Alexandersmap

    Tag: Philosophy

    • Here in My Mold

      ‘Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony, that’s life
      Tryna make ends meet
      You’re a slave to money then you die
      I’ll take you down the only road I’ve ever been down
      You know the one that takes you to the places
      Where all the veins meet yeah
      No change, I can change
      I can change, I can change
      But I’m here in my mold
      I am here in my mold
      But I’m a million different people
      From one day to the next
      I can’t change my mold
      No, no, no, no, no
      Have you ever been down?
      — The Verve, Bitter Sweet Symphony

      Do you hear Thoreau’s “quiet desperation” quote in your head reading the lyrics of Bitter Sweet Symphony? This song exploded in the mid-1990’s, becoming a theme song of sorts for Generation X and maybe some of those who followed. How do the lyrics hold up, almost three decades later? I think it depends on how well you’ve broken free of your mold.

      Breaking free of that mold you’ve been cast in and following your heart is reckless. The very idea of breaking free disrupts all you’ve built around you. For what is a mold but that? Our very place in this world is determined by where we place ourselves. Life is change and moving beyond our old self. We must grow and see where the road takes us. Where our heart takes us.

      Watching people you care about quickly turn from vibrantly alive to quickly sliding into the next triggers an urgency to break molds. To do the things you’ve been putting off and live today. This is what the stoics have been telling us all along. Memento Mori. Carpe Diem.

      Get after it already. Follow the road where all your veins meet. We can all change.

    • To Shine, in Verse


      Let’s go, my poet,
      let’s dawn
      and sing
      in a gray tattered world.
      I shall pour forth my sun,
      and you—your own,
      in verse.”
      — Vladimir Mayakovsky, An Extraordinary Adventure Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovsky In A Summer Cottage

      We look at the world through our own lens. It’s relatively easy to be optimistic about the future when you aren’t facing a violent end, or the relentless oppression of an authoritarian government. Bullies tend to sap the creativity out of most poets and artists. But every now and then you run into one that stands up to the bully, puts their work out there and lets it speak for itself despite it all.

      Mayakovsky published this charming little poem about having tea with the sun in 1920. I visit it now not to celebrate the void of positive leadership in Russia since then, but rather the resilience of the poet in the face of darkness. Mayakovsky would eventually succumb to that darkness, committing suicide a decade or so after writing this dance with light. Humans aren’t meant to live in darkness. We must find a source of energy and hope to carry on.

      We choose to focus on the positive in this world, not because we’re delusional, but because the only hope for our collective future is in optimism and love. Mayakovsky’s poem ends with a radiance that illuminates us still. It offers an example to press on with our work, to fight for what is right and true. For not everything in the world slips into darkness. We still might shine.

      Always to shine,
      to shine everywhere,
      to the very deeps of the last days,
      to shine—
      and to hell with everything else!
      That is my motto—
      and the sun’s!

    • Holding the Love I’ve Known

      When my body won’t hold me anymore
      And it finally lets me free
      Where will I go?
      Will the trade winds take me south through Georgia grain?
      Or tropical rain?
      Or snow from the heavens?
      Will I join with the ocean blue?
      Or run into a savior true?
      And shake hands laughing
      And walk through the night, straight to the light
      Holding the love I’ve known in my life
      And no hard feelings
      — The Avett Brothers, No Hard Feelings

      I’m watching four people in my family waste away before my eyes. We all have our time, but it still comes as a shock when that time is in such close proximity to now. When you’re the one holding it together for them and others you learn a few things about yourself. Mostly you learn to stop deferring and just say and do the things that need saying and doing.

      I’ve noticed some doubt and regret overwhelm those facing rapidly receding time on this earth. Life is unfair, we all see that and reconcile with it as best we can, but it’s particularly unfair for those who have the rug pulled out from under them in the prime of life. You mean to have that conversation, experience that moment, see that place for the first time or maybe for one last time, and realize that you’ll never reach it.

      What are we to do, knowing we haven’t done all we want to do, but celebrate what we did have the chance to do? To hold on to the love we have known? For that’s all that matters in the end. We make the ripple we make, and hope that the world might feel the urge to surf it. Life isn’t the accumulation of stuff or places or rungs on the career ladder, it’s the people you love in this world.

      We all have our time, sometimes far sooner than we ever imagined. We either hold a grudge with the universe or dance in the time we have left. No hard feelings—only love.

    • The Act of Being

      “It’s worth realigning our doing, to whatever degree we can, with our joy. Even better, find your joy in the act of being. And almost all doing can become joyful as a consequence.” — Neil Strauss

      There is plenty to be unhappy about in the world. Circumstances aren’t always optimal for joy. But let’s be honest, life is rarely optimized for joy. We must focus on collecting the bits of it together and build our own joy nugget. This isn’t delusional, it’s purposeful living.

      We all know people who find no joy in anything. We all know people who find joy in everything. Which do you suppose is the better way to go through life?

      Be joyful. Enjoy being. Simple? No, but deliberate.

    • One Week in Infinity

      “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
      ― Vladimir Lenin

      I’m hesitant to quote Lenin for all the reasons you might imagine, but the quote resonates this particular week, when the world and my own world turned in on itself and landed with a thud. Plans and lives can change in an instant. Our bravado betrays us as our fragility surprises us. It might all seem too much.

      And yet the rivers still flow to the sea. The sun continues to greet us every morning, indifferent to humanity’s struggles. The most distant stars reach across 100,000+ years to express their indifference, and their light keeps on reaching beyond us to infinity. Who are we to fixate on a single week?

      And yet, in the microscope of a human lifetime, Lenin’s quote rings true. Some weeks are far more eventful than others. Some moments stay with us forever. But what is forever for you and me? We weren’t built to dance with infinity, but we can dance with today.

      Like that starlight flying past us, this moment will pass. We will pass. But we each play our small part in what happens before it all flies away. We ought to make the most of it.

    • Playing At the Edges of Knowing

      I believe I will never quite know.
      Though I play at the edges of knowing,
      truly I know
      our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving,
      which is the way I walked on,
      softly,
      through the pale-pink morning light.
      — Mary Oliver, Bone

      Like the beach Mary Oliver walked in this poem, life ebbs and flows. We either surf the rip or get pulled under by it. This latest period of chaos could overwhelm us or strengthen our resolve to persevere in the face of it.

      We never quite know all that we seek to understand. Just when we think we’ve got it figured out the world throws another curveball at you. Coming out of a pandemic, thinking that things will finally get better and… they don’t. Not yet anyway. You know that this too shall pass, somehow. But life asks us to wait just a bit longer still. Or life tells you that your time has come, sooner than you expected it to. Just when you thought you’d arrived.

      Our part is not meant to be easy. Our part is not knowing, but staying with it anyway. Our part is to support one another in the face of uncertainty.

      Amor Fati, or “love of fate”, is the stoic’s answer to these times. Amor is not quite right. We don’t have to love our fate. But accepting it frees us to focus on the moments we have together. While there’s still time.

    • Focus in Chaos

      How do you stay informed in a world gone mad without losing focus on the things that are most important for you? It’s not easy–we can all find something very distracting and completely out of our control just a click away. I allocate time for my daily news update from trusted sources, absorb the weight of it and do my best to keep crossing the stream of time one leap at a time without drowning in the abyss.

      When you refocus on that next leap, does it mean you’ve chosen ignorance, or discipline? For all of us to remain sane in a time of escalating tension, we can’t keep drinking from the fountain of bad news. Be aware, react and refocus on what we can control. We don’t cross the street without looking both ways, and we shouldn’t completely ignore the world around us. But it doesn’t mean we should huddle in fear and never take the first step towards our destination. We can’t bring light into this world without action.

      Just like those before us, our time is full of challenges and assaults on our senses. And like those who came before we must find a way to focus anyway. The only real choice is to assess our place, summon up the necessary audacity and make the leap.

      Be bold, despite it all.

    • Transcending the Path

      I’m told that Iddo Landau once said that we should all “transcend the common and the mundane.” Yesterday I had an opportunity to test that with a drive through parts of five of the United States on my way from New Hampshire to New Jersey. How do you transcend a long and overly familiar drive? Music helps, and I dove deep into a healthy mix of early 90’s grunge early on, mixed in a compelling podcast and made a few calls. I stopped for coffee and talked to two veterans of the Korean War for a few minutes, thanking them for their service and sharing a hope for peace in this crazy world. The commute soon slipped away and I was surprised to see the Tappan Zee Bridge rise up ahead of me. I arrived at my destination right when I thought I might.

      If life is short, shouldn’t we seize even these common and mundane moments? Our life path takes us to mountaintops and magical evenings with those we love, but it also takes us through White Plains, New York on a random Monday. What we do with that part of the path is what matters most.

      The world has taught us that none of this should be taken for granted. We might start out with the intention of getting from here to there, but we can never be sure how it will go or whether we’ll actually arrive until we get there. Making the most of each moment as the miles tick away is a way of living the axiom, “it’s the journey, not the destination”. There’s no better opportunity to prove that than on a rather common and mundane part of life’s journey.

    • To Be Alive

      “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond them.” — Alan Watts

      “The sound of the rain needs no translation. In music one doesn’t make the end of the composition the point of the composition. Same way in dancing, you don’t aim at one particular spot in the room… The whole point of dancing is the dance.” — Alan Watts

      If there were ever a counterargument to an overt focus on productivity and shipping our work every day, it would be these two quotes (and just about every Thoreau quote I draw upon). Life is about the dance, not about arriving at a place. To be alive is the whole point. Knowing that, how are we doing? Do we greet today as a new song to dance to, or as “Monday”? If every day is a new song, what do we hear when we wake up? Do we go immediately to our to-do list or simply begin to dance?

      Happy Monday.

    • Outward Expression

      “I feel as if my life had grown more outward when I can express it.”
      ― Henry David Thoreau,       A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

      There’s a tricky thing in writing—deep introspection is conveyed through outward expression. When you read a lot you stumble on some deeply damaged characters who had the courage to put it all out there on paper for others to see. I’ve mined myself similarly, but I don’t have the deep scars that others seem to have. Blame it on a good family growing up, but the fuel for the writing isn’t to draw out the pain of the past but rather to tap into the experience and intense gratitude of being alive at this time. That doesn’t mean there aren’t scars, how does anyone live an unsheltered life without scars? That which you once were is a memory that haunts you or spurs you towards becoming a better person. I’ve long ago buried the character I hated in myself, though he keeps trying to crawl out of his grave.

      Decide what to be and go be it.

      There’s a feeling that comes over you when you decide what to be. It’s like a magnet that pulls you in the direction you want to go in. My sailor and hiker friends know this, for it relentlessly pulls them towards their True North. I smile when someone questions why someone would put all their eggs in one basket. If you haven’t found your basket you can’t possibly know why others do what they do.

      “I don’t want to swim in a roped off sea.” — Jimmy Buffett, Cowboy in the Jungle

      We all have our calling. Do we listen to it or to the helpful guidance of others? When you find that direction, killing time on other things feels like you’re strangling yourself. Urgency and purpose demand your attention. The only way forward is deliberate action. Growing outward requires we stretch ourselves beyond what we once were, and then to keep doing it over and over again. To reach out towards where we want to be often means pulling away from what we once were.