Alexandersmap

    Tag: Philosophy

    • Unprovoked

      “To be like a rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      We are all works in progress, and it’s understandable to be stirred by emotion—just look at all that happens in this world. To be provoked is instinctual. To be stoic is logical. Which comes naturally?

      Emotions are thus easy to stir up, but are we effective when emotional? Are we clear-headed and deliberate in our actions? Not likely. And so to be the best possible version of ourselves, to survive a crisis in the midst of chaos, we must train ourselves to react better to stimulus. We must learn to be clearheaded and unprovoked.

      “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ― Viktor Frankl

      Plans change. Forces out of our control wash over us all the time, disrupting our days—disrupting our lives. When we are clearheaded and unprovoked we often see the possibilities available to us in these moments. We may pivot into some other course of action, or turn inward to temper our reaction when all else fails. We are here, this is happening, what will we make of it?

      Amor fati: Love of fate. We don’t have to love fate, but we can accept the path we find ourselves on. The universe will remain indifferent either way. Isn’t there a lesson in that indifference? So keep calm and carry on. That is our logical choice. There is a measure of profound freedom available to us should we remain unprovoked.

    • Stop Fluttering About

      Never regret thy fall
      O Icarus of the fearless flight,
      For the greatest tragedy of them all,
      Is never to feel the burning light.
      — Oscar Wilde, Icarus

      Some days we soar, and on some we stumble. The trick is to keep getting up and trying to win the next day. The alternative is to sink into the abyss, and what kind of life is that?

      Life is unfair and challenging. Life is beautiful and ripe with potential. Where is the truth but in the eye of the beholder? We may experience the life we manifest, but we can acknowledge that there is an element of luck too. Most of us reading this were born at the right time and right place. Some were dealt a lousy hand. We may celebrate or blame the circumstances that brought us to where we are, but we ought to recognize that here and now is only the beginning of this odyssey. The next step is up to us.

      This idea of having agency in our life is revelatory or ridiculous if we aren’t conditioned to take matters into our own hands. We may choose to learn and grow, to rise early and stay with something until we’ve reached mastery. Or simply concede that we never really wanted to soar anyway and simply give up our agency to someone with loftier goals. The choice was always ours to make.

      The thing is, this is nothing but words until we take action. We all have dreams that will go to our graves with us. But we also have our daily rituals and habits that are leading us to realize something tangible in our lives. Just where are our habits taking us? Maybe we ought to up our game, and soar just a little higher than where we’ve been fluttering about. While there’s still time.

    • The Dog and the Frog

      “A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.” — Albert Einstein

      Every morning I let the puppy out to relieve herself. Inevitably, she ignores her full bladder and makes a beeline for the pool to see who is swimming there today. Most mornings this time of year there’s a frog bobbing around with the acorns believing it’s found paradise on earth. And so the standoff begins. The pup will circle for hours if I let her, chasing something that she’ll never catch. The only way to break the spell is to take the net and rescue the frog from the pool, relocating it over the fence. Tomorrow it will likely be right back in there again, awaiting the pup. This would go on each morning until the end of time if the season wasn’t drawing to a close.

      Are we any better than the dog following the frog? We also run around in circles relentlessly pursuing some concept of happiness or success, as if either are tangible. Reach for either and we find it’s bobbing somewhere other than the place we just dove for it. Each are nothing but ideas of what we think we ought to be.

      The aim of life is growth. A tadpole or a mighty oak measures it’s time alive in growth, and so should we. We ought to break the spell of chasing happiness or success, whatever the heck those mean to us and focus instead on purposeful gain. What might our net gain be today with a change in focus? Knowledge or strength? Enlightenment? A deeper understanding of ourselves and our place in this world?

      Forget about running in circles with nothing to show for it but a wet nose. Break the spell of the chase and focus on incremental growth instead. Whatever moves the needle forward in a meaningful way towards personal excellence and growth are the true wins for the day. Stack enough of these wins together and we may realize a state of happiness and success.

    • A Sense of Progress

      “One thing we have lost, that we had in the past, is a sense of progress.” — Daniel Kahneman

      “My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there” — Charles Kettering

      This writer’s near-constant focus on improvement is simply a reminder to keep going towards the things that we can control. Sure; momento mori, but before that, we ought to have something to look forward to. A sense of progress is essential to our well-being. We’re all heading towards something, and we’d like to think it’s something better than everything that surrounds us now. Better health. Better relationships with others. Better options for how we spend a random Friday night. Focusing on one thing we may improve upon leads us to better in that thing. Expand that improvement to a few things, and maybe we can feel some positive momentum developing.

      The world may feel like a hot mess right now, and really, there are compelling reasons to feel that way. We cannot control most of what is happening, but we should raise our voice when we can influence the trajectory. How we treat others, and how we treat ourselves, matters more than we realize in any given moment. Ripples project from the center, but they also interact with other ripples. So we must always strive for that evasive personal excellence (arete), knowing that it’s not something that stays bottled up in our core, but is something that projects outward towards others, raising the standard for each of us.

      The thing is, we tend to become what we focus on. When we focus on the steady decline of society, we become fearful and mistrustful, which perpetuates, well, the decline of society. When we focus on developing new skills and our overall fitness, we realize incremental improvements that lead us to a higher level of performance. This in turn may transform our belief in the state of things from pessimistic to optimistic. Applying that positive force on building bridges and lighting beacons of hope may just transform others along the way.

      One twist in our belief for the future may just spritz a little joy into an otherwise methodically-dismal life designed by the doom cycle trolls. Indeed, we’re collectively heading towards the very thing we focus on the most. We ought to set the compass accordingly. Make some progress today—towards something better. It makes a world of difference.

    • Rest in the Grace

      When despair for the world grows in me
      and I wake in the night at the least sound
      in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
      I go and lie down where the wood drake
      rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
      I come into the peace of wild things
      who do not tax their lives with forethought
      of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
      And I feel above me the day-blind stars
      waiting with their light. For a time
      I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
      — Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things

      There is reassurance to be found in witnessing the dignity with which so many who, seeing the darkness in the world, have chosen light instead. There is calm to be discovered in poetry spun from words magically sorted together in clarifying and entrancing ways. And surely—even now—there are still wild places far from the noise of life where we may find stillness.

      If we are indeed what we consume, does it make sense to soak up the anger, fear and misery imposed by a world that wants us to buy in, or to shun it in favor of a more natural information diet? What liberates us from the shackles of a maddening world? With clarity and focus, we are better equipped to find what we seek. And even that which we aren’t fully aware we’re in need of. In moving away from the noise of the world, we may finally hear what was whispering for us all along.

    • Our Quiet Proximity

      Oh good scholar,
      I say to myself,
      how can you help

      but grow wise
      with such teachings
      as these—
      the untrimmable light

      of the world,
      the ocean’s shine,
      the prayers that are made
      out of grass?
      — Mary Oliver, Mindful

      Yesterday I watched a skunk shuffle along in that skunky way, sniffing and moving through the neighborhood. Bad break for those of us with dogs, and a reminder for us to be more aware. Dogs have no problem being aware, and boldly curious, which is why they end up on the wrong end of skunks all too often.

      On that very same walk, I watched a snapping turtle glide underwater in the stream as I walked over the bridge. The turtle is an active participant in the stream—I’ve seen her before, seen where she had buried her eggs, and expect I might see her every time I walk. But sometimes I see the blue heron instead, or the river otter, or the ducks moving through the slow August current. These characters aren’t fond of spectators hovering over them on the bridge, so I’ve learned to ease up slowly and glance discreetly down. And so has the pup.

      On the day that my father passed from this world, I remained very much a part of it, fully aware of what surrounded me. That we should rush through life without noticing the blessings around us is the curse of a busy mind. If my long goodbye with my father taught me anything, it was to appreciate the gift of presence for all it offers. It’s not a eureka moment, it’s a lingering awareness of all that is and will be in our quiet proximity. The light of the world continues to shine through in unexpected ways, simply awaiting our notice.

    • What Is Mine

      “We have to make the best use of the things which are actually in our power, and use everything else according to their nature.”
      — Epictetus, Discourses

      It’s easy to get caught up in things. I wrestle with it myself at times, mostly out of a sense of fairness. We were raised to know what is right and what is wrong, and when we see things that are wrong we expect to see things made right. This is folly. The world is unfair, it always has been, and the only way to navigate this world without being forever caught in despair is to let go of that which we cannot control. That doesn’t mean to give up, and it doesn’t mean to let the worst of humanity rule the roost either. It means to focus on what we have agency over and nothing more.

      “What is mine is mine, and what is not is not.”

      Epictetus was born into slavery, studied under Musonius Rufus and became famous as a philosopher after he was emancipated. So it’s easy to see how he latched onto this idea of focusing on what is within one’s power. If you’re a slave you don’t have much agency over your own life. When you’re emancipated, you have much more, but you’ve got that experience of being enslaved as insight into how to move through life.

      And what of us? What enslaves us? We may boast of being free, but how many of us fall in line with what other’s expect of us? How many are so tethered to the screen on their phone that they won’t look up and look someone in the eye? Which offers more truth for us? All we have is this moment together. We must learn to emancipate ourselves from that which enslaves us and focus on what is essential.

      “And when I do die, how will I die? Like a man who gives up everything that belongs to someone else.” — Epictetus, Discourses

      There are experiences we want to have in this lifetime. Some will be reached, some will fall by the wayside. What we do with our brief time isn’t always up to us, but we may control what we pay attention to and how we react to each encounter. Whatever will be will be (Que Sera, Sera). The rest will pass through our grasp. The secret to a happy life is learning to let those things fall away.

    • What Would Do?

      And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure—
          your life—
      what would do for you?
      — Mary Oliver, To Begin With, the Sweet Grass

      There’s still time today to find adventure. The day is still young, and we are young enough to be bold—and old enough to play this hand wisely. Seek adventure, as Thoreau whispers from his root-covered grave in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Be enchanted, Oliver whispers from her grave in Amarillo.

      And so we must heed the call, with the sum of who we are, to multiply our experiences. There is no deferring with living. Do the math: Every day we subtract another.

      Yes, these are distracting times, and things like adventure and enchantment may seem frivolous when there’s so much at stake in the world. But this is our time, and these are our days to be alive. Do something that stirs and inspires. The world will still be there, miserable as ever, when we return to it.

      What would do for you? What are you waiting for? Do. Be. While there’s still time.

    • Stop Taking It for Granted

      “A man took his new hunting dog out on a trial hunt. Presently he shot a duck that fell into the lake. The dog walked over the water, picked the duck up and brought it to his master.
      The man was flabbergasted! He shot another duck. Once again, while he rubbed his eyes in disbelief, the dog walked over the water and retrieved the duck.
      Hardly daring to believe what he had seen, he called his neighbor for a shoot the following day. Once again, each time he or his neighbor hit a bird the dog would walk over the water and bring the bird in. The man said nothing. Neither did his neighbor.
      Finally, unable to contain himself any longer, he blurted out, “Did you notice anything strange about that dog?”
      The neighbor rubbed his chin pensively. “Yes,” he finally said. “Come to think of it, I did! The son of a gun can’t swim!”
      It isn’t as if life is not full of miracles. It’s more than that: it is miraculous, and anyone who stops taking it for granted will see it at once.” ― Anthony de Mello, The Prayer Of The Frog, Vol. 1

      We may choose to see what we want to see in this lifetime. The world at the moment offers many things from which we may react. But the reaction itself changes the way we see everything else in our lives. Thus, we move through our lives seeing everything through the lens of our beliefs and our reaction to things that challenge or support these beliefs.

      I can know that I’ve been held captive by my own beliefs, and also see what I believe holds others in theirs. But there’s the trap. One belief influences the other, and we move through life blind and captive behind our lenses.

      This way of seeing the world holds us captive until we release ourselves from this state. But it feels easier to just stay sheltered in our beliefs. When we stop trying to validate all we believe we may finally see just how miraculous this whole state of being alive truly is.

      At least that’s what I believe.

    • Where Am I?

      “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” ― Lao Tzu

      I was prompted to look at an old blog post I’d written back in 2019 because it showed up in my statistics. That one post has garnered hundreds of views, which isn’t exactly Seth Godin numbers, but it was one of the ones that got more traction than most. Historical, introspective and curious. I’d like to think I’m still those things, even if my focus has changed a bit.

      Back then I was traveling a lot more, we hadn’t had a pandemic yet, and life hadn’t thrown a few more gut punches our way. We all accumulate experiences over time—the good, bad and ugly. In general, I liked the way I wrote back then, I just hadn’t experienced the changes that would wash over me yet.

      The thing is, back in those days exploring place, I was asking the same questions I’m asking now: Where am I? What happened here and what can it teach me?

      Everything changes, and so must we. Each experience accumulated changes us in some way minutely or profoundly. It’s like that river analogy, where both the river and we are not the same each time we visit. And flow we must, always having been somewhere, always on to the next, and yet right here in this moment. What have we learned this time?