Alexandersmap

    Tag: Philosophy

    • Answers

      “Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.” — William S. Burroughs

      Yes, and how many years must a mountain exist
      Before it is washed to the sea?
      And how many years can some people exist
      Before they’re allowed to be free?
      Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
      And pretend that he just doesn’t see?
      The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
      — Bob Dylan, Blowin’ in the Wind

      The world is a confusing mess that we may either work to make sense of or practice active avoidance of. Most of us are somewhere in the middle. I used to pride myself on reading the news every day, and doubled down by watching the news every morning to be informed before I stepped out the door. It was my way of having a perspective on things when asked for my opinion, but also because I thought it was my duty as a citizen to know what the hell was happening.

      Lately, I’ve had an ongoing dialogue with a good friend about which media source is most unbiased. We all should know that they’re all biased, because they’re all hoping for enough traction to be profitable, but which is the best for fair and mostly unbiased information? Those who follow one source for all information are a slave to that source. We must seek information from multiple sources and sort it out ourselves.

      Or not. The historian in me knows the truth is never found in the headlines, but in the stories that come out long after the dust settles. We know certain truths, but we certainly don’t know everything. The lens of time offers true perspective. And even though we see the world burning, even though we may feel outraged far more than we ever believed we’d be outraged at this point in human history, we must separate emotion from the moment and see what happens (while fighting for what’s right in this world).

      We know that those who say they have it all figured out are generally full of crap and trying to sell us something (well, unfortunately, slightly less than half of us know that). Knowing everything is not in the cards. Our answers will come to us in time, if we’re lucky enough to have time, and so we must rely on what we believe to be true for us and set ourselves in a direction that feels right.

      All that said, the historian in me also knows that history is written by the victors, and vast swaths of truth have been swept aside and blown away in the winds of time. We’ll never know the full story about anything, only what we are able to capture and discern. The trick for us in this moment is to ensure that we come out on the other side to bring the truth to the future.

      And that brings me back to the Burroughs quote that kicked us off today. We must learn to quiet our minds and find the answers within ourselves in the context of the times we live in. To be aware of the world is essential for navigating within it, but we cannot forget to turn inward and listen to what our own truth is. And if we find those answers, we may set our compass in a direction that carries us through the confusion and madness in the world to a place we know deep down is right for us.

    • Crossing the Threshold

      “To see that your life is a story while you’re in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      Some change is obvious. Quit drinking for the month and you can say you had a dry January. Stop eating for a day or two and call it a fast. Write a blog post every day for a year (or six) and call yourself a writer.

      Some change is more subtle—sneaking up on us over time. Read enough books and you begin to think differently. Walk a few steps more each time out the door and find the scale doesn’t mock you as much. Change can be abruptly obvious or a drop in the bucket that overflows with time.

      We are all writing our life story. We are the sum of all that we’ve written thus far. So which chapter are we working on today? Are we encountering the threshold in the hero’s journey, leaving the ordinary for the extraordinary? To feel the rush of crossing the chasm is as exhilarating as it is terrifying. Most of us feel we aren’t crossing thresholds every day. Mostly we feel we’re in the ordinary because it sure feels that way to us.

      Seen another way, every day is a threshold to be crossed. We woke up again! What a thrill that should be! We know where we are, but not always where we’re going. Life is our puzzle to solve in our time. A master class in becoming someone we only imagined before. Doesn’t it serve us to be more creative with the script we’re writing for today? To be bold in our daily decisions pulls wonder out of a previously blank page. So spice it up a bit, grateful for the opportunity! Be bold today.

    • The Right Time

      “A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.” — Carlos Castaneda

      I spent a lifetime
      Waiting for the right time
      — Elvis Presley, Its Now or Never

      It’s been bitter cold the last few days. The kind of cold that stings bare skin. These are the days when building a roaring fire to warm ourselves was exactly what we envisioned when we were busy chopping and stacking firewood. Indeed, all that chopping and stacking led us here; so make use of that spark we jealousy hold onto and light the damned fire already!

      All that planning and goal setting to start the year is useful, but now we must get straight to the business of executing on that plan. Start the streak of productive days, or keep the streak alive if we’re fortunate to be on the right path already. The trap is to keep on planning for a bold life, instead of living it.

      There is no right time for anything, there’s only now. Do what must be done in the time we have. We all want to be the hero in our own epic journey—so what are we waiting for? It’s now or never, friend. There comes a time when chopping and stacking firewood is no longer the best use of our precious time.

    • Like Wind Blowing

      “Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      It is and we are. What matters is we’re a part. We need not make sense of it all, for who can possibly know? What matters is that we are playing our part in the universe in our time.

      This echoes of Walt Whitman’s famous answer in O Me! O Life! which will always be read with the voice of Robin Williams in my head:

      “That you are here—that life exists and identity,
      That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

      Some of us forever dwell on the why. Some descend into nihilism, as if a why matters a lick, for existence itself is folly. And some simply get straight to work, believing action creates a why. The only thing we control is our reaction to the world we find ourselves dropped into. What do we find when we break down the word reaction? Google AI to the podium:

      “The Latin word reāctiō is the origin of both the Old French and Middle English words, which comes from the verb reagō. Reagō is made up of the prefix re- meaning ‘again’ and the word agō meaning ‘to act’.”

      To act again. Like wind blowing through the grass, we stir meaning out of the inanimate and create a life for ourselves. This is what it means to be alive. To play a part infers action, for which we must boldly embrace our agency. Life has purpose or it’s meaningless—we play a part in determining which it will be. Who says we can’t make our part a thrilling page-turner?

    • Buried Treasure

      I know, you never intended to be in this world.
      But you’re in it all the same.
      so why not get started immediately.
      I mean, belonging to it.
      There is so much to admire, to weep over.
      And to write music or poems about.
      — Mary Oliver, The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

      I know that there’s darkness in the world. I know that my time in it will draw to a close one day. I can hope that day is long from now, but really, who knows? And so I work to make something beautiful of this day, even if the world never finds it—it will be my buried treasure awaiting discovery. Perhaps this blog post, perhaps a photograph, or maybe the way a passage I underlined in a book long ago, that escapes even me.

      The snow is accumulating, layering above the frozen lawn, hiding those stubborn acorns and oak leaves that fell after the very last cleanup. There is never a last cleanup, they whisper. Life is a cycle and we are merely surfers catching a wave in our time. We aren’t meant to wrestle with infinity, it’s always had the advantage of waiting us out. Those holdout acorns have become buried treasure too.

      Each day I find some small project to finish. A book I thought would never end, a bit of paint on the wooden trim, a call I’ve been reluctant to make, a paragraph written and re-written in hopes of being published one day. Maybe, like those acorns buried under the falling snow, our work will be frozen in time awaiting some moment in the sun. Our best treasure still hides within. We must stop hiding and venture out into the world, while there’s time for such things.

    • By Whatever Name

      Every day I’m still looking for God
      and I’m still finding him everywhere,
      in the dust, in the flowerbeds.
      Certainly in the oceans,
      in the islands that lay in the distance
      continents of ice, countries of sand
      each with its own set of creatures
      and God, by whatever name.
      How perfect to be aboard a ship with
      maybe a hundred years still in my pocket.
      But it’s late, for all of us,
      and in truth the only ship there is
      is the ship we are all on
      burning the world as we go.
      — Mary Oliver, On Traveling to Beautiful Places

      It’s late for all us. We can see this when we pay attention to such things. We can see the world burning as we go, we see the games of distraction that keep the masses occupied while the power brokers pad their pockets, and apparently we can’t do all that much about it. As I’ve said before, all we can really do is build resiliency and beauty into our own lives. But maybe we can do a little more. Maybe we can help others, lost in the darkness, find their way to beauty too.

      To be aboard a ship with maybe a hundred years still in my pocket… Ah the places we’d go! We’ve only got this one go at things, and it’s late for all of us. Where shall we go today? The more I see, the more I come back to where I started. Our life’s work is ourselves, and as Michelangelo put it, seeing the angel in the marble and carving until we set him free. Yes, it’s getting late for all of us, but we may still keep carving to release the angels.

      I’m not particularly religious (when you see the power brokers for who they are you see them everywhere), but there’s an undercurrent of spirituality running through me that is best expressed in empathy and reverence. Perhaps you feel that too. What’s beautiful in this world is realizing the connection. We’re all in the same boat, spinning through the universe, infinitesimal yet infinite all at once. Isn’t that miraculous?

    • The Diplomat

      “Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou

      Every trip reminds me that we’re mostly all the same. Would that everyone travel more, that they too might learn this lesson. True, the popular tourist destinations are already crowded enough, but the lessons aren’t learned on a tour bus or cruise ship anyway. To know people we must meet them on their terms, where they live, without the sticker telling everyone which group we’re in.

      I am a diplomat without the pension plan. Wherever I go, I work to meet people halfway. That may be Rome or London now and then, but mostly it’s the person next to me on a train or a restaurant. I don’t know who they voted for most of the time (unless they’re wearing the uniform), but it honestly doesn’t matter anyway. The job of the diplomat is to build bridges, not to tear them down.

      Each day I work my craft. It’s not manipulation I practice, but the craft of reaching understanding and finding something in common with that human I’m interacting with. Most people reflect back that which we project onto them (the rest are narcissists or psychopaths—it helps to realize when you encounter them too). The diplomats are the ones who keep this fabric of humanity woven together. Someone’s got to do it.

    • Source Material

      “Who are you? They called out, at the edge of the village. I am one of you, the poet called back. Though he was dressed like the wind, though he looked like a waterfall.” — Mary Oliver, Pen and Paper and a Breath of Air

      This morning there was a hard frost on the lawn, and a bit of sea smoke mingling with fog across the bay. The sky was pastel and postcard perfect. Why do we leave such places? Because life happens beyond the bliss of the comfortable moment. There’s so much more to discover and do, just over the bridge between here and what’s to come.

      Scanning the headlines it was evident that the doom cycle is in full gear. Wars, accidents, murder and a heated national election. It’s all a hot mess. No wonder so many people are irrational and afraid. No knock on responsible (and absolutely necessary) journalism, but there are those who seek profit in rapt attention. Shame on all of them, they who profit on dissent and tragedy and the misery of others, for they serve the darkest depths of human instincts. We may acknowledge the lessons without slowing down to have a good look. For all the madness that pastel sky indicated another perspective.

      It’s all source material for how we live our own lives, and for what we produce ourselves. Do we carry light or darkness with us in our oeuvre? To produce anything in this noisy world that may resonate with another is challenging, and leaning into formulaic and familiar may feel like a shortcut to acceptance in a fickle world, but aren’t we simply a part of the choir then? Where is our own voice? What differentiates us more than marching to our own beat? We may choose to be the source material for those who would follow. We may choose to be true to ourself.

    • Fears, Growth and Energy

      “If we do not have the depths, how do we have the heights? Yet you fear the depths, and do not want to confess that you are afraid of them. It is good, though, that you fear yourselves; say it out loud that you are afraid of yourselves. It is wisdom to fear oneself. Only the heroes say that they are fearless. But you know what happens to the hero.” — Carl Jung, The Red Book

      “Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.” — Steven Pressfield

      I’m not particularly afraid of the dark, but when I walk the dog at night I still bring a flashlight with me. Part of that is practical (try scooping up dog poop without light) and part of that is hedging my bets. I may not need the flashlight to see, but if a pack of coyotes decided to come out of the woods to face down my dog and me, seeing clearly slightly improves our odds.

      The thing is, we’re much more likely to encounter shit in our daily reconciliation with life than a pack of wild animals. But we must build resilience for those black swan events anyway. It’s only when we put ourselves in a fragile or vulnerable state that we are truly in peril.

      There are different kinds of fear we humans must face. Let’s start with the fear of the known and the fear of the unknown. Both are heavy hitters, aren’t they? If we know for sure that we’re going to have the crap kicked out of us, there’s an element of fear about the danger we clearly see approaching us, whether that crap-kicker is a person, animal or a storm, we know we’re in big trouble and it’s scary. All we can do in such moments is hope that we’re resilient, skilled or lucky enough to survive.

      Then there’s the fear of the unknown. Anyone who’s watched Jaws knows that the shark is much scarier before you really see it than it is afterwards. Likewise, fear of the dark is fear of what you don’t see. What we don’t know is far scarier than what we do know.

      We ought to condition ourselves to face our fears and do things anyway. I regularly begin most conversations with strangers rather than shrink back into myself, just to see where it takes us. I don’t mind speaking up at public events because I’ve conditioned myself to do it. Anyone can do that, if they really want to. Just do the scary thing, face the unknown and realize whatever the worst thing we imagined would happen wasn’t all that bad in reality. Then do it again.

      I currently have an underlying fear of the unknown with the United States Presidential election coming up Tuesday. I can’t control anything but my own vote, but I can fear for the future of democracy. Likewise I can fear the rising environmental crisis, the impact of artificial intelligence in everything from fake news to the proficiency of hackers to the ability of AI to take away the jobs of creative people. It’s all unknown and a little scary when you think about it.

      The thing is, everything I just mentioned are forces outside of my control. The only way to navigate these kinds of unknowns is one at a time. Bring the flashlight and phone when you walk in dark places. Live in a home situated above the 100 year flood zone. Buy insurance. Diversify investments. Exercise and eat well that we have a strong foundation for the inevitable health challenges that comes in time for all of us. Build layers of protection into our lives and we put ourselves in a position to survive and maybe even thrive. But still, vote like your country depends on it.

      Still with me? I know this is a long one, but fear is a deep topic. And we haven’t even gotten to the biggest fear of all: fear of failure. This is the ultimate unknown staring us down between the ears. Fear of failure makes a lot of sense if we’re walking a tight rope or doing a free solo rock climb high up on a cliff. The consequences aren’t nearly so high in most cases. Most failure bears out as embarrassment or setbacks—things we can learn from that lead to growth.

      So do ask the dumb question, ask out the person you want to be with, take the leap of faith on the job that is very different from the last one. We never know until we try. But in each case, do the work to be prepared for the moment. Informed “dumb” questions are better than ignorant dumb questions. Having the emotional intelligence to be with the person you’re asking out improves one’s odds of success when asking them out. Developing the skillset to handle the job we aspire to inevitably leads to better results than simply winging it when we walk in the door on day one.

      It all comes back to that invaluable Boy Scouts motto: Be prepared. When we’re prepared for the moment the moment becomes less scary. So prepare! And know what failure really means before taking the calculated risk. This is what gives us the best opportunity for success. When we’re prepared and know we’ve done the work, fear may still tingle the spine, but it’s transformed into productive energy.

    • The Start of Something New

      “One is never afraid of the unknown, one is afraid of the known coming to an end.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti

      Last month I left a job I’d been in for 6 1/2 years. It was coming to an end for some time, and the company did me the favor of reminding me that I was an employee at will. I have another job lined up and ready to go in a couple of weeks, so there’s no real underlying stress in the move, more a move from that which I’d grown comfortable with to a move towards something completely different. So it goes. In my mind it was a necessary sabbatical, and the time filled with consequential experiences I might have missed otherwise.

      Ending anything can be hard, especially if the ending wasn’t our choice. We’ve all had our heart broken at some point in our lives. Holding on for dear life isn’t a good look in relationships, in a career, or really with anything we know we must let go of. Still, there’s something exhilarating about starting something entirely new. We learn through all the changes we go through in a lifetime that change in itself is usually for the better. The hard part is letting go of what we once had. Yet it’s still a part of us, isn’t it?

      What is known is comfortable for many (and stale for others). Conversely, what is unknown is either scary or tantalizing, depending on how ready we are for change. Each encounter with the unknown makes us more prepared for the next. In a lifetime of change, we learn that each is simply another step forward for us, even when it may feel like going backwards. Indeed, life is change, ready or not. Why hold on to something simply because it’s comfortable when our time here is so short? Dance with the unknown. Start something new.