Alexandersmap

    Tag: The Youngbloods

    • The Great Affair

      “I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” — Robert Louis Stevenson

      Today’s blog post was written on a bus rolling through the Irish countryside between Dublin and Belfast. The timing of the trip was good, as it reminds us that the journey is really up to us to make. There’s time enough for work and scarcity-based bickering and all of that darkness. Today we defer reconciling ourselves with the worst of humanity’s traits in favor of the great affair with living boldly. So we move.

      We know we cannot defer everything. The world is full of problems that must be faced, and we’ll do our part, but the world will always have its problems, and we are but a moment’s sunlight fading in the grass. We have infinity for stillness. We must move now, while there’s still time. Ready?

    • Time Will Have His Fancy

      ‘The years shall run like rabbits,
      For in my arms I hold
      The Flower of the Ages,
      And the first love of the world.’
      But all the clocks in the city
      Began to whirr and chime:
      ‘O let not Time deceive you,
      You cannot conquer Time.
      ‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
      Where Justice naked is,
      Time watches from the shadow
      And coughs when you would kiss.
      ‘In headaches and in worry
      Vaguely life leaks away,
      And Time will have his fancy
      To-morrow or to-day.
      — W.H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening

      January seems to be the time for planning out the year in neat blocks of time, priorities and action steps. It’s fairly easy work to define what must be done, it’s harder to actually do it. The execution of a plan is always the trick, isn’t it? Yet broken down into small enough steps, we somehow find the task more manageable. It seems there’s always enough time for the things that matter most, should we build our lives around our priorities. But time has other plans for us, should we lose our way.

      Lately in my work I talk a lot of urgency. We ought to feel it in our bones, and do something about it now. It’s cliché for a reason, for it matters a great deal in said execution of plan. It’s a call to arms, really—a reminder that time flies and the wishes of today are the regrets of tomorrow. We must therefore seize what flees, as our old friend Seneca reminded us.

      Later in Auden’s magical poem, he writes of wondering what we’ve missed. Wrestling with the eternal, we realize that we are not. We are but a moment’s sunlight, fading in the grass, as Chet Powers wrote and The Youngbloods made famous. It’s an unfair practice to dwell on that which has slipped from our grasp if we use the tally to embrace a helpless state of low agency, but when we use these moments to learn to be bolder in our choices now they may be just the catalyst we need. Feel the urgency yet? Carpe diem, friend. Tempus fugit.

      All this is nothing but a stack of words until we do something with our time. Be bold. Be audacious. Decide what to be and go be it. Today will slip away just as all the rest have. Yet we may still do something with the hour at hand.

    • The Moments Between Us

      Most people search all
      of their lives
      for someplace to belong to
      as you said
      but I look instead
      into the eyes of anyone
      who talks to me
      — June Jordan, Poem For a Young Poet

      We know how this works when we’ve lived awhile. People come and go from our lives, some never to return, and we move on without them. Some people we will barely recall, but others remain unforgettable. What do you remember most about a person? A tilt of the head and a shared laugh? Something said or done to punctuate the day? Often it’s nothing more than lingering in a gaze, and reaching deep connection with another soul, if only for a moment.

      I have little interest in transactional conversation. If the barista or waiter is expecting to take my drink order and move on with their lives they have another thing coming. I seek connection, even in those brief seconds, that will create a ripple of positive energy in an otherwise mundane exchange. Most of the moment will surely fade away for both parties, but what lingers?

      We are but a moment’s sunlight
      Fading in the grass
      — Chet Powers/The Youngbloods, Get Together

      Knowing everything fades away, wouldn’t the most generous thing we can do in this world be to then reflect light back to another? To illuminate and radiate, one-to-one, in this moment shared. It’s a form of upping the ante, because when the other soul is willing and aware they reflect right back to you too, magnifying the positive vibe.

      This is the opposite of the negative energy seen in the comments section of any social media platform, where darker forces prevail. Do you wonder why? I believe it’s because fellow humans aren’t making eye contact with one another, and thus not feeling the stakes of the game they’re playing. We can’t make real connection with another through words typed in reaction to someone else’s words. Darkness only consumes, it never illuminates.

      So where do we find moments of light? Awareness matters a great deal in building a life of connection and love. We all want to belong to something in this world. We all want to find meaning and purpose and maybe a bit of joy in the rush from there to the next. And there’s the answer, hiding in plain sight. So often we miss the opportunity for joyful connection standing right in front of us, awaiting our response. Look connection right in the eye and shine your light.