Alexandersmap

    Tag: Philosophy

    • Calm

      “Real power is not in momentary desires, but in complete calmness.” – Leo Tolstoy

      I have a bit of nervous energy as I write this. I’m traveling tomorrow for the first time in seven months and there’s a vibrating exhilaration deep inside knowing that I’m getting on a plane again, going to another state and driving around to places new to me. Mind you, its not like I’m flying to Antarctica for an extended climate change study, I’m going to Cleveland. I’ve been to Cleveland at least a half dozen times that I can recall and maybe a time or two beyond that. But it’s travel in a time of no travel, and this year that alone creates a buzz.

      I got the same vibration hiking solo up Mount Tecumseh earlier this summer. Not because it was a particularly challenging hike, but because I was hiking it alone late in the day. Just enough risk to raise the level of uncertainty, but calculated risk. Hiking alone at night inherently offers risk to the hiker. You just don’t have people walking by you to offer assistance. So you take extra care or alternatively, you charge ahead brazenly challenging fate.

      Calmness in the face of potential stressors is a superpower. In an age of talking heads stirring the pot of anxiety for advantage, of a pandemic ramping up for killing season, of a time when we teeter on the brink of a deeper recession or a depression and irreversible climate change should we get this wrong, in this time the calm prevail. We can take the bait and react, or swim calmly in the present storm.

      “Do not be concerned too much with what will happen. Everything that happens will be good and useful for you.” – Epictetus

      The posters used early on during the Blitz, “Keep Calm and Carry On” naturally come to mind. Those posters weren’t successful at the time as people viewed them as patronizing, but the expression has exploded in popularity in the last twenty years. Whether you view it as patronizing or nostalgic now, the expression does carry weight as a stoic reminder to keep your head about you. For in calmness we find clarity.

      During that time when the British were facing down Nazi aggression, Viktor Frankl was living a nightmare in a succession of Nazi prison camps, ending at Auschwitz before finally being freed at the end of the war. He observed that state of mind had a lot to do with who survived and who didn’t as much as the whim of fate. Some people were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but others just gave up in the face of hopelessness and horror. Some people survived simply because they had a purpose for living. Based on this experience, he wrote the extraordinary book Man’s Search for Meaning after the war.

      “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
      – Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

      Today we live in a time when everything is hyper-scrutinized, everything is a perceived affront, everything is designed to invoke a spark of fear or outrage. But when we swim in our sea of calmness, we overcome the efforts of those who would inspire a follow or a like or another cycle of commercials before they tell you the rest of the story. A calm mind sees the truth in the world and in ourselves. It remains the best foundation for a life of purpose and happiness. Want to improve the state of world? Be calm. And yes; carry on.

    • Several Fires Left in the Pile

      I lit a Sunday evening fire outside on the brick patio last night. This is two Sundays in a row, almost a trend. Last week was bear in the woods fireside Sunday. This week no such excitement, just the observation that the days are getting shorter and colder. If I were a bear I’d be finding a nice place to hibernate deep in the woods. Hopefully someone else’s woods.

      Last night began with reading outside in the fading twilight. This time of year that’s earlier in the evening than I’d like it to be, but the side benefit is it gave me the inspiration to gather pine cones and fallen branches to start a fire. Living amongst the trees we have little reason to use fire starter blocks or crumpled up newspaper to start a fire, and yet I opt for the simple route too frequently. It was good to get reacquainted with starting a fire without assistance from manmade products. I conceded the lighter instead of flint. I mean, I’m not on Survivor here.

      With pine cones and kindling crackling and erupting into a small fire, I gathered firewood of various sizes, assessing the size of the wood pile and calculating how many more fires I’ve got in it before a refresh is required. My math tells me about 30 Sunday night’s worth. Unless Tom comes over and takes command of the fire stacking, in which case we may have half that number. Tom likes a big fire. And with the cold air creeping behind I see the benefits myself and stack this one a bit taller than normal as a nod to warmer glows and good friendships.

      Stacking firewood is an act of faith. You expect to be given the time to use all that wood and start a new stack. All we can do is prepare for the future, we aren’t guaranteed we’ll arrive at the party. But so far we have. Surely a cause for celebration. Since we’ve been given this opportunity, why not make the most of it? I add logs to the fire and watch it roar in appreciation. And I in turn appreciate the warming glow.

      Fire established, a dram of scotch poured, and playlist rolling, I read I few pages more and put the book aside. There was nothing more to do but contemplate the work accomplished over the weekend and the objectives that lie ahead for the coming week. What will the week bring? Tasks accomplished and boxes checked? Conversations with people of substance and depth? What can I control and what must I let wash over me? Such are the thoughts of a fireside chat with yourself.

      My son came out and joined me. We talked of his own plans for the week ahead. He brought a flashlight out, just in case that bear should crunch through the woods again. No such luck this day. Instead we tracked the planets pirouetting across the sky: Bright Jupiter and Saturn with a faint Pluto to the south, red Mars rising in the east. The cold descended on the backyard and I added two logs to the fire and a wool hat to my head. Soon my bride joined us and we talked until the pile burned down to glowing embers. Another Sunday evening, and several fires left in the pile.

    • The Cumulative Force

      “Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it.”
      – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

      Re-reading Self-Reliance is always a pep talk with the Master. Sometimes I wonder at (and have written before about) the conversations Emerson and Thoreau must have had taking a walk about Concord, Massachusetts back in the day. Emerson, a dozen years older than Thoreau, might have offered more insight early on, but Thoreau measured up over time, diving deep into Transcendentalism and immersion in Nature (with a capital N). Thoreau was undoubtedly influenced by Emerson, and Emerson by Thoreau, yet each brought their own gift to the world.

      I’ve wondered at the writing lately. The content is a collection of many topics jumbled together, and much of that is by design. The scattered thoughts of one person marching through time. I’ve debated a shift to a once a week newsletter, which inherently would be more refined, more substantial and less clutter in the inbox of those who follow. But changing to a weekly post would change my habit loop in ways I wish to avoid. No, I subscribe to the Seth Godin school of daily blogging.

      So what then? Narrowing the focus to specific topics? Specializing for the pursuit of 1000 true fans? Instead of the trivial many blog posts, focus on the vital few, as Joseph M. Juran would say? If I were to monetize this site, I’d surely do that. But the goal of Alexandersmap is to seek adventure, to understand the place I find myself in (both physically and mentally) and write about it. And so it will continue as it always has been. The rest of the writing necessarily will evolve into a more focused pursuit of those vital few. But there’s something to be said for habit loops and cadence and Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours theory. Just write, often, on a diversity of topics, and the process will necessarily change you and improve the writing.

      And so here we are, one day at a time, building the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation, and seeing where it takes me. Is it a talent to write every day? Or accumulated skill? It would be brash to declare the former, and modest the latter. There’s a mix in there somewhere, but I do believe in sweat equity and making the most of the time we’re given. I’m a writer as long as I’m writing. There are plenty in this world doing the same. Whether the writing is that which I can do best? That will have to sort itself out. But I’m better for cultivating it.

    • Between the Earth and the Stars

      “Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars.”
      – Serbian proverb

      I sat outside last night on a cold evening in front of a warming fire; my body at the line of the radiating heat competing with the sneaky cold creeping up behind me. I inhaled more wood smoke than I should have cheating the line to get just a little bit closer to the fire. Off in the darkness a rustle of fallen leaves in the woods betrayed a wild thing making its way past, and overhead we were serenaded by owls. It was in this moment on the edge of hot and cold, light and darkness that I sat contemplating this quote and the one that follows. Sending an offering to the universe in the form of sparks rising with the smoke. I looked up, following the rising sparks as they climb to join the stars. For who’s to say they don’t reach them, why must they all extinguish on their ascent and return to earth?

      “For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”
      – Vincent Van Gogh

      It seems that I am a dreamer. Surely this must be so. For my mind rises with the smoke and ashes to meet the stars. We’re all derived from this humble earth, and return there soon enough. But the stars seemingly burn forever. The stars have witnessed many a fire ritual in the scattered history of humanity, and continued their dance across the sky unconcerned about my veneration. But then a meteor blazed through the sky with no perceivable tale, disappearing in the western sky, as if to remind me that stars have a timeline as well, well beyond our scope of reference.

      2020 feels big for all of us, filled with moments that remind us of our small part in the larger game. For the stars, for the earth, it remains inconsequential. And so it must be. But in our time between the two we might derive some inspiration from the stars and make our time on earth a bit more meaningful at a human scale. We too will return to earth, but we don’t have to keep our feet planted on it. We are ourselves an offering to the universe. So burn brightly.

    • Vigor (and a Smile)

      Eddie Van Halen passed away yesterday. And so it is that another chunk of my childhood drifts away into the otherworld. I was never much of a guitar player, but it isn’t hard to see Eddie Van Halen playing his guitar Frankenstein and see a virtuoso at work. I suppose there are other guitar players I personally love listening to more for their particular style, but there was no better guitar player on the planet than Eddie Van Halen. That he never learned to read music amazes me, but it shows the difference between knowing the music on paper and living the music in practice. You don’t have to be great at everything, just your particular thing.

      My own life is about as far from the life that Van Halen lived as anyone’s. I’m a New Englander, he grew up an immigrant child in Los Angeles. I dabbled in bass guitar and put it aside when I started college, a victim of my overall casual approach to any form of discipline at the time. He latched onto music and went all in. In the ten years from 1978 to 1988 he was about as big a rock god as you could find. I quietly went about my life, stepping stone to stepping stone, from kid watching Star Wars to high school and college. Completely different life tracks. A pity he always had that damned cigarette burning away. Those would kill him eventually, just as he was entering his elder statesman stage of life.

      I suppose the big lesson with Eddie Van Halen is to put in the time necessary to master your craft. Don’t half-ass your work. But the thing that sticks out with him is that huge smile when he played guitar. He was a guy in love with his craft, exuding joyous electricity. And that love of craft was exactly why he put in the insane amount of time necessary to become one of the best guitar players who ever lived. If you don’t love your craft, why the hell would you do it? And that’s the difference between a craft and your job. You work to make money to feed the family and pay for the stuff of life. You perform your craft to extend some of your life force out into the world. That’s true whether you’re knitting a pair of mittens or writing a novel or playing guitar.

      So a fair question to ask as you follow your muse then is will this pursuit make me smile like Eddie Van Halen playing his guitar? If yes, proceed. If no, well, find another way to express yourself in the world. For if Eddie taught us anything yesterday, it would be that life is too damned short to flitter away your life force on other things. Pursue your thing. And do it with vigor (and a smile).

    • Vif d’Esprit et de Corps

      To be quick in mind and body – vif d’esprit et de corps – that is the goal. In this year of years I’ve seen many recede into dark places, or spritzed with wine or spirits or awash in binge-watching Netflix, or worst of all following the every move of the orange narcissist. Or maybe all of the above. I find myself sliding into these darker places, la détresse, when I’m too immersed in Twitter or Facebook. So I took a 30 day hiatus from Facebook beginning Sunday and just deleted Twitter for the next five days to force a reset of the brain. I’m doing the same five days off without alcohol, just to show it who’s boss.

      Where are you most alive? Doing what? To be quick-witted and vibrant requires work, but the work doesn’t have to be tedious or painful. It just requires consistency of effort. Who makes you feel most alive? Why aren’t you spending more time with them being so? What gets you invited to the dance? Raising your own game, of course. Becoming more. Doing more. Seeing more. Learning more. Not for water cooler talk (virtualized for the foreseeable future), but for a hand up on the climb. I view the next 20 years as the climb of my lifetime, and I’d better be mentally and physically fit enough to squeeze as much of the zest out of the experience as possible. And after the next 20? Well, I’ll worry about that when I get there, but it will have to start with a strong base.

      Ultimately, it becomes a matter of how do you live with yourself? What makes you interesting enough to hang around this being for any amount of time? What is the next act? Immersion in a French or Portuguese-speaking culture? Knocking off peaks and waterfalls and old castles? Chasing dark skies? Visiting every fascinating country on the list? Sailing across the pond? Building (or building on) lifetime friendships with choice adults, children, grandchildren (should they come) and dogs? Finally finishing those dusty classics taking up space on the bookshelf? There’s time for all of these things, and yet no time to lose. And no time to waste on the stuff of little consequence.

      To be quick in mind and body, vif d’esprit et de corps, begins with this next step. And the one after that. Let the adventure begin.

    • Drink Up Before the Dregs

      “Lay hold of to-day’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by. Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time.” – Seneca

      “What is the state of things, then? It is this: I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him. I advise you, however, to keep what is really yours; and you cannot begin too early. For, as our ancestors believed, it is too late to spare when you reach the dregs of the cask. Of that which remains at the bottom, the amount is slight, and the quality is vile.”
      – Seneca, Letters From a Stoic

      We had our first frost of Autumn overnight. The fog rising from the ponds this morning betrays warmer days conceding to cooler nights. In New Hampshire the leaves will soon turn progressively to bright yellow, red and orange before turning brown and returning to the earth to fuel the next generation. Such is the cycle of life.

      Early mornings trigger my adventurous spirit. I have the most energy and a willingness to dare greatly. By 9:30 – 10 PM I’m generally running on fumes and ready to call it a night. While I’m not old just yet, I suppose I’m the opposite of youth in this respect. Certainly the opposite of the rest of my household. And if a day is a lifetime, I reach the dregs sooner than most. But I started so much earlier in the day savoring that first sip (metaphorically, of course). I honor the Thoreau quote on the home page whenever possible, seeking adventures, but mostly I rise early.

      Seneca’s Letters From a Stoic is a call to action written almost 2000 years ago and still ignored by the vast majority of people in their lifetimes ever since. Nothing is ours but time! Keep what is really yours, for you cannot begin too early. Savor this very moment, such that it is, and make of it what you can. That is the eternal challenge for each of us. To spend wisely this moment. And each day offers reminders to get to it already.

    • The Bows and the Arrows

      Your children are not your children.
      They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.      ..

      You may house their bodies but not their souls,
      For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.      ..

      You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
      For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
      You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
      The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
      Let your bending in the Archer’s hand be for gladness;
      For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
      – Kahlil Gilbran, The Prophet

      One by one the Grands stood up and told a favorite story about Pops. All of them good speakers, confident in the acceptance of the audience, and also in themselves. And this would have been his favorite part of the night. For he knew, as the generation between Pops and the Grands has learned, that the Grands are the arrows flying into the future. And we are but the bows that send them there.

      Admittedly its funny to think of yourself as a bow when you’re still flying along as an arrow towards your own future landing place. To be an arrow is to be actively reinventing yourself, using whatever momentum you have to muster. Sometimes you get a favorable wind to carry you along, sometimes the wind isn’t your friend, but you’re flying nonetheless. And with only a general idea of your direction, the rest just a mystery unfolding in front of you.

      When you stack four generations in a room to celebrate the life of one powerful bow you see a lot of arrows flying in different directions, but every one of them flying. To celebrate is what he wanted most of all, and he’d have beamed at the arrows he helped launch. And now that his arrow has landed, I suppose the rest of us have to provide the favorable wind for each other.

      I didn’t think of bows and arrows as each grandchild spoke, I thought about that grandchild and the incredible spirit they each have. They’re each still rising on their own trajectory, but with so much more momentum than I had at their respective ages. And that’s what we all want; the next generation to build off our own momentum and be an even more powerful force in the universe than we can be ourselves. Flying onward, seeding the future with the powerful spirit of those that sent them there. Watch them soar.

    • The World As We Know It

      “… and anyhow travel is over, like one’s books and the rest of civilization” – Rose Macaulay

      This Macaulay quote, plucked from the extraordinary Erik Larson book The Splendid and the Vile, was from a letter that she wrote to a friend after her London flat was destroyed in 1941 during one of the many attacks the city suffered, wiping out all of her books and personal belongings accumulated over her lifetime to that point. I found this particular quote profound because in many ways I feel that way about 2020, when the idea of travel and any semblance of civilized discourse seems illusive at best. It shines as a reminder that others have been in far worse places than we’re in now, and this too shall pass. The war eventually ended and some level of civilization returned. Macaulay went on to travel extensively, writing some best sellers along the way.

      Of course, I can’t just read a quote like that and not look into the source, and Macaulay doesn’t disappoint. I’ve added her to the list of authors I need to invest more time with once the stack of books has reached a respectable level of completion. For now, here are a couple of quotes from Dame Rose Macaulay that particularly resonated for me:

      “It wasn’t really touching to be young; it was touching not to be young, because you had less of life left. Touching to be thirty; more touching to be forty; tragic to be fifty; and heartbreaking to be sixty. As to seventy, as to eighty, one would feel as one did during the last dance of a ball, tired but fey in the paling dawn, desperately making the most of each bar of music before one went home to bed.” – Rose Macaulay, Dangerous Ages

      “Life, for all its agonies…is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing…and whatever is to come after it — we shall not have this life again.” – Rose Macaulay

      I suppose the takeaway from each of the three quotes is familiar ground for readers of this blog. The world as we know it will continue to change, and so must we. Savor the dance to the last note. Savor youth while you have it and the moments always. And in the darkest days, remind yourself that the world will be there for you when you’re ready or able to venture out into it once again.

    • That Fire Was

      “Ashes denote that fire was;
      Respect the grayest pile
      For the departed creature’s sake
      That hovered there awhile.
      Fire exists the first in light,
      And then consolidates, —
      Only the chemist can disclose
      Into what carbonates.” – Emily Dickinson, Fire

      I once climbed into a cave deep in the Grand Canyon and observed the soot accumulated on the ceiling from fires generations years ago. I’ve had similar observations in fireplaces in the castles of Scotland and the old forts of North America. And I’ve come across old fire pits deep in the woods. And I’ve often wondered, who gathered around this fire? What was their story?

      With Autumn we start gathering around fires more often, warmed by the glowing embers and infused with smoky thoughts. Inevitably I think back on other fires I’ve gathered around, sometimes with the same cast of characters, sometimes with their echoes, and wonder where the time goes. The burning coals I stir become the ashes I scatter when they cool, like memories cooled with time. And I wonder, who will come across my own fire’s ashes?

      And now, what coals are you stirring?