Alexandersmap

    Tag: Philosophy

    • 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?

    • 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.