Alexandersmap

    Tag: Semisonic

    • Next Steps

      “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” — Seneca (and also Semisonic, Closing Time)

      We often think of starting something new. Yet we’re reluctant to bring the party we’re currently at to an end. We get comfortable in places we ought to be more uncomfortable being. Comfort is a cage.

      It helps to ask ourselves, why am I doing this? If we like the answer, we ought to double down on action to make the most of our opportunity. If we don’t, we ought to leave the party and find someplace else to dance, while we can still dance. The only wrong answer is to plod along wishing for something else without doing a damned thing about it.

      Have you seen what time it is? This party won’t last forever, and neither will we. What is that new beginning—or to borrow from the business world, what does success look like? What is the first step towards that? Defining a series of next steps is the proper way to end any productive meeting. It applies equally well to each stage of our lives. Being a little uncomfortable with a plan is a sure sign that we’re on to something more interesting.

    • The Places We Will Be From

      Closing time, you don’t have to go home
      But you can’t stay here
      — Semisonic, Closing Time

      There’s something comfortable about staying in place. Things feel more natural and familiar, after all, and this is where all our friends are. But life is change, and we too must embrace it. Even the farmer, seemingly always in the same place, changes with the seasons. Most of us aren’t farmers, but we ought to listen to the wind and watch the level of the sun and know our place in this world will not be what it once was. We must be change agents for progress to happen.

      Closing time, time for you to go out
      To the places you will be from

      It’s easy to think back about who we were then. It’s harder to imagine who we’ll be in the future, let alone to map the path from here to there very accurately. Surely, there will be unexpected twists and turns along the way. The future is not ours, any more than the past is us today. But we do have the present, such that it is, to do with it what we will. Someday this will be who we used to be too. So we ought to make it a great story.

      Closing time, every new beginning
      Comes from some other beginning’s end

      When one door closes, another is said to open. How many doors have closed already? No matter—not really. What matters is the door opening in front of us, and our willingness to step across the threshold to what’s next. Life is about reinvention, rebirth, renewal. It’s closing time on some older version of ourselves, isn’t it? We can’t stay here forever. But as with any great adventurer, we should develop a strong sense of what’s next.