Alexandersmap

    Tag: The Avett Brothers

    • Release the Dancers

      “He was weary of himself, of cold thoughts and intellectual dreams. Life a poem! Not when you perpetually went around inventing your life instead of living it. How meaningless it was, empty, empty, empty. This hunting for yourself, slyly observing your own tracks—in a circle, of course; this pretending to throw yourself into the stream of life and then at the same time sitting and angling for yourself and fishing yourself up in some peculiar disguise! If only it would seize him: life, love, passion—so that he wouldn’t be able to invent it, but so that it would invent him.”
      — Jens Peter Jacobsen, Niels Lyhne

      There’s a fine line between imagination and invention. We dream big dreams, or perhaps simply a wee wish or two, and they each dance about happily in our imagination until we do the work to realize them or eventually get sick of being teased by the dancers and find something else with which to fancy for awhile. Life isn’t meant to be a dream, it’s meant to be a gradual realization of our potential. It’s a matter of turning imagination into reality through deliberate and purposeful work. That line is crossed through action.

      “Decide what to be and go be it.”… —The Avett Brothers lyric that lives rent free in my head.

      Incremental experience—the experience that Jacobsen’s character Niels is pining for—in turn forever reinvents us. The person we’ve become is far more capable of doing this next thing than the person we were then. We imagine possibilities we couldn’t imagine from our previous vantage point, and we move along a timeline of steady progression.

      It’s natural to chafe at the limitations of our current level of experience. This discomfort is a catalyst for change—if we allow it to be anyway. Unless we’re forever paralyzed by inaction and low agency. We must develop our voice over time and learn to use it to realize possibility:

      Alas for those that never sing,
      But die with all their music in them!
      — Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Voiceless

      We are forever inventing ourselves or settling into the stasis of an under-developed character. We must raise our voice and sing! This life is flying along with or without our active participation. By all means, step away from the mirage of dreams and do something with this day. Release the dancers!

    • We Choose to Become

      “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
      — Carl Jung

      Recently far more active than I was just a couple of weeks ago, I’ve become reacquainted with lactic acid and the aches and pains of shrugging off lethargy once again. A small price to pay today for a healthier tomorrow. The idiom “pay me now or pay me later” is always in play in every decision. Paying as we go will always net a better result for those building a better future.

      We change when we decide it’s time, or when change is forced upon us (which is usually too late in the game). We have agency, we must choose to use it. Decide what to be and go be it, as the song goes. If that’s not high agency, I’m not sure what is. First, decide, then go be that which we’ve decided to be. There is no magic formula hiding behind the curtain. We were the wizard all along.

      The thing is, when we keep a promise to ourselves, we learn to trust ourselves more when the next audacious idea comes into our heads. We made it this far, why not try for that next BHAG (“Big Hairy Audacious Goal”) that Jim Collins points to as the fuel behind reaching for long term objectives with urgency and purpose. Is getting back in shape audacious? Not really, but closing that gap makes us more inclined to close another, then another still. And thus to reach higher than we might have otherwise.

      We choose to become or we concede our agency to others. Have another drink, have the fries with that burger, don’t wrestle with that homework, don’t make that call that would make all the difference… we know where these broken promises took us. So why keep breaking more? What’s happened in the past brought us here. What we choose to do now will determine who we will become next. Why leave that to fate? Go be something more.

    • Accepting the Path

      Before I′m pushin’ up daisies
      Give me a long, heady summer
      With arms open wide
      I won′t take this world for granted
      I’ll become what I′ve been askin’
      I′ll accept the path that lays before my eyes
      — Sam Fender, Nostalgia’s Lie

      In order to chase the dream, we must first decide to launch ourselves in that direction. The launch is nothing but the first step in a series of steps, and anyone wondering what happened to their New Years resolutions knows the score on first steps. It’s the ones after the first that really count, because we’re gradually trying on a new identity, one step at a time, accepting the path that we’ve determined for ourselves as ours.

      Decide what to be and go be it, as the Avett Brothers song demands of us, and surely it must be so for us to reach our creative potential, for us to get closer to our version of personal excellence, to realize the dream. Don’t be that person on their death bed wondering what happened. What happened was forever deferring the path in favor of the maze. Once we step into a maze the path is no longer clear, and what feels like progress is often nothing but a dead end.

      We don’t always know a maze until we’re in it, but hit enough dead ends and it becomes evident eventually. The answer, of course, is to get the hell out of the maze and back on the path. To become what we’ve been asking of ourselves. Where each step makes the path clearer than it was before. Knowing deep down that whatever the path, the clock is ticking.

    • Reverent Listening

      “Good writing as well as good acting will be obedience to conscience. There must not be a particle of will or whim mixed with it. If we can listen, we shall hear. By reverently listening to the inner voice, we may reinstate ourselves on the pinnacle of humanity.” — Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry David Thoreau

      I went through a period of time where I considered whether to stop blogging altogether to give that valuable time to other writing. My most productive time is first thing in the morning, before the world wakes up and tells me what it thinks of my grand plans. Why use that time for a blog when I could use it to write a novel or the works of non-fiction that whisper to me?

      The answer, I think, is that this is my daily reckoning with a particular muse that blesses me with its time. To jilt this one for the hope of meeting another is impertinent. Put another way, everything has its time, and first thing in the morning is taken. We may be more selective with our listening at other times of day and turn off the noise of the world. We may choose to spend, say, lunchtime walking quietly with a new muse, reverently listening to a new perspective.

      Everything we do is habitual and routine. This naturally implies that what we’re doing with that time now ought to change. Our life’s contribution comes down to a series of decisions about what we say yes and no to. Decide what to be and go be it, as the Avett Brothers song suggests. Perhaps our most important decision is what we choose to listen as we navigate our days.

    • Leaning Into Constraints

      “When everything is possible, nothing is possible. But when we lean into external and internal constraints by choice, the possibilities, ironically, open up to us.” — Chase Jarvis, Never Play It Safe

      “The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      I have a trip coming up in the near future. There’s no winging it when it comes to which airport I’m driving to, which airline I’m boarding, when the doors close or which seat I’ve been assigned. Likewise, I’m pretty sure I’m on the same page with the pilot about which city we’re flying to. When I arrive I know I’ll have a room waiting for me, a few reservations already made and so on. Constraints can be helpful guardrails for an otherwise unconstrained weekend. Too many constraints can feel confining, too few chaotic. We feel when we’ve arrived at our comfortable medium.

      We function within constraints all the time, often without thinking about it. We are constrained by laws, time, borders, finances… and on and on. But the most persistent constraints are internal. We have an identity that is boxing us into who we are and what we do. We reinforce this with the friends we accumulate around us. Skate your lane, friend, and I’ll skate mine. Together we’ll skate to some distant point in our frozen future.

      Constraints can be limiting. When we get too comfortable we miss out on everything possible that resides outside our current comfort zone. On that upcoming trip I’ve left far more open space in between than scheduled time. There’s a lot to be said for those skip the line tours at the Vatican, for example, but you realize immediately that most of them just put you in a different line, and within a different box than you might have been in otherwise. The lesson is to buy the tickets, but leave room for chance too.

      The thing is, constraints can be highly effective at focusing our attention. There’s nothing like a deadline to keep us on track with a project. When we build the right kind of restraints into our lives, we focus on productive use of our limited time on earth (the ultimate constraint). Being rigid with some things allows us to create the identity we aspire to. Decide what to be and go be it. I write and publish every day, no matter where I am in the world (or within my own head). This blog is surely meaningless in eternity, but it means something to me in the moment.

      What color are we dying our soul? Our habits and routines, our very beliefs in who we are and why we’re here today, will determine the next step on our journey (up, down or sideways). Some useful constraints put us in our place, but they can also move us to a new place. A better place, full of possibility.

    • Action is Identity

      “Creators create. Action is identity. You become what you do. You don’t need permission from anybody to call yourself a writer, entrepreneur, or musician. You just need to write, build a business, or make music. You’ve got to do the verb to be the noun.” ― Chase Jarvis, Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life

      If action is identity, so too is inaction. What we say yes to and what we say no to are each a part of who we are. It’s inherently obvious, yet so easy to forget in the day-to-day demand for our time played to the soundtrack of the well-meaning who only want the best for us (thanks a bunch for that). We must pause a beat and get our bearings, then get back to the climb to our potential.

      If I could offer a bit of unsolicited advice to myself, to my children and anyone else paying attention, it’s to simply follow the call for as long as we can get away with it until we meet that person we envisioned. The only way forward is to do that thing. To write, to build, to make: action is our identity. It’s that vote for the person we wish to become that James Clear reminded us of.

      And so a bias towards action is the not-so-secret way to reach the promised land. Hitting the lottery is a fool’s game, hitting our stride by doing the things we know we need to do is how we live fully. We’ve been gifted with being born at a time and place where possibility flows. The people telling us that this is a time of scarcity are getting wealthy with words. There’s an audience for everything, even that thing that we’re telling ourselves to go be. Decide what to be and go be it, as the song goes.

      We ought to give ourselves a gift these last few months of the year. Do the creative work and put it out there for the world to see. Make a bold statement in who we will be today, and build on it in our following days should we blessed with enough of them. Tempus fugit: time flies. Do it now before it all slips away. If action is identity, just what will we think of ourselves if we don’t act now?

    • To Follow the Call

      “When one thinks of some reason for not going or has fear and remains in society because it’s safe, the results are radically different from what happens when one follows the call. If you refuse to go, then you are someone else’s servant. When this refusal of the call happens, there is a kind of drying up, a sense of life lost. Everything in you knows that a required adventure has been refused. Anxieties build up. What you have refused to experience in a positive way, you will experience in a negative way…
      Your adventure has to be coming right out of your own interior. If you are ready for it, then doors will open where there were no doors before, and where there would not be doors for anyone else. And you must have courage. It’s the call to adventure, which means there is no security, no rules.” ― Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

      We have people in our lives who would read that passage from Joseph Campbell and shudder at the very idea of answering the call. They’ll throw all kinds of logic at you about why this is not a good idea at all, not nearly as good an idea as staying the course and following through on the path chosen for us. It’s an attractive rut to stay in place, doing what is expected of us, with a promise of retirement and a few healthy years before we die. It’s a Siren’s song that has lured many a soul to the rocks.

      Thoreau said something unnervingly similar, didn’t he, when he observed that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”? We may either look inward and refute the observation or find it rings true, but we may never be fully the same having seen the truth within us. Still, every day is a new opportunity to step into who we really are. Every day we may follow the call or go on killing the dream. We must choose wisely which voice we follow, remembering that the rocks are closer than we might believe.

      Alone on a midnight passage
      I can count the falling stars
      While the Southern Cross and the satellites
      They remind me of where we are
      Spinning around in circles
      Living it day to day
      And still 24 hours may be 60 good years
      It’s really not that long a stay
      Jimmy Buffett, Cowboy in the Jungle

      Joseph Campbell is very much in the “follow your bliss” camp. He’s largely the originator of the term. There are many who mock this following your bliss strategy as impractical at best and self-deceptive folly at worst. The question is, if we may have our 60 good years doing something we absolutely love—that calls to us—or if we will forever shelve that for what the world wants of us. What will it be, for you and me?

      Perhaps the answer is to follow our call, instead of bliss. Sure, it’s the same thing, but the optics are better for the person who knows what they want and seizes the moment attempting to achieve it. What is the difference between a start-up entrepreneur in the garage and a poet writing in a cabin in the woods? The former have better marketing budgets. We glamorize the chase for a personal fortune but mock the chase for personal enlightenment.

      Whatever our path is, whatever our call, we ought to feel the urgency to follow it immediately. For the rocks are getting closer and there’s no time to waste. Decide what to be and go be it.

    • Inflexible Disciplines

      “I have always believed that exercise is not only a key to physical health but to peace of mind. Many times in the old days I unleashed my anger and frustration on a punching bag rather than taking it out on a comrade or even a policeman. Exercise dissipates tension, and tension is the enemy of serenity. I found that I worked better and thought more clearly when I was in good physical condition, and so training became one of the inflexible disciplines of my life. In prison, having an outlet for one’s frustrations was absolutely essential.” — Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

      Life spins along at a rapid clip. It’s easy when we’re busy to push some things to the side and realize one day that we haven’t done something essential for some inexplicably long time. Habits we’ve folded into our identity can slip away in a few weeks of inaction. If we are what we repeatedly do, we are also what we repeatedly don’t do. So we must zealously hold on to the things we want in our lives. I can’t help but think of Nelson Mandela as I write that. He had a rigid exercise routine throughout his life that began at 05:00 every day. This carried him through his worst days in prison through his best days as President of South Africa. Who am I to use excuses for not being more disciplined?

      This idea of inflexible discipline is the key. We all must have our line in the sand of what we will always do or not do. This is our core identity. For me it includes writing and publishing something every day, along with a key set of other habits I track daily. A fitness routine is woven into that essential habit list, but it comes and goes like the breeze. As with writing, it has to be a box that must be checked every day. And as with writing, it’s better to check that box early in the morning before life’s distractions stack up against us. Like Mandela and others in human history who represent a disciplined life of fulfillment and transcendence from the ordinary.

      Our actions determine who we are and will be. It seems that being inflexible with ourselves may be the difference between reaching a desired identity and forever punting it away. Decide what to be and go be it, as the Avett Brothers put it so well. Being it begins today and every day.

    • Finding the Boldly Creative Work Inside of Us

      “Some arrogance is essential to the creative process. The very idea that your private thoughts or feelings are worth sharing with anyone outside your family or friends is already a kind of arrogance. Arrogance is the exit and entry point to the humiliation that art requires. Not unrelated is a dubious courage that when you find yourself out of your depth in troubled waters, you will discover how to swim. Another daft but true idea that creativity seems to depend on.” — Bono, Surrender

      “Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That’s why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance.” ― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle

      Taking a leap into anything is a bit scary and uncomfortable. Think a moment about public speaking. Did you shudder just then? Walking up to a microphone to deliver a speech can be daunting, yet some of us flip the switch and do it anyway. It’s nothing more than playing a character—a bigger version of our normal self. A bigger version that has something to share that others may find connection and meaning from. That voice inside that says you don’t deserve to play that bigger version is the real fraud, not the person you’ve become. Every step on the climb can be thought of as arrogance should we surrender to the Resistance.

      Art is very much like public speaking, in that we are putting ourselves out there for all to judge. There is a large sample size of writing now that would give the world a pretty good idea of who I really am deep down inside. Is there arrogance in thinking anyone really cares to find out? Surely there’s some truth to this, but how else do we move forward in this world were it not for the boldness to speak up and show our work?

      I’ll embrace arrogance if it means I’m bold. I’ll embrace the courageous leap into the unknown if it leads to growth and better work. I’ll risk it all for better. How about you?

      Behind those words are other words. The self-talk of someone who knows that there’s still so much work to do. The words of someone who doesn’t dare leave this world without putting my best out there, but knowing the best is yet to come. Feeling that urgency and acting on it is all that really matters. The rest is just talk.

      “Decide what to be and go be it.” — The Avett Brothers, Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise

    • That Person in the Middle

      We each build our identity through our actions—on the people we become through our habits and relationships. As Jim Rohn pointed out, we are the average of the five people we associate with the most. There’s a lot of truth in this observation. The people around us influence us, and amplify our own actions and beliefs as we in turn influence them.

      So what happens when the people we associate with the most begin to fall away? Someone fills the void, or perhaps nobody does, but either way the dynamic has changed. The pandemic surely taught us that relationships and routines are fragile things indeed. What we lean into when our circle begins to fall away will define who we become next. Our core identity often rises to the occasion in such moments, and it’s up to us to decide whether we like who that person is. Every day is an opportunity to change the story.

      The thing is, we have agency. We may yet decide what to be and go be it. Stasis isn’t our natural state, by it’s very nature it’s what we settle for. We ought to stop settling and continue becoming. There’s more story to be written for us, friend. Consider Gordon Lightfoot, who just passed away. He was a notorious drinker, until he decided not to be. He became healthy and active when he changed the people he spent his time with:

      “I love Canada. I’ve traveled all over the North in various canoe expeditions. Fortunately, I… fell in with a group of people about 30 years ago who were into canoe trips. I got into it and over a period of about 15 years I did ten trips. I’ve done a lot of the major rivers in Northern Canada — the Coppermine, the Back River, the Nahanni, the Churchill. I feel very fortunate about being born in Canada. Never really wanted to leave.” — Gordon Lightfoot, “Gordon Lightfoot on Meeting Miles, Canadian Canoe Trips and That One Time with Ozzy”, The Exclaim! Questionnaire

      There’s a heavy dose of identity in these words. Not just about being Canadian, but about being out there exploring the wilderness of Canada. This is a man who became something far more than a heavy-drinking musician. It almost certainly extended his active lifetime by many years.

      And what of us? What is our identity, and who are we becoming through our associations and habits? We must continue to play an active role in writing a story worthy of a lifetime, for our entire lifetime. People inevitably come and go in our time. What we’ll always have is the person in the middle.