Alexandersmap

    Tag: Philosophy

    • What’s Next?

      What do you do with the day after a holiday? You clean up, maybe you feel the need to clean yourself up a bit, and then you move on. It’s a reset, if you will, with the lingering glow of celebration slowly fading into memory.

      Americans are waking up to the day after Independence Day. Yards are filled with debris from exploded ordinance, recycling bins are chock full and the wildlife that surrounds the house slowly recovers from the shock of humanity fully expressing themselves. And oh boy, do we express ourselves.

      Americans tend to be hard drivers in the game of life. Work hard, play hard is the favorite expression. You’re either into the madness and frenzy of the moment or you’re not. Those who are not are using the long weekend to get away from the noise and hike or sequester themselves in some quiet cottage somewhere away from it all.

      The day after Independence Day we look up and see that half the year has slipped away and we’ve moved from the earliest days of summer to the height of summer. The days are getting warmer but shorter all at the same time. You aren’t moving towards the sun now, you’re slipping away from it.

      For all the talk of New Year’s Eve and resolutions, the day after Independence Day is the day when I look around at how my year is going, and how my life is going after the frenzied first half and decide how and what I’m going to change in this second half. It’s the midway point of the year, with so much already accomplished or so much potential untapped. But it’s not either/or, is it? More likely a bit of both.

      The day after is the day when you shake off the cobwebs and finally stop for a moment. There’s still so much you can do in the year. Still so much you have to do. The growing season is well underway, but there’s plenty of time before the harvest to do some meaningful work. So it’s a fair time to ask yourself, in the quiet of the morning after the madness, what’s next?

      If July 4th celebrates the Declaration of Independence, what will we declare for ourselves as we look to the future? Shouldn’t we make it just as bold? If that document tells us anything, it’s that an inspired vision that you can get behind can make a big difference in where you go next.

    • A Beautiful Reluctance

      We were born saying goodbye
      to what we love,
      we were born
      in a beautiful reluctance
      to be here,
      not quite ready
      to breathe in this new world
      – David Whyte, Cleave

      I understand this reluctance. I wrestle with it myself. And tackle the moments as they wash over me and undermine my footing like a relentless surf. We’re never quite ready for what the world throws at us, but with a subtle shift and a will to persevere we find a way to keep our footing.

      For all the harshness in the world we learn that, more often than not, the waves come from within. The demons aren’t out there marching towards you in waves, they whisper in your ear. The distractions and busywork and perceived obligations squander our moments and precious minutes. The reluctance pulls at our sleeve, back towards what we are comfortable with, back towards the safe and predictable and indistinct.

      Each step is uncertain, but slowly we move forward. The farther we venture, the harder it is to hear the call to come back. And in the growing quiet we might hear something just out of reach. Just ahead. And we continue towards those who call us, towards the Muse, towards our boldest dreams. One moment, and one breath at a time.

      But it begins, as it must, with goodbye.

    • Forever is Our Today

      But touch my tears with your lips
      Touch my world with your fingertips
      And we can have forever
      And we can love forever
      Forever is our today
      – Queen, Who Wants to Live Forever

      This idea of living forever is tantalizing, isn’t it? It fuels our fascination with vampires and elves and superheroes, but I’m not sure it’s in our best interest to be immortal. We waste so much time already. Maybe time running out is a gift. as Jason Isbell wrote in his magical song I quoted last week. It does tend to focus us on the urgency of the moment, doesn’t it?

      There are advancements in science that offer legitimate hope for extending life 2-3 times longer than our current lifespan. Swap out a bit of DNA code for something better and become almost invincible. To cure all ills and live a healthy vibrant 150-200 years seems like pure fantasy, but there are people like Peter Diamandis with his company Human Longevity actively pursuing this now. Which makes you wonder, to what end?

      Will longevity become like plastic surgery for the truly vain, with constant adjustments and tweaks to our genetic code based on the latest blood work? Probably. Who wants to live forever? Plenty of people. And the wealthy have the means to chase it. If you want to be in the genetic engineering game you’d better be adept at accumulating wealth before the bill comes due.

      Will our pursuit of immortality lead humanity down unethical paths? There’s no doubt. Hostile governments are likely already working on superhuman soldiers with incredible strength and no fear. 60 Minutes recently aired a segment about foreign governments accumulating information about your DNA. We’re really just at the early stages of exponential growth in genetic engineering. Ethical questions abound.

      “It is naïve to imagine that we might simply hit the brakes and stop the scientific projects that are upgrading Homo sapiens into a different kind of being. For these projects are inextricably meshed together with the Gilgamesh Project… since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, the real question facing us is not ‘What do we want to become?’, but ‘What do we want to want?’ Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven’t given it enough thought… Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want? – Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens

      Pretty heavy ethical questions right there. But fair to ask. What is the mission anyway? Perfection? Dominance? Immortality? To what end? There are plenty of selfish, irresponsible people who demonstrate every day that we can’t just trust people to do the right thing. If Sapiens detailed anything in fine detail, it’s that humanity has shoved aside questions about ethics and fairness at almost every step in our existence.

      So where does that leave you and me? There’s the shared wealth of knowledge we can lean on as science sifts through what works and what doesn’t. We all know to exercise more and eat more blueberries and kale. Are we really chasing immortality or just a healthier, more vibrant life in the time that we have? Better surpasses longer on the priority list, I should think. Why would anyone want to extend a miserable life indefinitely? To hold out for just one more Fast & Furious movie to see how it all turns out?

      What do we want to want? Yikes. Forever seems pretty attractive, but personally, I’d like to master today. Forego the maddening crush of distractions pulling you towards perfect smiles and perfect abs and the perfect family and just be incrementally better than yesterday. A good start would be to be fitter and sharper through good decisions and a little discipline. String enough good days together and maybe you have just enough life in the end. Immortality is folly. But we can have today.

    • This Audacious Tango

      There was a time when I would consistently win chess games against the Apple chess application. I’d have the difficulty set to just the right place to challenge myself but not so challenging that I couldn’t win if I played well. Apple has since adjusted the settings to make it impossible to win a game unless, I imagine, you sign up for Apple Arcade or some such monthly fee. That’s a game I won’t play.

      So what do you do when it’s impossible to win a chess game against a computer? Join an online chess group and play against a person somewhere else in the world? Play a [gasp!] physical game of chess on a board against real humans? Or quietly give up the game and focus on other things, like that project you’re actively avoiding with computer games?

      I’ve learned to embrace the impossible coldness of computer chess against this cyber bully. Like life itself, we never get out alive, so why not dance with it? You could try to delete the app in frustration (Apple taunts you by making this nearly as hard as the game itself). You could pretend it doesn’t exist. I choose to dance, in moderation, with the futility of it all. To see how long I can play before the wave of artificial intelligence overwhelms my attempts to stem the tide. And in doing so, I’ve come to understand gallows humor a little better.

      We’re all dead men walking. No matter how much we try to game the system we’re all going to pass eventually. So, like that chess game, why not play the best game of life you can? Why not see how far you can take this audacious tango before the Almighty (Be it the Grim Reaper, God, Apple…. whatever) taps you on your shoulder and sends you to the sidelines?

      Life is full of moments when you realize that, dammit, things just aren’t going the way you wanted them to. We can either walk away in frustration or learn some new moves. Enjoy the moment for what it is and for all that it offers. The genetic lottery placed us here against all odds. We ought to show a bit of panache in our brief time in the game.

      That ought to mean, I should think, less time in front of a computer screen playing games and more time out in the world. Doing audacious things. Like meeting vibrant people out in the wild. Ready?

    • Gardens and Purpose

      One of the neighbors won the town’s garden of the month award for June. He does have a lovely garden in the front yard. I imagine it was especially satisfying because the guy next door to him, someone he’s been in something of a rivalry with for twenty years, won this particular award years ago. As a neutral party, I’ve heard both sides of this particular story, and am well-practiced in steering the conversation on to other things.

      My own garden has never won the town’s garden of the month award. I believe this is in part a result of my distinct focus on the backyard garden, which I view as an oasis, and maybe also a distinct lack of focus on winning this particular award. But the whole thing got me thinking, maybe it’s time to double down on the front garden? Maybe it’s time to show some gardening spunk?

      I look around knowing the work I put into the garden, knowing the battles with the weeds and the trees. And I wonder, what is the purpose of all of this anyway? I’m not chasing awards. I’m not growing a meaningful amount of food for my family. So why do it at all?

      Simply put, the garden is a place for me to meditate for a while. A place to pay my penance and focus on something besides myself. A handy escape destination during a pandemic or after a particularly long commute. And an expression of hope for the future and optimism for my place in it.

      I suppose that’s enough. Still, I am competitive. And that award looks awfully nice sitting in the neighbor’s front lawn…

      Which brings me to purpose. What are we invested in? What prompts you out of bed in the morning? What’s your why? Those two neighbors up the street are retired now, and things like gardening awards drive them. I’m driven by experience, and the garden is a vehicle to get to the experiences I want out of my time on this plot of land.

      For all the frustrations of a garden – like getting a catbird out from the inside of the elaborate netting I’d put around my blueberries, installing fencing to keep the rabbits out, and the battles with the other assorted pests that test my patience, there’s an underlying message in the work. It all ends up being the purpose. About having a go at something and making it work against the odds. Anyone can do easy – there are plenty of pristine lawns across America. A garden says something else entirely about you. It says that we want something more and we’re willing to work for it.

      Maybe that deserves an award after all.

    • Wake, Into This Life

      The sound
      of a bell
      still reverberating.

      or a blackbird
      calling
      from a corner
      of the
      field.

      Asking you
      to wake
      into this life
      or inviting you
      deeper
      to one that waits.

      Either way
      takes courage,
      either way wants you
      to be nothing
      but that self that
      is no self at all,
      wants you to walk
      to the place
      where you find
      you already know
      how to give
      every last thing
      away.
      – David Whyte, The Bell and the Blackbird

      A poem like this grabs you just like that bell or blackbird, reverberating inside and declaring it sees what you’re doing. What you’re not doing. And reminds you that time is quickly slipping away. And yet here you are, giving it all away.

      Or are you?

      When we finally wake up into this life, we see the uneven ground we walk on, the big asks and the small favors that add up. How do we deal with that, when we finally see life as it is? Do we run away from it or embrace it?

      What is asked of us is not the point of life. What matters is what we give. Willingly or grudgingly, what we give back to life is all that ever matters.

      Have the courage to be selfless.

      Have the courage to give it all away and go to what awaits you.

      But wake up.

    • To Be Touched by Everything I’ve Found

      One obvious problem with long drives is that it eats into reading time. You can solve this with audio books, of course, but then what of podcasts? As a heavy consumer of both, what do you choose? And this is where time becomes our enemy.

      Long drives require epic podcast episodes, and there’s nothing more epic than Hardcore History with Dan Carlin. For the last year I’ve been saving long stretches of travel to complete Supernova of the East, which is like all of Carlin’s podcasts: devastating edge of your seat listening. You want a little perspective as you crawl along in traffic over the Tappan Zee Bridge? Listen to the details of the Battle of Okinawa as Carlin spins his magic.

      What do you do when you’ve finished a series like Supernova of the East and you need to step back into the better side of humanity? Music helps. Lately I’ve been mixing classic rock and what today is known as “Americana” music (personally, I just call it music). Specifically, diving into old Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young tunes and new Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit compilations. Looking for poetry set to music? You can’t go wrong with either. As a lover of words piled together just so, Isbell does to your brain cells what a complex Cabernet does to your taste buds.

      The best I can do
      Is to let myself trust that you know
      Who’ll be strong enough to carry your heart
      – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Letting You Go

      When you get to a hotel room in some remote place and you’ve caught up on all those emails and administrative work, what next? Drink? Watch television? Or dive back into the books that have tapping you on the shoulder for attention? There’s a place for every form of entertainment, but in most of my travels the hotel television never gets turned on. But the Kindle app does.

      After some consistent prodding by a friend of mine, I’m finally finishing Sapiens by Yusef Noah Harari. I know, what took me so long? Honestly it just kept slipping down the pile as other books jumped ahead. Regrettable, but life is about tradeoffs. What we choose to dance with in our brief time makes all the difference in how we see the world. Now that I’ve almost wrapped it up, I see what all the fuss is about.

      “Even today, with all our advanced technologies, more than 90 per cent of the calories that feed humanity come from the handful of plants that our ancestors domesticated between 9500 and 3500 BC – wheat, rice, maize (called ‘corn’ in the US), potatoes, millet and barley. No noteworthy plant or animal has been domesticated in the last 2,000 years. If our minds are those of hunter-gatherers, our cuisine is that of ancient farmers.” – Yusef Noah Harari, Sapiens

      Speaking of that stack of books, I put aside a couple of other books to focus on completing Sapiens. One in particular, The Blind Watchmaker, is a heavier lift than Sapiens, but compliments it well. I’ve referenced it before in the blog, and look forward to moving it to the virtual “done” pile. Combined, these two books have shaken my perspective of the world and how we got here.

      “If you have a mental picture of X and you find it implausible that the human eye could have arisen directly from it, this simply means that you have chosen the wrong X.” – Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

      Inevitably I need to sprinkle in page-turner fiction, poetry and sharp left turn material to shake off reality until I can catch my breath again. Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda was a definite left turn for me, an interesting read that got me thinking about mysticism and craving more time in the desert Southwest.

      “You can do better. There is one simple thing wrong with you—you think you have plenty of time.” – Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan

      The Sea in You: Twenty Poems of Requited and Unrequited Love by David Whyte is a lovely collection of poems by one of our living masters. Whyte stirs words together with the best of them and catches my imagination with his alchemy. I’ll surely spend more time with Whyte in this blog in the near future.

      “be weathered by what comes to you, like the way you
      too
      have travelled from so far away to be here, once
      reluctant
      and now as solid and as here and as willing
      to be touched as everything you have found.”
      – David Whyte, The Sea in You: Twenty Poems of Requited and Unrequited Love

      We collect bits of wisdom and memorable nuggets in our consumption. Does this make us better conversationalists or a faster draw on Jeopardy? Most likely, but there’s something more to it than that. To revisit the old cliche, we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. What we consume either amplifies our biases or challenges them. I choose to be challenged, and find myself slowly stretching and building a better mind, with greater perspective, through what I listen to, watch and read.

      In short, to be touched by everything I’ve found.

    • Illusions of the Moment

      “When you go through life with preferences but don’t let your happiness depend on any one of them, then you’re awake. You’re moving toward wakefulness. Wakefulness, happiness—call it what you wish—is the state of nondelusion, where you see things not as you are but as they are, insofar as this is possible for a human being. To drop illusions, to see things, to see reality. Every time you are unhappy, you have added something to reality. It is that addition that makes you unhappy. I repeat: You have added something … a negative reaction in you. Reality provides the stimulus, you provide the reaction. You have added something by your reaction. And if you examine what you have added, there is always an illusion there, there’s a demand, an expectation, a craving.” – Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      Monday mornings are a good time to revisit De Mello. To confront the reality of the work week ahead without dread requires a measure of acceptance of the moment you’re living in. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing do something else as soon as you possibly can. If you enjoy it, understand what it draws out of you and double down on that. Most people in the world today have the freedom to choose how they react.

      The entire quote above might immediately makes you think of Viktor Frankl’s thoughts on stimulus and response. Even in the worst of moments, we can choose how to react to stimulus in our lives. Accept the truth of the matter for what it is and see things for how they are. That might not make you happy, but it makes you fully aware. And don’t we need to be in that state to make effective, meaningful decisions in our lives?

      The question is, what exactly are you adding in the moment? What are your illusions about the way things ought to be, about how someone should speak with you, about wearing a mask or getting vaccinated or how we see a person a bit different from ourself? How do you view that job you’re going to or the title you have or the car you drive? How about how you view the person driving in front of you or the one trying to pass you? What are you adding in that moment?

      We often confront illusions in how others treat us. I had a conversation with an old friend who was poking at me about a tendency I used to have when we were younger. I smiled and let the moment slide away, knowing I’m not that person anymore. You learn to accept who you once were as you get older. But doing so in the moment is a bit trickier, isn’t it? It requires us to be constantly aware of the illusions we’re throwing up. What story am I telling myself right now? And what might happen if I simply subtracted that story?

      This idea of observing yourself in the moment between stimulus and response is a way of getting outside of your own head and seeing the choices in front of you. To shatter the illusion that you don’t have a choice in how you react. To shift to a state of non-delusion and maybe, to choose the path towards happiness. In the thirty years since I first read Man’s Search for Meaning and accelerating in the two years since I read Awareness I’ve chipped away at this within myself. I’m under no illusion that I’ve mastered it, but I work with the tools available to step outside myself towards wakefulness.

      This is a skill that is especially handy on some Monday mornings.

    • Since It Must Be So

      “For Sayonara, literally translated, ‘Since it must be so,’ of all the good-bys I have heard is the most beautiful. Unlike the Auf Wiedershens and Au revoirs, it does not try to cheat itself by any bravado ‘Till we meet again,’ any sedative to postpone the pain of separation. It does not evade the issue like the sturdy blinking Farewell. Farewell is a father’s good-by. It is – ‘Go out in the world and do well, my son.’ It is encouragement and admonition. It is hope and faith. But it passes over the significance of the moment; of parting it says nothing. It hides its emotion. It says too little. While Good-by (‘God be with you’) and Adios say too much. They try to bridge the distance, almost to deny it. Good-by is a prayer, a ringing cry. ‘You must not go – I cannot bear to have you go! But you shall not go alone, unwatched. God will be with you. God’s hand will over you’ and even – underneath, hidden, but it is there, incorrigible – ‘I will be with you; I will watch you – always.’ It is a mother’s good-by. But Sayonara says neither too much nor too little. It is a simple acceptance of fact. All understanding of life lies in its limits. All emotion, smoldering, is banked up behind it. But it says nothing. It is really the unspoken good-by, the pressure of a hand, ‘Sayonara.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh, North to the Orient

      The very best part of coming out the other side of this pandemic, fully vaccinated and more than ready to get on with things, is getting reacquainted face-to-face with the people who you’ve built lifetime relationships with. It was seeing my father in person for the first time in two years a few weeks ago. And seeing a group of people I hadn’t seen since Christmas 2019 yesterday. The reunions are always special, and now always involve some version of How was it for you?

      And what then? We part ways and go back to knowing each other from apart. Fresh memories instead of stretching the mind for highlights. Will we see each other again soon or was this a quick stepping stone to another few years, or really, will we ever see each other again? The presumption is yes, because we live in a time where there’s generally a good probability that we will. But what if we don’t?

      Lindbergh clarifies this moment of goodbye and the things we say to each other in the moment. The moment for me is a celebration of what we’ve just shared in our short time together, less a reflection that we might not cross paths again. Call me an optimist if you will.

      The stoic in me recognizes the fragility of the moment. I was at a birthday party yesterday, looked around at all the people celebrating their newfound freedom to be together and saw that nobody was taking pictures. For the record, I do this at every event, and generally I’m the one pulling out the camera phone and taking photos to lock the moment in photographs. For photos are more reliable than memory. Photos travel through time, awakening old memories and even past our lifetimes to introduce us to people we will never meet. Long after our goodbyes and Sayonaras, that picture may still exist.

      Since our separation must be so, I wish you good health and a moment when we might be together again to celebrate this short time with you once again. Reunions seem more tenuous than before, but surely more special than they ever were. So here is my acceptance of fact: this moment will not last, so since it must be so I’m making the very best of it while it does.

      Happy Father’s Day.

    • Endlessly Changing Horizons

      “The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” – Chris McCandless

      I’m a traveller at heart, a wanderer and nomad wannabe. So it’s easy to be stirred to action by McCandless’s quote above. He was the subject of Into the Wild, making him instantly more famous than those of us who chose a less aggressive path to chase new horizons. I know viscerally the call that brought him to the wilderness of Alaska even as I question his tactics for getting there. I’m far less risk-averse than many, but far more so than McCandless was.

      Friends poke and prod at the nomad in me, knowing it wants to break free and go. There’s a rawness in the desire when it gets stamped down too many times. And the pokes always seem to hit home right in that sore part. Nomads seek endlessly changing horizons to see what’s over there, and then over in that other place. Always chasing new and different. I know this chase.

      There are three fair questions to ask when you chase horizons: What do you seek? and How will you pull this off? and What are you leaving behind? Purpose, logistics and consequences. If you tackle all three and feel comfortable with the answers, then what are you waiting for? Go!

      Joy comes through seeing the change in yourself as you encounter new perspectives. Sometimes that’s in another place, and sometimes that’s in finding a new place within yourself. No, changing horizons aren’t about chasing, they’re about becoming.

      So, again, what is it you seek?