Alexandersmap

    Tag: Memento Mori

    • The Magic of Applied Attention

      “We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.” — Charles Bukowski

      There is a Persian lime tree growing in a large pot on the sunny deck behind my house. This spring there were more than a hundred blossoms on this tree, each developing into tiny fruit that promised a bumper crop of limes. But after a particularly angry thunder storm and torrential downpour dozens of those tiny fruits scattered the deck, their tart potential over before they really began. While mourning the loss of so may limes, I took solace in the dozens of fruit still developing on the tree. It seems the tree had culled itself that it might focus on the ripe potential of the fruit that remained.

      We each bear so much in our lifetime, holding on to things we ought to shed to focus on the essential few. It’s okay to let go of the trivial, that we might nurture the truly important things in our lives. Letting go is painful, but not as painful as diminishing our best work by carrying more than we should.

      Little by little,
      as you left their voice behind,
      the stars began to burn
      through the sheets of clouds,
      and there was a new voice
      which you slowly
      recognized as your own,
      that kept you company
      as you strode deeper and deeper
      into the world,
      determined to do
      the only thing you could do —
      determined to save
      the only life that you could save.
      — Mary Oliver, The Journey

      The night after the thunderstorm, I spent an evening with friends, throwing axes at a target drawn on a wooden wall and building fragile wooden castles in the air (Jenga). There is a unique strategy for each, naturally, being so very different from each other in practice. But there are also similarities. Besides each pursuit using wood, it was the act of applied attention that is common to both. To be good at either you must simply get out of your own head and focus on successfully completing the task at hand. One might utilize this in every pursuit, from writing to navigating any of the essential tasks that fill one’s day.

      We ought to cherish our time together, forgetting the trivial affronts that life throws at us. We ought to find our own voice in a world full of people waiting for us to shut up that they may say something clever. We ought to direct our attention inward, to the ripe potential of our own ideas, calling us to truth and clarity. We know, deep down, that we won’t survive this, but if we give ourselves the time to focus, we may just yet produce something substantial anyway.

    • The World Lies Waiting

      “Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.“ — Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

      “The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not.” — Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

      When those who have achieved mastery in their craft leave this world, what are we to do but reflect on their work? But something else stirs in their passing: Memento mori. A whispered reminder that we too will slip away one day, work and dreams of what might be be damned. It’s now or never, friend. Carpe diem.

      This is the urgency of living. This is the call to produce that which must be finished in our time. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting. But the world deals in reality, not dreams. We must realize the best in us through our actions.

      We must make the most of our days.

    • Aware in the Moment

      “Später ist zu spät.“ (Later is too late) — Peter Altenberg

      This morning I’m driving my daughter to the airport. Once again our time together was all too brief. We each pack a lot into our days, which means never enough time in the same attentive moment, but we make the time that we do have matter. None of us is perfect in our efficiency: We all waste time on unimportant things at the expense of the essential. But awareness helps with prioritization.

      Memento mori—Remember we all must die, one day hopefully many years from now. Or perhaps sooner, we simply don’t know for sure. But we ought to embrace that realization and do something about it. If not now, then when? Anything but now is a fool’s game.

      Whatever we are deferring that matters a great deal must be done now. There’s simply no guarantee for tomorrow. What would we do if we knew this was our last day together? We’d up our game, linger in moments, hug harder and be hyper-aware of everything. Let’s all hope for a longer timeline, but live with that urgency today anyway. Be aware in the moment. For it’s all that matters.

    • Optimizing the Interval

      “Several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal.” — Jean-Paul Sartre, The Wall

      “Those who are truly decrepit, living corpses, so to speak, are the middle-aged, middle-class men and women who are stuck in their comfortable grooves and imagine that the status quo will last forever or else are so frightened it won’t that they have retreated into their mental bomb shelters to wait it out.” — Henry Miller

      On the face of it, this pair of quotes might feel morbid and dark, but they’re simply pointing out the obvious. Memento mori: we all must die, so what will we do with the time left to us? We ought to make it something worthwhile. And so it is that at some point in our lives we truly recognize that someday our time will end. That moment of realization until the last moment of our lives is our interval. We owe it to our fragile selves to optimize that interval.

      Given the outcome, shouldn’t we stack as many healthy, fully vibrant and alive days into that interval as possible? Lean in to consistent exercise and good nutrition, that we might not one day surprisingly soon erode into a shell of ourselves. Read the great books now, that we might build our foundation stronger, and sit at the table of the greatest minds awaiting our arrival. Contribute something tangible in this world, not to be remembered, but to sustain the positive momentum the best of humanity offers. These are worthy goals for an interval as shockingly brief as this.

      Several hours or several years are just the same, friends, we must seize what flees.

    • Analog and Delightful

      Change is good, but it can also be a pain in the ass. This is exemplified by the forced version upgrades Apple puts us through before we can resume our regularly scheduled activity. Microsoft has their own version of upgrade hell, and I’ve recently undergone the process of re-learning everything I thought I knew about Microsoft Office when I was issued a new laptop PC for work. There’s something to be said for pen and paper in this constantly changing world of technology.

      If I sound like an old dog, well, forgive me. I pride myself on keeping up, I just prefer choosing the time and place for when my world is turned upside down. Tech doesn’t work that way. Critical updates and staying a step ahead of the bad guys is paramount, and [sorry, but] f**k your feelings, friend. It’s not about us with tech, it’s about the greater good versus the underlying bad. Here we are, buttercup; embrace the suck. Amor fati.

      The thing we must accept is that the people building all these tech tools love to fiddle around with this Pandora’s box. The rest of us, simply wanting efficiency in our lives, are along for the ride. Once we’re on the ride, we’re on. Buckle up and mind your hands. No loose items allowed. Carpe diem.

      I’ve been telling myself that the blog site needs an upgrade for a long time now. While acknowledging that fact, I nonetheless avoid doing anything about it because there is pain associated with that change. Ah, yes, the excuses: I’ll have to learn new things and I don’t have time to learn right now. Re-designing the blog will be disruptive and inherently full of risk. All I really care about is writing and sharing that writing every day, what’s the point of a forklift upgrade on the web site?

      Sooner or later, we have to rip off the bandaid. Technology will continue to evolve to torture us, er, to make our lives easier. We must learn to keep pace. We aren’t old dogs, friends, we’re surfers riding the bleeding edge of technology wherever it takes us. As with most tech, it will end up in the recycling center, dusty and forgotten, soon enough. Memento mori. But that’s then, this is now. Just do it. Just remember to change your password to something impossible to remember, er, hack.

      One of the small joys I have each day is taking out my bullet journal and tracking my progress on tasks, streaks and long-term goals. It’s all so very analog and delightful. I like to think of myself as technologically savvy, but I’m just fooling myself. All this technology is a means to an end, the rest is just a game played by someone else’s rules. Give me simplicity. For deep down, I just want to be analog and delightful too.

    • Later is Too Late

      “Später ist zu spät.“ (Later is too late) — Peter Altenberg

      If there’s one theme we ought to have learned from living in the aftermath of the unexpected, it’s to make the most of the moment we’re currently in. We may never pass this way again, as the song goes. Memento mori. Carpe diem.

      If there’s a theme I’ve worked to embrace this spring, it’s living with urgency. We must do what we can in the time we have. This means prioritizing the important and deferring the trivial to later. There’s simply no other way to get to the most important things.

      This week I surprised myself at what I was able to do with a relatively short burst of creative energy. What might I do with consistent and sustained output? There’s never been a better time to find out than now. For later is indeed too late.

    • Here’s Your Miracle

      “No matter how long your journey appears to be, there is never more than this: one step, one breath, one moment – Now.” — Eckhart Tolle

      For all the times I’ve reminded myself that there’s only today (memento mori, so carpe diem), I often get swept up in distractions and comparison. Living is a daily wrestling match with what we know to be true and what we wish it to be. So I’m continuously reminding myself that we ought to celebrate the moment more for what it is: a miracle of presence amongst the living. This is it, friend. Do something with it. And strangely, out of nowhere, the sound of Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald filled my head with harmony:

      For once in your life, here’s your miracle
      Stand up and fight
      Make no mistake where you are
      (This is it)
      You’re goin’ no further
      (This is it)
      Until it’s over and done
      — Kenny Loggins & Michael McDonald, This Is It

      I had to face facts. After returning from the epic of Iceland, it was hard to celebrate the miraculous in the routine I’d returned to. And when we can’t possibly celebrate, we ought to at least savor the miracle of being. So for the last two nights I walked out to watch Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites parade past in a long line. There’s something inspiring about a satellite streaking through the sky, and that feeling is amplified into something altogether surreal when you see dozens of them following one another in a long line at exactly the moment that they’re supposed to.

      So in a way, that parade of satellites playing to the soundtrack of a cheesy 70’s song were just the ticket to shake me free from the post-vacation funk that a return to routine subjected me to. It was a good reminder that there’s nothing routine about living. The funk is derived from not being present with being here, now. Step outside of yourself and look up. We must make the most of the miracle while it’s here. And tell me, what’s more miraculous than pulling Elon Musk, Eckhart Tolle, Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald together into one post about Stoic philosophy?

    • Listen Carefully, Spend Wisely

      Colm Doherty: I just have this tremendous sense of time slipping away from me, Pádraic. And I think I need to spend the time I have left thinking and composing. Just trying not to listen to any more of the dull things that you have to say for yourself.
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Are you dying?
      Colm Doherty: No, I’m not dying.
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: But then you’ve loads of time.
      Colm Doherty: For chatting?
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Aye.
      Colm Doherty: For aimless chatting?
      Pádraic Súlleabhain: Not for aimless chatting. For good, normal chatting.
      Colm Doherty: So, we’ll keep aimlessly chatting, and me life’ll keep dwindling. And in twelve years, I’ll die with nothing to show for it, bar the chats I’ve had with a limited man, is that it?
      — Martin McDonagh, The Banshees of Inisherin

      There’s a darkness in this film that is borne of desperation. The characters react to the bleak reality of their lives in different ways. Colm and Pádraic’s sister, Siobhan Súilleabháin, desperately seek something beyond their relentlessly trivial existence. Pádraic sees nothing at all wrong with living out his days one exactly the same as the one before. And this raises the central question of the film, one we all faced at the height of the pandemic: what are we actually doing with our time? Is this all there is for us, or might we create something meaningful that lives beyond us before we pass? These are questions many of us wrestle with, while others contentedly choose more of the same. We each reconcile our brief dance with the world in our own way.

      These questions are timeless, even if we aren’t. Indeed, this temporary shelf life drives us to find answers. Our old friend Thoreau famously observed in the beginning pages of Walden that “the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation”. We bear the weight of these questions still, amplified by that realization that time is slipping away. Memento mori, friends. Carpe diem.

      The thing is, we shouldn’t despair at the thought. There ought to be freedom in that realization. We have an opportunity to amplify our living, and make it resonate in our time. We have the opportunity to create something that lives beyond ourselves, something that ripples. Alternatively, we might simply live. Neither choice is wrong, unless we’re quietly telling ourselves it is. The answer for each of us is to listen carefully, and spend wisely.

    • A More Resplendent Life

      “Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.” — Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

      Most every year I travel to New York City in November for work and get to experience the city just before the holidays. The Christmas tree is up in Rockefeller Center but not yet lit up, the temporary stands are lined up along the Thanksgiving Day parade, and the general buzz around the city is anticipatory. Having done this a few times, I know what to expect, appreciate my opportunity to reconnect, and treat every moment like it’s the last time I’ll have a November visit here. We just never know, do we?

      Filling our time on earth with glory is a deliberate act. It requires more than casual interaction with life, and perhaps more than appreciating the moment itself. It requires a regular dose of Memento mori to fully arrive at Carpe Diem. Perspective leads to action.

      Glory is the wrong word, I think. Written in another era. Less modern. I like splendid or magnificent more. But the point is to live a more resplendent life, not to fixate on the trivial. We ought to look around more and see what the gifts are that the universe presents to us. And in seeing for the first or last time, to savor and shine brightly in our days.

    • Shaking the Perception of Sameness

      “You start earning a million dollars, and you get all the stuff that comes with it. On week one, when you get a nice house with a nice shower, and a nice car, that feels good. But by week two or three, that’s just your shower. That’s just your car. It’s just your house. You’ve stopped noticing all the great things about it. This is a bad feature of human psychology for all the fantastic things in life. Even the best things in life, we will wind up getting used to.” — Laurie Santos, The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish: #139 Laurie Santos

      What do we get used to? We relish that first cup of coffee in the morning, but by the second we’re simply maintaining our energy, akin to filling up the tank in our cars. There’s magic in the ritual of making and savoring that first cup, isn’t there? So why does the novelty wear off so quickly on subsequent cups?

      Now take out the coffee analogy and insert any other thing that we begin to take for granted in our lives. The place we live, the car we drive, the people we hold most dear. At what point does routine dull our appreciation for the things we cherish the most in our lives? And more importantly, how do we break ourselves of this mindset?

      That’s what the Stoics were pushing themselves towards when they reminded themselves that the entire game is temporary. Memento mori, Carpe diem, Amor Fati… not just clever Latin phrases to throw around at parties, but a way of living with awareness. A way to focus on the now and appreciate where we are. Stuff is temporary, people come and go from our lives, good fortune can turn bad and back again in an instant, and through it all each moment remains a blessing.

      We humans get caught up in our annoyances, setbacks and frustrations du jour, but perhaps the worst thing that can ever happen to us is to simply getting used to living the way we do. Same job, same friends and family, same lunch… there’s just no savoring when we’re focused on sameness. Like salt sprinkled over an otherwise bland meal, a good shake of Stoicism offers us the opportunity to savor. For this is our big night out, and we ought to celebrate it for the special occasion it is.