Alexandersmap

    Tag: Ursula K. Le Guin

    • Made New Again

      “Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      My bride and I went out to dinner with old friends over the weekend. We hadn’t seen the two couples we met with in some time so there was some catching up to do before we got down to what each is planning for the future. I fancy myself a good listener, and delighted in the company of some exceptional listeners who sought to hear what each party was saying and not simply waiting for a break to jump in with their own take on the world. I delight in a conversation with a person who seeks first to understand, and I do my best to be that person myself.

      Once you’ve raised children together, gone through the succession of jobs and pets and cars and appliances and hobbies that all had their day, we look around and see that the person who’s been there through all of it is still patiently waiting for us to finish stating an opinion they’ve heard us state a hundred times. It may occur to us in such moments that we’ve been every bit as complicated to live with as they have been for us. A long-term relationship is an investment, shared and nurtured equally.

      We put energy into today, that tomorrow we are stronger together. All those fatal flaws that every one of us bring to a relationship are discovered, wrested with and navigated beyond on a course to better. Each day is an encounter with a new version of the person we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with, who’s looking at the latest version of us and deciding what to do with that discovery. Together we grow into something similar, but entirely new.

      The magic is in the rediscovery of that old familiar spark, still burning under the layers of days together. Some days it’s easier to find that spark than other days, but it’s hiding there somewhere, waiting for the fuel and oxygen it needs. So many relationships peter out for neglect, smothered under layers of indifference. Each day is our chance to rekindle and reinvent, to remake and make new. Our future together depends on it.

    • A Creative Life

      “The creative adult is the child who has survived.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      A creative life is a lifestyle choice more than an economic choice. I once had that mixed up in my mind, chasing a career path that didn’t suit my particular passion. But with anything done repeatedly, we develop business acumen and an ability to communicate with others that lends itself to business success. But is that enough?

      When I began this blog, it was a way to start incrementally introducing myself back to creativity. It’s paid dividends in other parts of my life as well, with better writing and communication skills (as one might expect), but also in more creative thinking applied to problems encountered along the way. When we let creativity out of the box it becomes a trusted advisor tapping us on the shoulder when most needed.

      Whatever the future holds for all of us, there’s no doubt that the need for more creativity in our lives is essential. It’s a call to arms for the self: do the work that inspires, and grow with it. So what is whispering in the ear now, eager for expression? We must give creativity the light it needs to grow, that we may grow with it.

    • Using Words Well

      “A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      I’ve had a song stuck in my head for a week that is so profoundly beautiful it changed my perspective on how I want to spend my days. We’ve all had those experiences with art that change us in unforeseen ways. When we encounter prose, poetry or lyrics that awe us with truth, we are inadvertently rising to meet a higher plane of understanding about ourselves and our place in this brief shining moment. We know that the game has changed, and must rise to meet a new personal standard by mining deeper with our own work.

      So many writers tell us that to write better we must read better, and really this goes for all art. But to write better we must also learn to live better, be more present and aware, and through heightened awareness, move closer to personal excellence (arete). Some characters and places are formative, and lead us to places unanticipated before we ascend to that vista. We experience the thrill in discovery in the immediate, and the assurance of familiarity in time. And then it all repeats again with the next encounter.

      The goal is to keep building on the gains made previously. To find new paths worth exploring, to learn something new today, to use that as a stepping stone for something more tomorrow. Writing has brought me farther faster than I would have gone otherwise, but more, it brings creativity to my days that may be applied to other aspects of my life. This creates a snowball effect as each act builds upon the other, as each day builds upon the previous, to create an exponentially greater soul than the one who started this journey.

    • Crossing the Threshold

      “To see that your life is a story while you’re in the middle of living it may be a help to living it well.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      Some change is obvious. Quit drinking for the month and you can say you had a dry January. Stop eating for a day or two and call it a fast. Write a blog post every day for a year (or six) and call yourself a writer.

      Some change is more subtle—sneaking up on us over time. Read enough books and you begin to think differently. Walk a few steps more each time out the door and find the scale doesn’t mock you as much. Change can be abruptly obvious or a drop in the bucket that overflows with time.

      We are all writing our life story. We are the sum of all that we’ve written thus far. So which chapter are we working on today? Are we encountering the threshold in the hero’s journey, leaving the ordinary for the extraordinary? To feel the rush of crossing the chasm is as exhilarating as it is terrifying. Most of us feel we aren’t crossing thresholds every day. Mostly we feel we’re in the ordinary because it sure feels that way to us.

      Seen another way, every day is a threshold to be crossed. We woke up again! What a thrill that should be! We know where we are, but not always where we’re going. Life is our puzzle to solve in our time. A master class in becoming someone we only imagined before. Doesn’t it serve us to be more creative with the script we’re writing for today? To be bold in our daily decisions pulls wonder out of a previously blank page. So spice it up a bit, grateful for the opportunity! Be bold today.

    • Like Wind Blowing

      “Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      It is and we are. What matters is we’re a part. We need not make sense of it all, for who can possibly know? What matters is that we are playing our part in the universe in our time.

      This echoes of Walt Whitman’s famous answer in O Me! O Life! which will always be read with the voice of Robin Williams in my head:

      “That you are here—that life exists and identity,
      That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

      Some of us forever dwell on the why. Some descend into nihilism, as if a why matters a lick, for existence itself is folly. And some simply get straight to work, believing action creates a why. The only thing we control is our reaction to the world we find ourselves dropped into. What do we find when we break down the word reaction? Google AI to the podium:

      “The Latin word reāctiō is the origin of both the Old French and Middle English words, which comes from the verb reagō. Reagō is made up of the prefix re- meaning ‘again’ and the word agō meaning ‘to act’.”

      To act again. Like wind blowing through the grass, we stir meaning out of the inanimate and create a life for ourselves. This is what it means to be alive. To play a part infers action, for which we must boldly embrace our agency. Life has purpose or it’s meaningless—we play a part in determining which it will be. Who says we can’t make our part a thrilling page-turner?

    • Dismantling Our Walls

      “Change is freedom, change is life. It’s always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don’t make changes, don’t risk disapproval, don’t upset your syndics. It’s always easiest to let yourself be governed. There’s a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities. Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I’m going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to go unbuild walls.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      I used part of this quote a few months ago, but wanted to revisit it using Le Guin’s entire challenge. And it is a challenge, isn’t it? We must decide what to be and go be it, or fall in line with all the rest of the compliant souls marching to their ends with their hopes and dreams and potential to make a dent in the universe unfulfilled.

      We’re a few days into the new year now, so how are those resolutions going? Are we moving in the right direction? Walls take time to build, but once built they’re equally hard to unbuild. We know that what brought us here won’t get us there, so we must get busy building or dismantling our walls.

      Change is rarely a leap to the summit but a steady climb built today upon the work of yesterday. Our lifetime is a story written over thousands of days. We must remember this and focus on the direction we’re going and not the failings encountered as we close out any given day. Turn the page and start writing the next.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” — James Clear

      What is identity but a series of days built around behavior and habits? Each reinforces who we are, or corrodes our set beliefs over time. Our lifetime work is to embrace our peculiarities and make something special out of them. The alternative is to fall in line with everyone else, marching through time to their inevitable end, living the lives of quiet desperation that Thoreau warned us of. That’s not us, friend. When we find that our walls are blocking us from any direction but the one in front of us, we’d better like that direction or we must get busy dismantling walls.

    • The Roll of the Peculiar

      “There’s a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

      We finally begin to hit our stride when we ignore the expectations of the well-intentioned and follow our own path. For some of us it comes well after our formal education and those earnest early career moves. Momentum isn’t leaping off the cliff, it’s picking up pieces of our identity and adding them on, one after the other, like a snowball rolling down a mountain of fresh, sticky snow. Soon there’s no stopping us.

      The thing is, that momentum applies as much to the wrong slopes as it does the right one. Once we start rolling and picking up habits, stopping becomes very challenging indeed, let alone nudging ourselves over to another slope. We don’t always know which slope is our slope, but we often know which one is not for us. And we know we can’t wait forever to decide: we must eventually roll.

      Some snowballs appear as oddballs. So what? Does the world need yet another compliant commuter making their way to a job they hate? Who want to go through life wedged into a box like that? Find a place where it’s okay to roll the way you want to roll. That which makes us peculiar also makes us unique, and there’s always an audience for someone unique. What is more virtuous than a life spent growing into the purpose we were meant for?