Alexandersmap

    Tag: Will Durant

    • Past and Present

      “It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time. You, too, are your past; often your face is your autobiography; you are what you are because of what you have been; because of your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations; because of every element of environment that has affected you, every man or woman that has met you, every book that you have read, every experience that you have had; all these are accumulated in your memory, your body, your character, your soul. And so it is with a city, a country, a race; it is its past, and cannot be understood without it. It is the present, not the past, that dies; this present moment, to which we give so much attention, is forever flitting from our eyes and fingers into that pedestal and matrix of our lives which we call the past. It is only the past that lives.” — Will Durant, Fallen Leaves

      Super Bowl Sunday was a fun day for many, a crushing day for a few, and a collective memory for all who paid it any attention. Life marches on, no matter which team won or which celebrity did what at the game. It’s all a game in the end. The fact that I woke feeling pretty good overall is far more important to me than who won the game (particularly since “my team” hadn’t even made the playoffs).

      We are each a collection of our past living on within us. We do what we must with the present trying to make it great and to set up a better version of us tomorrow, but our identity is always built on what we’ve done in the past that brought us here. We are all writing our life’s story, our greatest hits, and our obituary. We ought to make it shine.

      A few years ago I started logging what I did every day in a line per day journal. It’s a great way to focus on making something memorable of every day, but it’s also a great way to look back at the breadcrumbs of a life that brought us from there to here. The blank pages to come are full of optimism, but the pages that have been filled are who we really are.

      My recent past has involved looking at several paths forward, weighing each, dismissing some and leaning in to others. Humans must look to the future, even as we live a present built on our past. Our question is always, “What’s next?” and we spend our lives trying to find the answer. Our present, on the other hand, forever answers a different question: “How have you been?” We ought to like the answer. Yesterday is gone, but it lives on within us.

    • More Movingly Visible

      “What are the needs and impulses that make a man spend years of preparation, and then months of labor, to produce a work of art? Presumably because he wishes to express himself, his ideas, and his moods; because he longs for distinction and reward; because he has a keener sense of beauty than most of us; because he aspires to combine the partial beauties and veiled meanings of actual but transitory forms in a vision of clearer significance or more lasting loveliness. Usually he sees more than we see, in fuller intensity or detail; he wishes to remove some of these perceived aspects in order to leave the essence and import of the scene more movingly visible to our eyes and souls.” — Will Durant, Fallen Leaves

      Empathy is a conditioned response. We are empathic when we live and struggle, find our way around obstacles or alternatively, find no way around it and find some other way to live, knowing deep down that that other way was closed to us. Those “not for you’s” burn inside as a driving force or a ready excuse for other behavior. If we’re lucky, we find a person who encountered a similar obstacle in their life and made something of themselves anyway. The world is full of examples of people who rose to greatness and also those who spiraled into darkness. Empathy is seeing ourselves somewhere in each.

      The artist learns to see through similar conditioning. Art is a daily struggle to express ourselves in a world that wants us to shut up and fall in line. It takes courage to put oneself out there under such circumstances, but the art takes on a life of its own. The very best artists turn the lens over to us to see what they saw, and maybe something more. Art, like music and prose, is digested and interpreted by the audience. We work through some things, run into our own share of “not for you’s” and produce some time stamp of the person we were at the time. Some work resonates, some falls flat, but the work continues for as long as we choose to dance with the universe.

      Writing, like my amateur photography, helps me to see. Each attempt expands my idea of what’s possible, and I lean into it a bit further with each session. I’ve read books I’d never have read otherwise in my pursuit of more, taken side trips that I might never have considered, and most essentially, turned my gaze outward. We all have an internal dialog happening within us, the artist trains themselves to open that dialog to the universe and expand the conversation. The art is thus a transcript of the moment, a scene made more movingly visible for others to see.

      The thing is, the universe reveals itself to us on its own terms. We learn to be patient, to do the work, to engage and observe. We may be witness and yet not have the wisdom to see the beauty in our moment. Some art is not for us to express. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t express what we can in our time. Like sketches in a student’s notebook we mark our journey to a higher place.

    • Let Us Play

      “Health lies in action, and so it graces youth. To be busy is the secret of grace, and half the secret of content. Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them. In Utopia, said Thoreau, each would build his own home; and then song would come back to the heart of man, as it comes to the bird when it builds its nest. If we cannot build our homes, we can at least walk and throw and run; and we should never be so old as merely to watch games instead of playing them. Let us play is as good as Let us pray, and the results are more assured.” — Will Durant, Fallen Leaves

      Health lies in action. We know the drill: sitting is the new smoking. We must get up and move, and not just move, but delight in moving. To play is to live. Life is full enough of tedious moments, don’t you think? Our exercise ought to be fun.

      For me walking is a more fun form of exercise than just about anything save paddling or rowing. Walking in places that inspire and awe is wondrous, and ought to be a regular part of our routine, but sometimes a simple walk around the block is enough to reset the soul and stir the blood. Sometimes we focus so much on the spectacular or the glory of the summit that we forget the benefits of the activity itself. We must move, and glory in the act itself.

      This past weekend I’d contemplated a hike. Knock off a couple of summits that were particularly evasive for me on the list for one reason or another. When you hear the call of the wild you ought to listen, but sometimes that call is a siren. It was treacherously cold in the mountains, the kind of cold that will ruin a perfectly good day for the prepared, or kill the unprepared. Not exactly the play I was craving: lists be damned. So instead of a 4000 footer I opted for sea level and a January beach walk. Also bitingly cold, but distinctly more accessible. It also offered an easy opportunity to simply bail out and get back into a warm car (or bar) if needed.

      My bride and our pup are both beach bunnies at heart. Off-season walks on the beach are their kind of play, and mine too. I can spend all day at the beach so long as I’m not lying still like something that washed up. Surf speaks to me almost as much as summits do, and I view a great walk on a long beach as delightful as any walk can be.

      We chose Hampton Beach, New Hampshire for our off-season walk. We wanted to take stock of the damage from the winter storms last week, and to have a long stretch of beach sand. That biting cold ensured few people would brave the exposure of the beach, so our only company were other dog walkers and a few determined metal detector miners looking for lost riches. We each chase the American dream in our own way, and everyone needs a hobby.

      We should never be so old as merely to watch games instead of playing them. The trick is to stay in the game. To play in the sand is just as fun as playing king of the mountain. Just move, and delight in the company of others. That’s a simple recipe for a great life.

      January at Hampton Beach. Lot’s of footprints in snow, few people.
      Winter means walking in brisk solitude

    • On the Wire

      “Youth is as confident and improvident as a god. It loves excitement and adventure more than food. It loves the superlative, the exaggerated, the limitless, because it has abounding energy and frets to liberate its strength. It loves new and dangerous things; a man is as young as the risks he takes.” — Will Durant, Fallen Leaves

      “Life is being on the wire, everything else is just waiting. — Karl Wallenda

      I was talking to a bright young man we have welcomed into our family. He feels trapped in his job, working to pay bills accumulated trying to make a go of it lumped on to that all-to-pervasive source of misery for young adults nowadays: college debt. The thing is, that feeling of being trapped is a common refrain. If it’s not paying down debt it’s some other commitment we’ve made. To step out of line is viewed as audacious for a reason; The world wants us to fall in line, not to leap. A line of credit is as rigid a line as we can fall into.

      One compliment we give to certain young people is to call them old souls. Mature beyond their age, they can hold their own in a conversation with an adult, are measured in their approach to living and have a strong idea of their identity. When you raise children to be responsible, empathetic and deliberate, this idea that they’re old souls is a compliment you hear often. Being an old soul doesn’t mean you’ve prematurely lost your youth, it means that you’re making the most of it as seen from the perspective of people who have been around the block a few times.

      Those people who have been around that block might suggest taking more risks while you have that youthful exuberance. Taking more risks doesn’t mean being reckless, though it may appear to be reckless to the timid souls who believe they know what’s best for us. Risking is a form of breaking free from the hold of expectations. Risking is putting ourselves out there on the proverbial wire that we may find out who we may become for having done so. We should go to great lengths to put ourselves in challenging and identity-stretching situations, not to risk our well-being, but to shatter our beliefs of what’s possible for us.

      We are indeed as young as the risks we take, differing as they do from the risks we contemplate taking but defer to another day. As Wallenda put it, that’s just waiting. We may want to be bold and adventurous in our lives, but the very idea of risking everything that makes life so comfortable and familiar warrants strong consideration before the leap… or does it? What’s the worst thing that will happen should be do this thing? Can we recover from that worst thing? If the answer is yes, then we ought to put ourselves out on that wire. A bold life can’t wait very long for a decision, for we know life is short and youth is but a state of mind soon tempered by commitments and lines.

      What are we waiting for anyway?

    • The Rhythm of Routine

      “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” ― Will Durant, The History of Philosophy

      We get into a rhythm of routine in our lives. When we travel frequently this becomes our rhythm. When we hike or sail or play pickle ball every free moment we’re in a rhythm of routine. And when we do nothing but stare at a computer monitor all day we’re most definitely in a rhythm of routine. We find a rhythm that works for us and we dance with it for as long as we feel the beat in our souls.

      We’re just past two weeks into a new year as this is published. It’s a good chance to review progress thus far and ask ourselves, are we getting where we thought we’d go when we rounded the corner on last year? Does that rhythm of routine feel right or do we need to change the playlist? Are the weekends filling up with joyful pursuits, or are we stumbling through to Monday? Does the work feel right or are we looking towards Friday?

      We are reminded now and then that we need the right dance partner or we never quite feel the rhythm enough to dance with it. Sure, we can dance by ourselves, but what’s the fun in that? Any adventure in life is better together. With the right partner, we become accountable, and push each other just enough to go that much farther into the world. And surely, the right partner also keeps us from charging off the cliff when we get ahead of ourselves.

      Looking at my own daily habit tracker, I see a pattern very similar to last year’s habit track. Some things I defined as absolutely essential to the rhythm I want to be dancing in aren’t being checked frequently, if at all. Some are tracking nicely to firmly establish themselves as part of my identity. Nothing speaks more clearly than the truth staring back at you in black and white. We must measure our progress, that we may reconcile our beliefs with our behavior.

      Indeed we are what we repeatedly do. Does the rhythm of our routine feel right for us to reach personal excellence? The answer lies in progress—incremental or in big leaps forward. Are we getting there, or settling into a routine of excuses and complacency? We can reset ourselves at any time, really. Why not now?

    • A Dash of Flavor

      If most of life is lived in a steady state of routine, we have the opportunity to add micro-bursts of exceptional living now and then to spice up this dish. Some people take that opportunity whenever a free moment comes along, some embrace routine for their entire journey. Bursts of unique experiences can be quite thrilling. Conversely, routine can be quite fulfilling. Who are we to judge which is best? Maybe the answer is a wee bit of both.

      A couple of senior sisters I know recently took an epic roadtrip from New England to Florida, stopping at bucket list historic sites along the way. These were places they’d always wanted to visit, but kept putting off to prioritize the routine things that came up in their lives. This trip was a burst of adventure that they’ll talk about for years to come. I hope they’re already planning their next adventure.

      I’ve come to terms with not selling everything and sailing around the world. Simply put, I have a lot to do right here and now that compels me to embrace some level of routine that reinforces the productive, creative soul I’ve decided to be. That doesn’t mean I’ve accepted blandness in my life diet. Every day offers the opportunity for more flavor than we’d otherwise consider. Add a dash.

      The rower in me knows how this goes. Most of the race is intense steady state, with a few bursts of all-out effort to pull ahead. You don’t win the race rowing steady state the entire way, nor can you sustain all-out effort for 2000 meters. You must be strategic in where you use your energy, ensuring that you don’t run out of gas before the finish (“fly and die”), while also reaching the end with an empty tank (thus, doing your best). A productive life has similar cadence.

      “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle (or was it Will Durant?)

      Surely, we can do more than we believe is possible in a day, let alone a lifetime. Another lesson from rowing was to just focus on the next stroke, and then the one after that. Dwelling on what is sustainable is a sure way of talking yourself out of doing anything at all. Still, we must use our power budget wisely. Micro-bursts of activity teach us what is possible, while offering a light at the end of the tunnel. Knowing we only have this brief time to do things, why not maximize the moment?

      We can’t have it all, but we can have a lot more than we give ourselves permission to go after in life. Spice up life with a burst of adventure now and then, for it’s good for the soul. It also informs us of what’s possible. Too much spice can ruin a dish, but not enough and it’s bland. There’s that line between chaos and order again, showing us that balance is the key. Just don’t confuse balance with timidity. Be bold.