evil, because it deprives us of all pleasures, leaving us only the appetite for them, and it brings with it all sufferings. Nevertheless, we fear death, and we desire old age.” — Giacomo Leopardi, Pensieri (Thoughts)

      Leopardi wrote this in his latter years, with understanding of the sufferings of old age. As his work goes, Pensieri was published unfinished. We all leave something unfinished when we leave this life. If our legacy is what we leave behind us, our unfulfilled potential is all that we never got around to. Thoreau’s “quiet desperation” is knowing the gap exists between the two.

      I’m one of those people who say to the world that I will live to be 100. I know the statement is foolhardy, brash and unrealistic. It’s said tongue-in-cheek, like many things I say. We simply don’t know when our expiration date is. Given the rate of decline in our latter years that I’ve observed in the generations ahead of mine, I aspire only for good health and sound mind for as long as possible, that I may kick the sufferings of old age down the curb right to the end of this joyride.

      Each day we wrestle with fear and desire. The trick to aging gracefully is to focus on filling those gaps in our potential with applied experience. We produce and share and move on to the next stage of our lives to the end of our days. If our health span allows, we may expand our legacy. So above all else, it seems, focus on increasing that health span. Fitness and mental acuity are far better desires than simply growing old.

    • Governed by Illusions

      “Reason is the enemy of all greatness: reason is the enemy of nature: nature is great, reason is small. I mean that it will be more or less difficult for a man to be great the more he is governed by reason, that few can be great (and in art and poetry perhaps no one) unless they are governed by illusions.” — Giacomo Leopardi

      “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
      ― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

      How many of us are perfectly reasonable in our lives? We are taught to be so. Reasonable is predictable, manageable, reliable. When we aspire to be good, we are subscribing to a routine of reasonable. And of course there’s nothing wrong with reasonable, there’s just nothing particularly profound to be realized when we stay in that box. We simply cannot put a dent in the universe with reason. Dents require the velocity of audacity.

      Few can be great unless they are governed by illusions. Illusions of grandeur. Illusions of what might be far beyond what is. To dream and then chase that dream as if our very lives depended on it(doesn’t it?). To step outside of what is expected of us and write our own script beyond the imagination of the perfectly reasonable people in our lives. That is where illusions may lead.

      Of course, illusions may also lead us off the cliff to our doom. It’s reasonable to have a safety net, to wear a seatbelt, and to put on sunscreen. We can structure our lives around reason and still chase the dream. We just can’t put all our eggs in one basket—reasonable or illusion, and expect them to survive when we inevitably stumble. But let’s face it, that kind of logic is entirely too reasonable.

      It comes down to risk and reward. Those of us who are risk-averse aren’t likely to adapt the world to ourselves because we’re too busy adapting to it. The trick is to know our tendencies and learn to stretch beyond our comfort level. When we habituate discomfort as a normal state we adapt and grow and become. Change becomes something we are accustomed to, and more, something that we initiate.

      This entire blog post is reason in action. I might simply have said “just do it” and headed out the door to realize some grand illusion. Something less unreasonable would be to simply click publish and stretch my comfort zone after I’ve had a good breakfast. But those are the words of someone governed by reason. Just who is the boss here anyway?