Alexandersmap

    Tag: Sisyphus

    • Tiny Robots

      “Some years ago, there was a lovely philosopher of science and journalist in Italy named Giulio Giorello, and he did an interview with me. And I don’t know if he wrote it or not, but the headline in Corriere della Sera when it was published was “Sì, abbiamo un’anima. Ma è fatta di tanti piccoli robot – “Yes, we have a soul, but it’s made of lots of tiny robots.” And I thought, exactly. That’s the view. Yes, we have a soul, but in what sense? In the sense that our brains, unlike the brains even of dogs and cats and chimpanzees and dolphins, our brains have functional structures that give our brains powers that no other brains have – powers of look-ahead, primarily. We can understand our position in the world, we can see the future, we can understand where we came from. We know that we’re here. No buffalo knows it’s a buffalo, but we jolly well know that we’re members of Homo sapiens, and it’s the knowledge that we have and the can-do, our capacity to think ahead and to reflect and to evaluate and to evaluate our evaluations, and evaluate the grounds for our evaluations.

      It’s this expandable capacity to represent reasons that we have that gives us a soul. But what’s it made of? It’s made of neurons. It’s made of lots of tiny robots. And we can actually explain the structure and operation of that kind of soul, whereas an eternal, immortal, immaterial soul is just a metaphysical rug under which you sweep your embarrassment for not having any explanation.”
      ― Daniel C. Dennett

      I finally deleted some social media from my phone. I’ve tried hard to simply ignore it altogether, to be the one who posts pictures of family and friends, to wish people a happy birthday or sorry for your loss. To generally be that supportive, trusted associate that I try to be in real life. I felt like the social media version of Sisyphus, forever pushing that rock up the hill only to have it roll back down again to start over. Why push against advertisements and zealots? Move on to living life one blessed day at a time.

      I believe what is wrong with the world right now is that there are millions of people who are getting excited without direction. It’s like a petri dish with electric wires zapping the inhabitants now and then, just to see them get excited and bump into each other. That’s media and politics and some so-called religious organizations, all zapping the masses. But it’s also us, stirred up and zapping each other. Why stay in that mosh pit of despair and anger? The only answer is to climb out of the petri dish and see the world for ourselves.

      The thing is, when we step away from the noise, we may read more, or catch up with people we’d like to see more of. We may phone a friend, just to surprise them when they see our name pop up out of the blue. We may take a walk or row 5000 meters without distraction, listening instead to our bodies, even if we may not love what it has to tell us. Read a little poetry, dance and sing along to a naughty song from our youth, plant some seeds in hopes of a better tomorrow. There’s so much more to do than to forever push a rock uphill.

      Our daily lives are a series of habits and routines channeling us from one day to the next. We may love who we are and where we’re going, but it stands to reason that we ought to question everything anyway, just to affirm that this is in fact what we ought to be doing with this one precious life. This whole game is our miracle, and we ignore the fact that it’s a miracle and it’s our one go at the game at our peril. We may be made up of tiny robots, but the sum of us may choose to think and act towards a higher vision of itself, should we steer the ship in a direction that genuinely excites us.

    • A Series of Projects

      If life is a series of projects in various stages of completion, then I’m in the midst of another stage of life. The problem with living in a home for a quarter century is that what was once new feels a bit dated. A series of projects ensue, the free moments fill up with tasks, and time seems to fly by in the seemingly never-ending pursuit of incremental improvement. Like Sisyphus with his rock, we finish one climb only to descend back to begin all over again.

      I thought we were done after the last project, but then the washing machine needed to be replaced and that started a series of observations from my bride about the things she hated about the laundry room. We’d modernized it during the pandemic, but had missed a few key things she wanted resolved. She knew just the person to talk to about it. You know the old expression, “Happy wife, happy life”? Some may view that with a negative connotation, but not me. If I can make my life partner happy by simply doing work I usually enjoy doing, then sign me up for the mission! Chasing happiness is folly, but it’s a dividend we find together on the journey to better.

      I know people who have never painted a room in their home, never mowed their own lawn or done fall cleanup, never done more than swap out a picture or two on the walls. I envy the free time they’ve carved out to pursue other things. Indeed, the tax on projects is time, and we all need to decide if that tax is worth paying. That time and the money used to complete every project could surely be going towards a trip or dinner out, couldn’t it?

      My response is that incremental improvement of the environment we spend all our time in makes our time in that environment incrementally better. Over time, project-by-project, we may create a place far beyond what we walked into on that day we first got the keys. The point of all these projects isn’t to get rid of the old, it’s continual transformation of dreams into reality. That is part of our overall pursuit of personal excellence (arete). That series of projects is a lifetime pursuit of our potential, expressed in the form of sawdust and paint.

    • Icarus Also Flew

      Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
      It’s the same when love comes to an end,
      or the marriage fails and people say
      they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
      said it would never work. That she was
      old enough to know better. But anything
      worth doing is worth doing badly.
      Like being there by that summer ocean
      on the other side of the island while
      love was fading out of her, the stars
      burning so extravagantly those nights that
      anyone could tell you they would never last.
      Every morning she was asleep in my bed
      like a visitation, the gentleness in her
      like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
      Each afternoon I watched her coming back
      through the hot stony field after swimming,
      the sea light behind her and the huge sky
      on the other side of that. Listened to her
      while we ate lunch. How can they say
      the marriage failed? Like the people who
      came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
      and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
      I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
      but just coming to the end of his triumph.
      — Jack Gilbert, Failing and Flying

      We all have our seasons of triumph and tragedy, hope and despair, but we tend to dwell on the end of things too much instead of celebrating all that was when we never thought we’d touch the ground. In a lifetime we repeatedly rise from the ashes of who we once were to fly again. Icarus, like Sisyphus, is seen as a tragic figure in mythology. And yet he flew. Sisyphus, pushing his rock up that hill, might have caught a glimpse of Icarus from the top as he followed the rock back down to start his next defiant act.

      I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m ready to do something different. It’s a familiar feeling, having been here so many times before in my life. Some people settle into an identity and never leave it, cozy as it feels wrapped around their shoulders. Some people are nomads, shifting with the seasons, restless when change is in the air. Deep down we know who we are. In quiet moments we hear the whisper of change calling for us. No wonder so many reach for distraction rather than face the plunge into the unforgiving sea—the unknown next.

      No, we are not gods, and sometimes our audacity is punished by fate. Still, we must rise to meet the season when life brings change. For life is nothing but change, and we may dare the gods again with our boldness.

    • The Momentum of Trust

      “The individual in the organization who collects, connects and nurtures relationships is indispensable. This isn’t about recording the information in a database somewhere. This is about holding the relationships as sacred as they deserve to be.” — Seth Godin, Graceful

      There’s no substitute for hard work and consistency in our work, but life is a lot easier when we also have a network of alliances and trusted relationships developed over time. The very best way to build any momentum in anything is to build a network of trusted people around us. The network becomes our path to greatness, as those who trust us grow into greatness themselves. They pull us up just as we pull them up.

      The moment we change industries, we lose the momentum of trust. Like Sisyphus, we essentially go right to the bottom of the hill and start pushing once again. As someone who has reinvented myself several times over in my career, I know the power and absence of a strong network all too well. Nowadays I hold on to my trusted relationships for dear life, and go to great lengths to keep developing new ones.

      As people grow and change companies it impacts the people who remain as much as it does those who leave. Trust is earned over time. Momentum may slow or disappear altogether. We may choose to be the glue or the acetone in such moments. Nothing ever stays the same in something as dynamic as a career, but we can be consistent in our reliability and presence as a friend, peer and trusted associate. In the end it’s our relationships we’ll celebrate in our time.

    • All is Well

      “I conclude that all is well,” says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.
      All Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols… Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. — Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

      Fidelity has two meanings, of course, but in the case of Sisyphus, it’s verism—we humans must embrace the entirety of life, not just the beautiful but warts and all. That means the drudgery, the pain, the elation and the wonder. As with Sisyphus, this is our curse, but also our purpose. We’re here to do what we can with the circumstances life delivers to us. Amor fati.

      There are a lot of people who would rather dabble in distraction and conspiracy theories, rather than face the rock and push. The realist finds clarity in verity and derives purpose in the push. Some days grind us to dust. Some days fill us with joy. Each is a gift we may not fully realize. Sometimes the gift is surviving to fight another day. So it is. We have but to react to it in the moment and find that bit of hope that keeps us going to we push again. All is well, friends.

    • Striving for Prévoyance

      “C’est une prévoyance très nécessaire de sentir qu’on ne peut tout prévoir.”
      (“It is a very necessary forethought to feel that you cannot foresee everything.”)
      – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

      Prévoyance. The word tantalizes me, capturing my imagination, tauntingly just out of reach. It’s a French word, essentially translating basically to “foreseeability”. Prévoyance is powerful when applied to the markets, or business, social trends or simply whether to bring an umbrella with you on your walk. It also helps greatly when managing our own lives. I heard a richer and more profound definition from David Hackett Fischer when describing this trait in Samuel Champlain. He defined prévoyance as “the power of a prepared mind to act upon chance events in a world of deep uncertainty.” My French hasn’t reached that level of nuance just yet (and never will without immersion), so I’m grateful when people point out the magic sprinkled in such words.

      The problem with learning is in learning what you don’t know, or levels that you haven’t yet reached in life. But within that inherent underlying frustration lies growth and progression towards a higher self. And that’s where I find myself: decades into life and scrambling over jumbled bits of acquired knowledge in a climb to wisdom and higher truth. The promised land that I’ll never quite reach, but a step closer than I was yesterday or the day before. Sisyphus has nothing on me.

      “It was better to be in the right place than to be smart and work hard. It was best to be cunning and focus on results rather than inputs. Acting on a few key insights produced the goods. Being intelligent and hard working did not.” – Richard Koch, The 80/20 Principle

      In this life I find myself climbing a succession of mountains, looking around with a sigh, and descending back down to climb yet another (refer to yesterday’s post). Perhaps with a bit more prévoyance I might have climbed fewer mountains, and chosen the right one much earlier in life. But such is life: we don’t know what we don’t know until we gain experience or acquire and leverage knowledge from others who have had the experience.

      “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

      That distinction between greatness and meanness lies in which mountains we climb, and how soon we turn back down the path to ascend a different mountain than the one we’re climbing. And that leads back to foreseeability, to prévoyance, and acting upon chance events in a world of deep uncertainty. And so I stuff the brain with as many bits of knowledge from as many perspectives as I can consume, for knowledge, well-used, is the key to prévoyance. This blog, in many ways, is the public-facing library of that accumulated knowledge (such that it is), and the breadcrumbs on the path of where I’ve been recently. And in the 370,000 thousand published words, perhaps it telegraphs where I’m going too.

    • It Has Potential

      Looking out the window on a brisk morning on Cape Cod. Streaks of dark clouds mix with blue sky. Faint orange hints at the possibilities of the sunrise. It doesn’t look like a 10 right now, but it’s not a bust either. This sunrise has potential.

      Isn’t that the feeling we look for in every morning? We woke up, hey that’s a 10 right there! Aches, pains, ailments and troubles subtract from the score. Broken promises, setbacks, slips of the tongue, angry drivers and blatant disregard for others subtract more. But right now, what might go wrong in the day doesn’t matter a lick. This day has potential.

      “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”—Henry David Thoreau

      It’s a lot easier to start with a 10 and work to keep it there than to wake up with a 4 with a pit in your stomach dreading the day, trying like mad to build something of it. Each day has potential, and so do we, if we’ll make something of the opportunity. So I weave together habits of reading and writing and a bit of movement and great coffee and try to keep the 10 going as long as possible. Sometimes just making it through the day is all you can hope for, and this isn’t a call for blind optimism. But it is a call for gratitude, for starting the day on a positive note and working to keep the streak alive instead of endlessly pushing uphill like Sisyphus.

      My coat is too thin to linger out in the wind chill so I cheat and look out the window at the brightening sky. The sun crested the hills and I walked across the crunchy, frosted lawn and down to the water. The sky is a light blue streaked in faint pink. Pretty, but not a 10. But I’m grateful for the opportunity to see it, and to reflect on the potential this day brings. No day is perfect, but every day can be great, or at least pretty good, and that adds up to a great life.

      “The key to a great life is simply having a bunch of great days. So you can think about it one day at a time.” – Peter Adeney

      “They say: “Think big! Have a compelling vision!” I say: Think small. Do something super cool by the end of the day!” – Peter Drucker

      There you go, start with a 10, do something super cool by the end of the day to keep it a 10 (or as close as you can get it) and string together as many great days as possible. Seems a worthy challenge, and the best opportunity to make something of this potential.

    • Sisyphus the Homeowner

      It’s May 4th and Spring is officially here in New England.  Still a danger of frost, mind you, but the world is blooming.  I’ve been away from home for five full days and as with any extended trip I take a moment to take stock of the house, the pets, the yard and the pool to see what’s changed.  With Bodhi aging I started with him, and sure enough his overall well-being is much worse than it was on Monday.  He’s reaching his time, and we all know it.  For now I wanted to get him outside so he could relieve himself with dignity and I carried him down the deck stairs to the backyard.

      First thing I noticed was the sound of the pool filter making a strange sound and a quick glance at the pool betrayed the reason; the water level was eight inches lower than when I left on Monday morning.  Big problem.  I quickly shut off the filter (thinking the damage is done to the pump) and walked around the pool looking for the source of the leak.  As I write this I still don’t know, but for that much water to be drained from the pool it must be mechanical.  I cursed the timing as this would have been something I would have noticed had I been home.  Kris doesn’t focus on things like this, especially with an aging dog crapping all over the house while she’s at work.

      Beyond the dog and the pool, I noticed the many other changes that occur when you’re away for any time.  The world is constant change, and especially in early spring.  The grass is growing again, which is encouraging given the many bare spots that revealed themselves when the snow melted.  Several shrubs have significant winter kill, which is discouraging given the hope with which I planted many of them just a year ago.  Yet even these show signs of life.  Patient monitoring and maintenance may be enough to bring them back.

      Being a homeowner who travels requires a commitment to maintenance.  You’re signing up for lawn care, housework, mechanical troubleshooting, home decor changes, and ongoing financial outlay to fix or replace things that go astray.  These things ground you when you want to immerse yourself in this world.  Or they handcuff you as you look to the world outside.  It’s a state of mind, really.

      Today I need to roll up my sleeves and get to work maintaining that world we signed up for twenty years ago.  Like Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill only to see it roll down to be pushed up again for eternity, being a homeowner means you’re doomed to repeat the same tasks for eternity.  Last year it was the hot tub (still is), this year it’s the pool.  Last year I re-seeded parts of the lawn, this year I’ll be re-seeding parts of the lawn.  Such is the fate of the homeowner.

      There’s a calculation that every homeowner goes through in their heads; is the ROI on this worth the effort?  As an empty nester with a serious wanderlust trait, at what point does it make sense to sell the place and gift these Sisyphean, perpetual tasks to others?  Alas, the answer is… not yet.  For all the maintenance headaches, I love having a pool.  For all the weeding and re-seeding and winterkill, I love having a garden.  For all the sadness of watching your dog age, I love having him around as long as he’s not suffering.  And so it goes, around and around.