Alexandersmap

    Tag: Philosophy

    • Filling the Lantern

      “You should be a lantern for yourself. Draw close to the light within you and seek no other shelter.” – Buddhist Wisdom (according to Leo Tolstoy)

      I waited in the darkness for the sunrise. When you wake early that can be a long wait. The sunset last night was way down the bay and just after 4 PM, making this a long wait indeed. Such is winter in New England.

      But I walked outside and find it really isn’t all that dark at all. The moon is bright, a few stars shine through, and we’re well into nautical twilight start. Were I to let my eyes adjust I could get about quite well outdoors, even if it looks dark from inside the comfortable house. Perspective, on such things as light and time and relationships with others, offers insight.

      For all the darkness in this year of years, there’s still plenty of light even now. It starts from within, and shines outward on the world, reflecting and amplified by others back towards us. But sometimes it feels like the bowl is empty. If your own light is dimmed in the darkest moments, add fuel and oxygen. Seek reflection. And venture out. It’s brighter than you might believe it to be.

      December means early sunsets

    • Grains of Sand

      “Every time you wake up and ask yourself, “What good things am I going to do today?” remember that, when the sun goes down at sunset, it will take a part of your life with it.” – Indian Proverb

      I’m not sure of the source of the quote, but “Indian Proverb” seems as likely a source as any. There’s something timeless in the wisdom, even as it points out the value of a single day. That old cliché about time slipping by like sand slips through your hands comes to mind. The tighter you try to hold onto it the quicker it falls away. Making sense of time is folly; living each day as if it were our last seems a better place to focus.

      “People say that time slips through our fingers like sand. What they don’t acknowledge is that some of the sand sticks to the skin. These are memories that will remain, memories of the time when there was still time left.” – David Levithan, Invisibility

      The fact is, life is a blur. We aren’t walking down some endless beach here. This patch of sand is all we’ve got, no matter the mad swirl of wind or crash of the waves. What will stick and what will fall away?

      The central question from that Indian Proverb is “What good things am I going to do today?”, which is where those memories that remain come from. The grains of sand stuck to our hand are the interactions with others, the laughs and the tears; the memorable. Those are what make up a lifetime.

    • Good Forever

      “There is no past and no future; no one has ever entered those two imaginary kingdoms. There is only the present. Do not worry about the future, because there is no future. Live in the present and for the present, and if your present is good, then it is good forever.” – Leo Tolstoy

      Here is the present, such that it is. On the whole you’d call it good (we woke up didn’t we?), yet more challenging than other days we might remember. But that’s the trap, isn’t it? Comparison to fond memories robs the present as much as dreams of the future does. There’s only today, buttercup. Dance to the song the band is playing now.

      I walked outside to a red dawn and a chorus of nuthatches noisily haw-hawing their way up and down the tree trunks. They know where the party is: it’s right here, right now! Nothing lives in the moment like a wild animal. It’s the humans who get all wound up in past moments, or stirred up about what may come to pass in the future. These are stories we tell ourselves. If I’ve learned anything balancing 5-6 books I’m reading at a time, it’s that you can’t read them all at once. So stick to the story of the present.

      The flip side of the present being good is that it isn’t very good at all. If that’s the case, then it seems we must accept what we’ve got and work on making something of this moment that is better than it might have been. Those nuthatches would probably prefer an endless summer of warm days and tasty bugs. They woke up to a leaf-less, cold November morning. But they were singing away in the trees this morning like it was Whoville on Christmas morning. You can learn a lot about living from a nuthatch.

    • Towards Remarkable

      “What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there’s another force from inside battling to make us something else.” – Nadine Gordimer

      I don’t know much about Nadine Gordimer that you can’t find in her obituary or on Wikipedia. She was a South African writer who helped expose the darkness of apartheid for the world to see. She won a Nobel Prize for her writing and was on the short list of people that Nelson Mandela wanted to see first when he was released from prison. By all accounts she was a pretty remarkable woman.

      “…with an understanding of Shakespeare there comes a release from the gullibility that makes you prey to the great shopkeeper who runs the world, and would sell you cheap to illusion.”

      You know remarkable when you see it. There’s a life force exuding out of certain people that pulses. It’s not celebrity, though some celebrities, athletes and leaders have it (certainly not all). You learn to spot the authentic energy from the great shopkeepers and cons. It’s an intangible force from inside that is magnetic but genuine. People are drawn to them, because they see something in them that they haven’t quite let out of themselves.

      “If I dreamt this, while walking, walking in the London streets, the subconscious of each and every other life, past and present, brushing me in passing, what makes it real? Writing it down.” 

      I understand Nadine Gordimer better through her words. And in her words she shows us the way. Learn from the great observers of the past. Write it down (Rolf Potts recommends a “commonplace book” where you can record the best ideas you find – blogging certainly helps achieve this too). Keep improving over time. With patience but earnest effort.

      “Your whole life you are really writing one book, which is an attempt to grasp the consciousness of your time and place – a single book written from different stages of your ability.” 

      I’ve come to focus on remarkable recently. Having come across a few people with that extraordinary life force exuding out of every pore, you begin to think about how you might reach some level of that yourself. Gordimer hints at the journey we’re all on with this last quote. We’re all climbing at different paces, at different stages of our ability, towards our own peak. Towards remarkable.

    • Bold Living

      “There is freedom waiting for you,
      On the breezes of the sky,
      And you ask ‘What if I fall?’
      Oh but my darling,
      What if you fly?”
      – Erin Hanson

      Salto mortale, means the dangerous or potentially lethal leap. Mortale is the potentially bad outcome. Salto is the tricky part: the leap. We humans tend to dwell so much on bad outcomes that we never get around to leaping. And then we regret the leaps we didn’t take more than we celebrate having not leaped. And that suggests another Latin phrase that stirs those quivering leaping muscles: Quam bene vivas refert non quam diu, or “It matters not how long but how well you live”.

      “I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.” – Joseph Campbell

      Alive time means being out there, taking chances, doing things that make you a little bit uncomfortable but thrill you just the same. Not frivolous risk-taking, but leaping into the calculated risk of bold living. The art of being alive while you’re here and vibrant enough to spring to action.

      Live boldly. Leap. Fly.

    • The Other Side

      “What happens to the leaves after they turn red and golden and fall away?”
      – Mary Oliver, Roses, Late Summer

      I walked out just before bedtime for a quick look at the sky. The Northern Taurids peaked the night before, but we had overcast skies and alas, nothing to see here. A quick scan revealed another disappointing cloud cover masking the show. And still Mars shone through the passing clouds, offering hope that if I tried hard enough, maybe I’d see through to the other side. I went to bed instead.

      The Leonids offer a second chance, peaking on Tuesday night. The forecast doesn’t look favorable for the peak, but Monday night looks promising, and I promise myself I’ll stay up late to see them. We’ll see.

      Promises to ourselves have a way of falling away, like those leaves on the tree. I know where those red and golden leaves go: right over the fence into the woods by the tarp-full. I see them now; mounds of brown, damp leaves transforming back to mulch to feed their kin. And I see them gathering once again on the front lawn, mocking previous hours of work. And I wonder, where did all of these ones come from?

      The other side is that place we can’t see but we know it’s there. The other side of a fitness goal is evasive when you’re looking at the scale or your splits and don’t see much progress. The completed novel, the perfect job, the perfect marriage, and whatever it is on the other side of life all tantalize us with how close they are, yet how elusive they remain.

      All we control is what we do now. The direction we point ourselves. The consistency and honesty of our effort. Accepting this for all that it is. The rest blows in the wind, landing where it may.

    • The Lifting Fog

      “Opinions are like nails: the stronger you hit them, the deeper inside they go.” – Decimus Junius Juvenalis

      Or maybe in 2020 it’s “the more you express them the more your friends mute you on Facebook”. Or look at you funny when you see them in public. The lesson, I suppose, is to stop hammering all the time. And, as we all know, you can’t change other people, only yourself. So focus your energy in the right place.

      We begin another work week with deep fog outside. The heat of yesterday gave way to a cold, clammy fog that descended into the woods and surrounds the house this morning. It inspires me even as it drives nails into the ankle I thought was healed. The fog offers lessons: This day marks a new beginning, as every day does. Enough hammering opinions and defending positions.

      If you’re wondering, Decimus Junius Juvenalis, AKA Juvenus, has a wealth of wisdom/great quotes you’re familiar with in The Sixteen Satires (like “who watches the watchmen?”). Worth a search if you geek out on such things (as I clearly do). There are days when I wish I could just read all day just to catch up on things that I skimmed through in school because I wasn’t mentally developed enough to fully grasp what they were saying at the time. But that’s what lifetimes are for.

      “You can never step into the same book twice, because you are different each time you read it.” – John Barton

      And so we change, day-to-day. The fog slowly lifts, and a new understanding develops. I’m clearing out the fog of politics and rancor from the last several months and looking ahead with clarity and purpose. To grow in the new light emerging from the fog. To begin again.

    • Reflecting in the Present

      “When purple colored curtains mark the end of day
      I’ll hear you, my dear, at twilight time”
      – The Platters, Twilight Time

      Piscataqua River

      The sunset gets all the attention, and sure, when you have a western view at the right time of day you enjoy the show. I take great pains to see as many as I possibly can too. But my favorite Navy pilot reminded me long ago to turn around and see what was happening in the rest of the sky, and as we were offered a view of water and a glass of rum to celebrate Democracy in action last night we watched the sun setting on the Piscataqua River in Dover, New Hampshire. The windows on the opposite shore (in Eliot, Maine) suggested the sunset we were missing while we were looking east, but the night was calm, the rum was good and the company was exceptional.

      Looking east at twilight offers something beautiful. It’s a look back on where you’ve been, even as the sun draws you over the western horizon. We can appreciate where we’ve been before, regret moments lost and mourn those we’ve lost. Alternatively, we can look ahead, ignoring where we’ve been before and barely acknowledging where we are now in our scramble to get somewhere else. But really, all we have is now. Here you are lingering in between; reflecting in the present.

      The view in the present can be stunning or off-putting or maybe even monotonous at times, but its our view no matter what we think of it. We can learn from the past, build towards the future and slowly, incrementally change our present – moment-by-moment. Looking east, I reflect that what’s done is done. We did our best with the time we once had. Looking west, I eagerly plot a future I can only hope to arrive at. Reflecting in the present gives us a chance to reset. To pivot towards a better future, built off of who we once were and who we are now. And to celebrate the day we’ve been given even as we hope for a better tomorrow.

    • Mid-Autumn Philosophy

      “I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death”
      ― Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

      The leaves on the white oaks stubbornly hold on, even as the rest of the leaves are weeks into their return to earth. Still a lot of green in those leaves, I see. And orange and red and yellow. The oaks don’t get the attention that the maple leaves get – how could they possibly compete? And yet they remain the more resilient reminder of the warmer months. So we begin the waiting game.

      Two weekends ago the yard was cleared of every leaf and acorn. We knew it was only round one. Sure enough we had snow and cold temperatures roll in, and the leaves started raining down off the red oaks. Snow and red oak leaves scattered everywhere as if Mother Nature had vomited over the yard. Not a good look at all, really.

      But soon the snow melted and the winds picked up and the red oak leaves became a gift to others down the street. Or maybe the next town over. The winds were pretty strong and leaves love to fly, so your guess is as good as mine. The wind giveth, the wind taketh away.

      The stack of wood sits waiting for frozen ground and a chain saw to get chopped up into stackable bits. I gave the chain saw away in 2019 to someone who needed it more. I still hear about that, but it’s a phone call away and it was never mine to begin with. I find owning things to be a stack of small burdens that ask for attention, and yet we stack them like firewood anyway. Stuff we must take care of, stuff we give away time to. Stuff that doesn’t matter all that much in the long run.

      And so we slide towards late Autumn, when the trees concede their final leaves, the ground is raked bare once again, and life returns to a naked slumber. The days are short and grow dark too soon. A reminder that life too is short, but didn’t we know that all along? Embrace the cold, short days. For there’s magic in them. And this too shall pass.

    • Walking to Calm

      It’s easy to feel distressed in a tight election, especially when the current President goes mad and declares fraud well before the count is done. Emotions are high. But the noise doesn’t matter so long as there is order. Bluster doesn’t matter so long as calmness prevails. I tune out bluster and madness, not because they aren’t factors to consider, but because they don’t help me navigate life. Who can think with all that noise?

      It’s a great day for a slow walk in the woods, or on a quiet beach, or just to turn off the noise and breathe slowly. Stay off social media, which only amplifies the madness. We always knew this one would be tight, even if we wanted an easy election. Democracy is hard work – never more than now.

      I turned down a hike today because, well, I work for a living. Honestly the hike would have been perfect today, but a brief walk in the woods at lunchtime should do the trick. Instead of coffee perhaps a quick row this morning before things pick up again. Exercise offers another form of resetting the mind.

      Some will celebrate the chaos. I’ll celebrate the quiet. Turn off all media and take a long, quiet walk outdoors today. Walking meditation. Calm. The election will still be there when you get back. The pandemic isn’t going anywhere either. Walk. Breathe. Reset. And move forward with the things you can control in life.

      Simple, right?