Alexandersmap

    Tag: Philosophy

    • Crossing Bridges

      “When one door closes, fortune will usually open another.” — Fernando de Rojas

      We may navigate the world either closed within ourselves or open to all the possibilities it offers. If I’ve found any truth in my own winding road of a career (let alone life), it’s that opportunities always open up if we ourselves are open to opportunity. We ought to remember that we’re all connected, and by nurturing our connections we may build a bridge to many potential versions of our next self. The trick isn’t to cross the right bridge, the trick is to not burn the one we just crossed.

      When is a bridge too far to cross? Is it switching industries? Jumping to a competitor? Moving to another country or across the one we’re in? Putting up a sign for a political candidate the polar opposite of the one the neighbors have in their yard? In this connected world, I don’t believe we ever really reach a bridge too far so long as we live with character and purpose.

      When a bridge collapses it’s usually a case of one or both sides skimping on maintenance. Never let a bridge rust away from neglect. It doesn’t take much to maintain a connection, and one day we may wish to cross that bridge again. We’re all connected, aren’t we? At least when we want to be.

    • Holding On To the Precious Few

      “Casting aside other things, hold to the precious few; and besides bear in mind that every man lives only the present, which is an indivisible point, and that all the rest of his life is either past or is uncertain. Brief is man’s life and small the nook of the earth where he lives; brief, too, is the longest posthumous fame, buoyed only by a succession of poor human beings who will very soon die and who know little of themselves, much less of someone who died long ago.”
      ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      In a lifetime we may encounter thousands of people. If you search the Internet you’ll find that the average person meets about 80,000 people in their lifetime. Some of us have met that many people before the middle of our presumed lifespan. But we aren’t here to compete for the most people met in a lifetime, we’re here to make meaningful connections. As the name implies, connections are those people who come into our lives at just the right time with whom we naturally bond with. These are people who transcend the convenience of place and time and become lifetime associates. They are as invested in our well-being as we are in theirs. They are the precious few.

      What forms that bond? Usually something like shared experience, be it the good, bad or ugly. When you go through something with someone that few others would understand, sometimes you become lifetime friends. Then again, sometimes you drift apart never to speak again. Some of the people I rowed with felt like best friends until the diplomas came and I haven’t seen them since. One or the other of us had moved on, and so it goes. Same with old work connections, or fellow soccer parents, or whomever. Something in the moment brings us together, but once it’s gone the bond is gone too. It’s like the Post-It note of friendships: friends of convenience skating that indivisible point of now but not forever.

      And that’s okay too. We can’t very well have 80,000 best friends, or even close associates. We’d simply never have the time to maintain the connection and get anything else done. Most relationships are transactional, and it’s nothing personal, simply pragmatic. We may remember people fondly from our past lives and catch up with them at a reunion one day, or maybe not even that. The few that stick with us are there because they want to be, just as we want to be. Sometimes it’s as simple as that.

      Coming back to that indivisible point that Marcus Aurelius mentioned, we ought to put our full energy into the connections of now. We can’t very well say to ourselves that we’ve got our precious few and that’s enough for me. That next person we meet on the climb to 80,000+ might just be the one who makes all the difference in our lives, or we in theirs. When we make every encounter a moment of connection, we raise the average of our overall experience on this planet. We also find that our few become even more precious as the investment made by both parties naturally increases to meet the place we’ve arrived at in our lives. It always comes back to this: we get what we put into it.

    • The Mask

      “Masked, I advance.” ― René Descartes

      Later today I’ll be presenting to a group of people I’ve never met before, like a thousand times before. There’s nothing unusual about speaking to strangers when you make a living building bridges and nurturing trust. More essential in that moment, the subject matter I’m presenting is very familiar to me, and not so much to them. I hope they surprise me with deep familiarity and the inclination to challenge every word I say, because that would indeed be interesting, but more than likely they’ll simply accept what I say for what it is. We tend to simply believe what we’re told, rarely questioning the validity of the statement unless it’s especially incendiary or directly challenges our worldview.

      We all know those characters who navigate word soup with the stage presence to pull it off. But to pull it off, we’ve got to believe it ourselves. We are all actors in the play, and stage presence matters a great deal, but so too does some underlying belief in why we’re up there on the stage in the first place. Every day we wake up with a collection of beliefs in who we are and why we’re here. To break away from those beliefs requires an assumption of faith that the gap between who that character we’re stepping into and the one we’re leaving behind isn’t so great that we plunge to our doom.

      But what is doom anyway? What’s the worst that could happen in putting on the mask and advancing into the unknown? We’re pushed back? We’re cut down? Parry and redouble, friend. Thankfully, few matches are fatal. We live to fight another day. When we believe in the mask we’re wearing we may advance with courage.

      Sounds easy, right? The thing is, false bravado is easy to unmask. The first person we have to convince is ourselves. Yet often we’re the last to know. Assuming a character often helps us find something in ourselves that was waiting to emerge. Small steps at first, then a little bolder, and there’s no telling where we might find ourselves next.

    • A Little More

      “A great man is always willing to be little.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

      When we aspire to be a little more than we were yesterday, we begin to grow. Personally, I’m counting on it, because I’ve been far from perfect. It would be nice to inch a little closer to it today. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll get there. Well, perhaps one day.

      Every day we dance with our imperfections, knowing we’ll never reach excellence in all things but trying just the same. The trying is the thing—derived from an aspiration for better, for a sense that we’re moving in the right direction even when we reconcile the things that didn’t go so well. We often fall short in our days, yet still progress towards a better version of ourselves simply by trying again.

      When we stop trying to be the biggest person in the room and stop telling ourselves and others that we have it all figured out, we may find that humility fits us well. We’ve come to a place in our lives where everything we’ve done and learned about the world and our place in it forms this incomplete character. We are who we are, imperfect as that may be. Character is nothing but a foundation from which to build upon. The trick is simply to add a little more of what we’d like to see.

    • Crossing the Sea

      “You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” — Rabindranath Tagore

      I was thinking about some friends I won’t see this week, as they’re at a conference that I’m not at. They’re almost certainly going about their days with productivity in mind. I may choose how I feel about the matter. We may choose misery or acceptance when we aren’t a part of something. I’m approaching it like I’m looking at my hotel points that haven’t accumulated this year at the rate they normally would: I have far more important ways to spend my time. The trick is to invest our time savings into something with a great return on investment.

      This ought to be our marching order as we stare across the water wondering how we’re going to get to the other side: Be productive with the right things. Whatever those things are. Everything else is stalling. We have no time to waste on trivialities and busywork. We must do the things that must be done at the expense of all the rest. Nothing clarifies our lives like seeing where we want to go and knowing the steps that will get us there. The rest is simply having the courage to begin.

    • Bundles of Rain

      Are the clouds glad to unburden their bundles of rain?
      Most of the world says no, no, it’s not possible. I refuse to think to such a conclusion.
      Too terrible it would be, to be wrong.
      — Mary Oliver, Do Stones Feel?

      After a month of no rain, it’s rained at the most inconvenient time, at least for the outdoor projects I’ve had planned for the last few days. But so what? Rain is to be celebrated just as much as sunshine. At least in moderation. This hasn’t been moderation, but I loved it nonetheless.

      People who wish for sunny days all the time ought to live in the desert. The rest of us quietly yearn for change. We’d be ungrateful if we complained about it when it arrived. And so it is that we ought to dress for the occasion and worked with the gift the universe presents to us.

      I’ve learn that I’m not lazy when it rains. Instead of sitting quietly with a book and a steaming mug of tea, I do bundles of projects that have been postponed too long. Indoor projects, surely, but also outdoor projects that want for a bit of watering anyway. The garden is as grateful for the rain as I am in such moments.

      Rainy day projects are beneficial, but sometimes the best answer to a soggy day is to immerse ourselves in the solitude it offers. Soon the productivity will concede to completion. To celebrate the rain for all it brings to the day is just as essential as any project might be. And those books, and that solitude, call to me, reminding me that I must return to them soon.

    • Changing Seasons

      “There is nothing permanent except change.” — Heraclitus

      Somehow cycling season is drawing to a close. Sure, there are plenty of nice days to ride all year, but the challenge is finding enough daylight to ride safely. I’m more grateful for rail trails as the days get shorter. But there’s something to be said for those favorite routes on narrow country roads on a warm, sunny afternoon. I’ll remember a few rides fondly on those cold and dark winter afternoons.

      The obvious thing is that when we spend more time outside, we become more aware of the weather, but also the seasons themselves. A slow turn towards autumn is detectable well before September, a bite to the air in late November will signal a turn towards winter, and so on. Having experienced the seasons, we feel it when there’s a change in the air. Some of us quite literally feel it in our bones. Old injuries become reliable harbingers of a variation from the norm.

      We learn to celebrate every season for the change it brings. We may have our favorites, but there’s joy to be found in each. Often it’s just a matter of stepping outside to see what greets us. These are days we’ll remember as the good old days one day. Days when maybe everything seemed so upside down, but still present the gift of people and places in our lives that one day won’t be. We realize over time that a bit of gratitude for whatever season this happens to be in our lives is what changes everything.

    • Digging Holes to Yesterday

      “Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.” — Will Rogers

      The pup is obsessed with yesterday. She saw a chipmunk go into a small hole and proceeded to make it a big hole (just when we thought she was past the digging stage of life). This morning she was right back out there, chasing chipmunks because they were right there for the catching yesterday. Of course, the chipmunk has moved on to safer places, it’s just the memory that remains. Still, our pup remains a prisoner of what once was.

      What of us? What holes are we digging to yesterday, instead of being in today’s moment? I can think of a few of my own holes that ought to be filled in and left behind. It’s hard to climb when we’re deep in a hole.

    • The Beauty in Fragility

      I’m stubborn in some ways, no surprise to anyone who knows me, but sometimes I admit it to myself in quiet moments such as the one just before this one. I was thinking specifically about the beautiful Douglas fir beams that I turned into a pergola back in 2007, rotted now and about to be replaced by new fir beams that I just cut yesterday. My bride suggested PVC or some other engineered product that would ensure it would be resilient. A friend told me to just use pressure treated lumber so I never have to do it again. But I have enough plastic in my life. I have enough chemicals swirling around in my microclimate already. I chose like for like.

      When I built it the first time, I looked into cedar or redwood, but the price tag was prohibitive. Honestly, having replaced the wood a couple of times now, I should have just invested in redwood then, but 17 years isn’t bad for painted fir standing against the elements in New Hampshire. How has the last 17 years treated us? When I think about the wooden pergola that I built with my own hands back then, I feel something differently than I do about some more permanent building materials. There’s beauty in fragility. We know it won’t last forever and look at it differently than we look at something that we know will outlive our grandchildren.

      Working with the fir yesterday, I honored the wood and the tree it came from, with careful measurements, deliberate cuts with a jigsaw and slow turns as I moved the beams around to cut the other end. I’m 17 years older than the guy who did this the first time, after all, and slow and deliberate meant I could get out of bed without feeling like I was run over by a truck. I’m not so stubborn that I don’t see I’m fragile too. But more than that, I know this is the last time I’ll ever rebuild this particular pergola. I’m not just honoring the wood and the tree, but my own moment of youthful vigor. For time conquers all, friend, even this amateur craftsman whose seeing the truth in every project.

      Raw cuts awaiting further attention

    • The Lifetime Study

      “Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy.” ― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

      When I was an undergrad I took a Philosophy class that turned me upside down. I promised myself at that time that I’d go back to school someday, maybe after retirement, to study it more completely. I was young then and it never occurred to me that philosophy is a lifetime study, not something you do in school.

      This weekend was productive. In fact, far more productive than my work week last week was. That says a lot about the state of mind I was in last week in my chosen career, as well as during the weekend when I channeled all that untapped productivity into getting things done. Reflecting on it now, it makes me reassess how I’m spending my Monday through Friday. We’ll see how this week goes. I’ve started it with two of the three things that kick off a great day: reading and writing. And a brisk walk with the pup is just around the corner for the trifecta.

      But what then? We must schedule our productivity, lest we slip into bad habits. There’s a whole list of things that must be done, but what’s the one thing that, having done it, would make this day as good as one of our best days? Focusing on productivity seems far more effective than dwelling on philosophy. But really, the two go hand-in-hand. We must know how to optimize our what, but surely we must begin with understanding our why.

      So it is that I dive deeply into philosophical works that challenge my casual why’s, and dare myself to write about them here on this blog. Travel and history and observations about my current fitness challenges will surely be a part of this blog for as long as I’m capable of writing it, but they’re all means to an end. We never stop being a student, we just pay more taxes as we grow. Understanding just why we’re here in the first place, and what to do with that realization when we reach it, was our thesis all along. It’s fair to ask ourselves regularly, how’s it coming along?