Alexandersmap

    Tag: Philosophy

    • Lost Words

      “If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ­music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don’t just stick there scowling at the problem. But don’t make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people’s words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient.“ — Hilary Mantel

      Mantel passed away this week, leaving a vast treasure of her words to sift through. Writers are said to live forever, transformed into their words, so long as there are people to read them. In that context, we create our legacy one word at a time. So we ought to make those words as much our own as possible. Aspiring to the level of a Hilary Mantel is surely a worthy, if lofty, objective.

      We all get stuck sometimes, and state change often clears that which blocks us. Any productive endeavor benefits from quiet focus time, we know this. My own productivity, thrown off by a schedule off kilter recently, would benefit from a return to structured quiet time.

      Routine draws words from hidden places deep within us. Changes to routine inspire new ideas, shake old beliefs, and force a reckoning with priorities. Each serves us when balanced, and undercuts our potential when we tilt too far in either direction. Are we a one trick pony or risk merely surface-level understanding? The answer, always, is somewhere in between. It’s there where we may find those elusive lost words to piece together just so.

    • The World, Unmasked

      “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” — Franz Kafka

      We stumble over the universe most days. Distracted, harried, willfully blinded by the frenzy of staking a claim on our lives. The world unmasks itself when you look up and meet its gaze, and otherwise marches on to infinity without us.

      There’s no way we can possibly see everything, attempting to is a fool’s game. Still, an embarrassment of riches roll to us in waves when we offer our attention. We ought to rise to the occasion and meet the world halfway.

    • Doing, With Purpose

      “There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.” — Peter Drucker

      “You seem to spend a lot of time worrying if you will survive, and you will probably survive…. It’s the wrong question! The question is how to be useful.” — Peter Drucker to a young Jim Collins (via Nextbigideaclub.com)

      In September, Massachusetts’ Buzzards Bay is chock full of bait fish—millions of tiny fish trying to make a go of it in this world, as countless birds and bigger fish attempt to turn that bait fish’s purpose in life to be their breakfast. It’s a fish-eat-fish world on display, and offers lessons for those who witness it. Mostly, it’s a reminder to avoid being a bait fish. For us land-based creatures, the best way to avoid that is to live with purpose.

      We all dabble in those questions of purpose, the “Why are we here? questions. But isn’t that too big a place to start? Purpose is an impossibly big scope to answer with such a broad question. We ought to break it down into bite-sized questions that determine our unique value: “What do I do well? “How can I translate that into serving those who need this value the most?” and “What do I need to learn to become even more valuable for those I wish to serve?” are good starting places for building purpose into our lives.

      It’s fair to ask ourselves why we’re doing something. It’s appropriate to wonder where our work is leading us. And we ought to do something with the answers when we arrive at them, for our opportunity to do useful things resides in a very brief window of time. Feeling the urgency of the moment and doing something with it begins with knowing what both that something and that it really are for us.

      When we leave our lives to chance, we sometimes stumble upon a meaningful life. But more often than not, we end up getting chewed up in the feeding frenzy of life. Purpose brings us higher up the food chain, where we might rise above mere existence to a more valuable destination.

      Which leads back to that question of questions, posed so well by Mary Oliver in her poem The Summer Day:

      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?
      —Mary Oliver

    • Ours Alone

      “You are everything that the rest of the universe is not.” — Ogawa (via @bashosociety)

      Is it the ego speaking when you reflect on Ogawa’s words? The universe can feel overwhelmingly vast, and we are but bit players in the big scheme of things. Who are we to brashly believe we have a significant stake in the game?

      Yet, small as we may be measured against infinity, we’re still…. here. Sure, it’s a bit part, but still we get to play. As Walt Whitman famously answered when pondering this very question, “That you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

      In a life that may seem a bit overwhelming at times, we each have our verse. We might sprinkle magic. We might add reason in unreasonable times. We might play the game with audacity and hope. And we might concede that our part, however small, is ours alone.

      Orange stillness

    • Irreplaceable Instants

      “Every instant of our lives is essentially irreplaceable: you must know this in order to concentrate on life.” — André Gide

      Here we go again: another week beginning. Much like last week and the week before, yet we’ve changed. We’ve layered on our moments of insight and irreplaceable instants that root us in identity and purpose, or perhaps left us anchor-less and drifting. Let’s hope for the former.

      The thing is, this week is different from those weeks gone by. It’s surely more tangible and immediate, but more, this one is in our hands. We can’t get too caught up in our previous successes and failures, we can only double down on what works for us. And maybe, try something bold and new.

      I like the idea of micro-bursts: sprints of intensity where you focus on key activities that move you towards your goals. In rowing it was a Power 10, where everyone put aside personal discomfort and focused on making the next ten strokes their very best. It started with a call from the coxswain when they felt the boat needed a boost in momentum. And it nearly always worked.

      Focus on living a bold, meaningful life can start in an instant. Often it begins with a feeling that you need a bit of a boost in productivity or purpose. With the right concentration and effort, like a boat gaining a burst of speed and swing, it nearly always works to reset rhythm and concentration.

      Now seems as good a time as any.

    • Enjoying the Interval

      “There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.“ — George Santayana

      Santayana was a Harvard professor who personally influenced a long list of people who in turn became influential themselves. People like Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Walter Lippmann, Gertrude Stein, G. E. Moore, Wallace Stevens and others. So the way he spent his interval seemed pretty substantive and consequential. He demonstrated that we can enjoy our time while also making the most of it.

      So sure, they say that life is what we make of it. But on the surface this feels somewhat simplistic, given the general indifference of the universe towards our feelings on the matter of our fragile egos. Through the fair and unfair, the rituals and routines, the obligations and distractions, the magical and the mundane, we all choose and have choices imposed on us. In the end, or rather, in the interval, it’s all in the way we play the game, despite everything thrown at us along the way.

      Knowing we’ve hit this lottery of birth in our time and place, we ought to be fully aware of this moment and the opportunity it represents for us. I might have written a version of that phrase a hundred times now in this blog. Be assured it’s a reminder to myself more than a call to action for others. A reminder that, in the end, this interval is all we’ve got to work with.

    • Break the Chain

      “For you and your children hold a message: act so that the fruit of hatred, whose traces you have seen here, bears no new seeds, either tomorrow or forever after.” — Primo Levi

      This world offers a full sampling of good and evil. We sip from the fountain we choose to belly up to. It may be perplexing to see so many choose a path contrary to all that we believe to be true, but that doesn’t mean we should join them. We might instead offer a different path, one without hate.

      Despite it all, we each may choose what we perpetuate.

    • Reach

      To understand many things you must reach
      out of your own condition.
      — Mary Oliver, Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way

      There’s a place for nuance. There’s a place for understanding. And above all, there’s a place for meeting in the middle. This inclination to receptiveness runs counter to the toxic stagnation of self-centered.

      There is another virus spreading through the world—it’s a virus of the closed mind. We’ve become closed to new perspectives that might challenge our own. Too many sip the same flavor of Kool-Aid (blue, red, orange seem to be the only flavors at the moment in the U. S.). But a full life doesn’t fit neatly into such rigid choices, does it?

      Like a root-bound plant left too long in its pot, we must reach out of our own condition to grow to our potential.

    • To Grow and Know

      “With each encounter with truth one draws nearer to reaching communion with it.” — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

      What resonates? Doesn’t it change moment-to-moment as we ourselves change? As the world offers lessons, from subtle and brutal? Just what is our truth, our first principle?

      We try to arrive by sorting. We must process the world as it comes to us, and indeed, encounter the things that challenge our worldview. Assumptions and beliefs fall aside for the willing truth seeker. We must find and embrace each encounter for all that it offers us. Like the body adapting to exercise, the stronger mind is capable of handling even more challenges. Each challenge in turn makes us stronger (if we don’t let them destroy us).

      The truth is, we are alone on this journey. Surely friends and family offer support, mentors guidance, and those who came before us breadcrumbs to follow (or ignore), but this is our vision quest. We follow the winding path and see the changes in ourselves as we climb.

      She has seen me changing
      It ain’t easy rearranging
      And it gets harder as you get older
      Farther away as you get closer
      And I don’t know the answer
      Does it even matter?
      I’m wonderin’ how
      — Crosby, Stills & Nash, See the Changes

      We ought to leave our own breadcrumbs. For the conversation to continue with those we love, and those we’ll never meet, we must draw from ourselves and leave it for the world to accept or ignore. It’s not ours to choose, but when we suck the marrow out of life and gleen the wisdom of the ages our voice becomes more compelling.

      We won’t ever fully arrive at the truth. We might accomplish some noteworthy things, reach conclusions that resonate, grow closer than we ever thought possible to certain people while remaining dissatisfied and chagrined at the ones that got away… but we never will fully arrive. Still, we ought to be satisfied in the end that we gave it a go to grow and know. And to celebrate the journey wherever it leads us.

    • Finding the Safe Channel

      I once met with a boss I had great admiration for, a boss who dressed the part, had a witty remark for everyone, intelligent and clearly marked for future big shot roles in the corporation. He seemed to like me as well, encouraged my growing collection of ties and appreciated the early starts and late finishes to my work days. And then one day I walked in and told him that some employees were grumbling about some initiative or another, repeating their logic for why it wasn’t the right path for our company, relaying what I’d heard but didn’t feel strongly about in my soul. His face grew dark, he looked me squarely in the eye and told me that I should never aspire to be the messenger for other people, because it was the messengers who always got shot. Welcome to corporate America, kid.

      Fast-forward to today, I don’t wear ties much anymore. I work hard but don’t feel compelled to be the first one in or the last one out the door. And I’ve learned to always listen to but avoid repeating what other people say. But there are exceptions to this rule.

      In a recent management meeting, I lobbed a hand grenade on the assembled managers, repeating a statement from the employee of another manager who stated that he had to cover his ass with some tasks that had to be completed. When you hear something like this you might hold that card for a moment alone with that manager, or maybe bring it to the company President to discuss in private, or leave it for others to reveal. When you’re a small company and highly dependent on each other, you must identify potential problems. Without revealing the department where the trouble lay, I tossed it right on the virtual floor in front of the encircled management team and revealed it for the underlying problem it was. The thing is, there’s a time and a place and an audience for everything. This wasn’t an opportunity to undermine, it was an opportunity to mark the channel.

      When you’re out on the water, the ocean often looks tranquil and safe in all directions, but underneath the surface there are rocks and other hazards that can sink a boat if you blithely sail into them. When you identify threats, you must mark the channel, that others might continue on safely. There are some hostile environments where the channel isn’t marked, where you must fend for yourself. Progress slows dramatically in such places, and the bottom is littered with the broken hopes and dreams of those who foundered before.

      You know when you work in a culture that encourages open communication. These are clear channels that enable progress and growth. It’s an essential element in drawing out the potential in any team, and when it’s missing the team reverts to an every man for himself mentality. That tie-wearing, hard-charging kid I once was was thrown to the wolf by some men and women who didn’t dare confront the boss with objections themselves. It was no surprise that that company soon folded under the weight of competitive pressure they couldn’t adapt to. We must feel empowered to mark the hazards else we’ll surely find our ship foundering on the rocks someday. Clear channels of communication foster safe passage.