Alexandersmap

    Tag: Max Ehrmann

    • Quiet and Clear

      “Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.”
      — Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

      If we’re lucky, we’re born being the center of attention after our big birthday debut. That attention is inevitably diluted, but the hunger for it remains. Some crave attention so much that they’ll do anything to keep it. The world stage is full of such characters. The rest of us find our voice in ways big and small. Real power comes when we recognize that attention doesn’t matter as much as influence does.

      I try to move through this world a listener. Two ears and one mouth, as the saying goes. Yet I’m often the one who speaks up in a group, not to be first, not to be loudest, but because I’m engaged. It follows that when we truly listen, we become interested. The world could use far more interested and engaged listeners, so why not be one?

      Awareness develops when we give ourselves the space to find it. Constantly trying to fill empty space with chatter in a conversation is a lot like rapidly skimming the page trying to get the gist of what a poet is trying to say. We aren’t immersed in the moment and so we miss far more than we believe we have. The opportunity for understanding drifts away in a staccato of words.

      To try to understand everything is to understand nothing. And so we must learn to filter out the noise and favor comprehension. What has this person got to say? How do we respond? Attention is fleeting, but insight offers lift. We rise together when we learn to discover the quiet truth in what each has to say.

    • Our Kit of the Here and Now

      “Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.” — Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

      The easiest way to become angry or bitter at the state of the world is to focus on the latest affront to logic and dignity. But that anger and outrage is how we got here. We know this to be true even as we mourn for days when the world seemed more logical and dignified.

      We must zoom out, beyond the shuttered healthcare clinics and deportations, beyond the smirk on the faces of autocrats and oligarchs, and even beyond the ticking time bomb that is our changing climate and unregulated exploitation of the natural resources on this planet. We are in a moment in time—profoundly troubling though it may be sometimes, and we must zoom out to a longer timeline and see just how small all of this really is. The infinite remains indifferent about our troubles.

      Knowing the truth in this, we may switch the lens out to a microscope. How do I react to this moment? We don’t have all the answers, we only have the kit that brought us here. We may aspire for a better kit someday in the future, should we survive that long. It’s nice to think so. But right here and now, with all of this swirling around us, we’ve only got the tools and accumulated knowledge and emotional intelligence developed to this moment with which to choose how to react. We must do the best we can with what we have, right here and now. Alternatively, we could simply waste our moment with distraction and another round before the tariffs make it unaffordable. That’s the kit so many choose to draw from.

      Life is about playing the long game. Life is about this moment with no right to expect another. Life is what washes over us and life is what we make of it. All of this may be true. The universe remains indifferent, even as we are each aware of our small place in the vacuum. The miracle is in this kit, and our agency to react and act with what we’ve become, that we may step towards something else entirely new and equally miraculous.

    • Trust, But Verify

      “Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.” — Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

      It would do us all good to live by the adage, trust, but verify. The world is full of wonderful people who live beautiful lives filled with generosity and goodwill towards others. The world is also filled with charlatans and evil characters who think only of themselves at the expense of all that is good in this world.

      Knowing that both are true, we may choose to move through the world with cautious optimism armored in strength, resolve and a sharp eye. Put another way, it’s okay to walk into the theater to enjoy the show, but always know where the closest exits are and never turn your back on the bad actor holding a grudge.

      Trust, but verify apparently has its roots in an old Russian proverb, which tells you a thing or two about the Russians. They aren’t all bad, but they also won’t allow anyone to stab them in the back. We should naturally view them with the same level of caution. The Ukrainians have a proverb that goes, “the malicious cow disturbs the entire herd.” And here we are.

      The thing is, we must make our way through this world prepared to meet both the best and worst of us, because we have and will again. To live heroically, we must be both ambassadors and a trusted friend to others while also working diligently to develop resilience and Taleb’s concept of antifragility that we may fend off the malicious intent of humanity’s worst actors. To reach our full potential we must climb and hold the high ground, prepared to defend it when the barbarians make their charge.

    • 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.

    • Run to Simplicity

      “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.” — Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

      Do you wonder why the most beautiful people in this world seem so placid and steady? There’s an inner calm like a still pond; clear and deep and surrounded by hushed beauty. Isn’t that something to aspire to in our own lives? Not for the shallow goal of being beautiful, but of living beautifully? Our lives must be more than a puddle in a rut, waiting for a truck to thump into us and drag our essence down the road. Get off that damned road.

      “There is nothing that the busy man is less busy with than living; there is nothing harder to learn.” — Seneca

      The thing is, we’re all so very busy and distracted by life. It’s hard to go deep on anything when we barely have a moment to understand things at a surface level. But surfaces dry up quickly when the drought comes. We’re taught to stick to the surface—to hack our way through the hard stuff, seeking shortcuts and a way out of anything that holds us back from the next. That applies equally well in our education, our work, and our relationships with others. Is it any wonder why so many are unsettled and distracted? There’s no substance to them because they keep running away from it.

      To skate through life without ever lingering long enough to truly know the world and our place in it is the path of mediocrity accepted by the masses. Choose to be the exception—for there lies extraordinary. To truly master anything in life, especially the living of life itself, requires immersion and stillness. We must learn to turn off the spigot and develop a thirst for deeper waters.

      “One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.” — Bruce Lee

      I believe I keep this blog going to force myself deeper. The times when I want to simply shut it down and miss a day are when I’m running shallow—spread thin and beginning to dry up emotionally, intellectually, spiritually. I remind myself to run deeper, to eliminate distractions and to find stillness. Sure enough, the inclination fades away and I begin to write with clarity once again. Like a shallow stream building into a flowing river that steadily moves to the sea, building momentum in a deeper channel carved out of persistence.