Navigating Calm

It can be difficult to hold to something day by day over a long period of time. I struggle with New Years resolutions and lofty goals over the boring parts in the middle. 

But I’ve also learned that those periods of calm and temptation are when holding true is ever important. It’s easy to grit your teeth and bear through the storm, but distraction and laziness abound under clear skies. 

Keeping the end in mind can sway your conscience toward the light. When we hold to the ideals of truth and decency and sustainability, those around us benefit, as well as those who come after. 

Changes of a Day

As light goes down and darkness gathers around another day, have we learned more? Because every day that that happens, our species gets better. 

I may not know wisdom or have the ultimate vantage point of perspective, but I understand that our learning is perpetual. When we improve over the course of a day, it gets amplified across our species. 

We are each vessels of our collective greatness, harbingers of our collective capability. Can we rely on it?

We Can Do It

People have different perspectives. I may not have typed a truer sentence. 

The fact is, we learn and adapt to different situations. It’s not always pretty, and there’s something to be said that a synchronous “sync” can be messy, uncultured. 

We are animals after all, trying to make our way in this jungle. It’s arduous, but we can do it. 

On the Plane Again

I’ve been fortunate to visit some different places this year, and have felt safe doing so. I can’t help it; whether born or conditioned, I’m meant to explore.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve appreciated how even a “small” trip short in duration can add depth to one’s view of the world. Basically, if you’re on an airplane, you’re traveling a distance that was impossible not that long ago, and wherever you land, people will be living a little differently. 

There’s so much diversity of culture and perspective across our species, and travel unlocks access to it for ordinary people. Possessions pale in comparison to the experience and education that travel brings. 

Spaceship Day

Today doesn’t get enough attention considering its importance. More than anything, today is a reminder to shift our communal focus to the largest shared arena, Earth. 

Cities, cultures, countries... these constructs do not separate us the way we imagine them to, the way we have accepted. Because in the end, we are all passengers on one wondrous spaceship. 

For the time being, what happens on this spaceship impacts us all, affects the entirety of our species and all we know. This Earth Day, let us remember we are one ecosystem, on one beautiful planet, and let us be grateful. 

Space Time Eminence

We are constantly emanating energy output into space time. The most powerful mechanism for this is something we can’t even see: putting forth ideas. 

Our species thrives because it can store ideas into collective memory at scale, something no other life on Earth can do. Bravo for humanity, but it’s a fragile ability that must be maintained (just like anything else).

We have inherited knowledge and luxury from those who came before us, and innovation of the wisdom thus far collected is not guaranteed. What energy will we produce, what progress will we release into the universe, for those who come after?

True Traits

I often reflect on the fact that we will never truly understand another’s perspective. Sure we can attain near total alignment, but no one is you, and you are no one else. 

This makes openness and consideration paramount to our survival, to our success as a species. We are frail and weak compared to much of the animal world, and instead rely on our combined ingenuity to thrive.

So far removed from the primal world within today’s civilization, it’s easy for us to forget the real advantages that make us human, and our biology will never “catch up” to our technological innovation. It’s imperative we remember our togetherness, the true trait responsible for all we crave and enjoy. 

Types of Greatness

We have this sense, this sort of illusion of greatness, that probably didn’t biologically exist before our creation of society, of civilization. We are impressionable creatures that are allured by specialness. 

I’m not sure that’s where we derive our happiness, but it could be. We seem to be our most satisfied when we thrive collectively within our social group, our tribe, but maybe that requires a certain kind of greatness. 

It provides options at least. To pursue individual endeavors, or to seek solutions for the greater good of humanity—those things are worthy of admiration—but do they compare to the greatness of companionship, leadership, and support 

Post Pandemic Tide

It seems everyone is getting a sense of possibility, that there’s hope on the horizon of a “return to normalcy.” The weather’s getting nicer and more people feel safer as vaccinations continue to increase. 

There’s reason to be hopeful, and our great challenge now is to embrace living in a post pandemic world while still remembering what it’s taught us. There are things to fix and problems to solve, and the tide doesn’t rise on its own. 

The sooner we determine how to organize and divide the work so it’s manageable for all of us to put forth a collective solution, the sooner our society will flourish post Covid. There is much to enjoy, but there’s as always much to learn, and we need to do both moving forward... let’s get to it. 

To Show Love

I don’t know, but every passing day has shown me that we each have an opportunity to show love.  What’s cool is, we can all exhibit it at any moment.

Think about it: at this very moment that you are reading this, you can choose to emanate energy out to those around you. It’s a decision. 

Can we collectively make that decision? Are we capable, are you and me capable?

Power and Possibility

There’s a lot of scary stuff going on in the world right now, and “the news” has been disheartening for a while. But shrinking away from the problems that persist in our society is not the solution. 

We are one global community, whether we understand it or not. Our behaviors collectively affect everyone else. 

We can decide to rally together, to declare that we will continue to change and improve the world. It’s possible and it’s within our power... what are we waiting for?

Together is Better

We also might be the most social creatures on the planet. Deep connection separates us from all else we know. 

The pandemic has made socialization difficult, for all of us, kids to octogenarians. Hopefully it has made us recognize our greatest strength and lifeline. 

We are stronger together, as millennia have proved. From that timescale, this is nothing; we will overcome, together. 

Productive Creatures

We build upon our successive learnings and failures as time goes on, (hopefully) cumulatively solidifying our grasp of reality and how we can improve it. Is that not the defining characteristic of being human?

I don’t believe we’re designed for consumption; it’s just a sticky web very alluring to addictive creatures. Our greatest happiness, and greatest potential, derives from situations requiring applied creativity. 

We contribute value to the world and the universe when we produce, not when we consume. When we harness this power collectively, we are capable of manipulating our environment for the betterment of life on this planet; we are capable of changing the world. 

Home Again

I returned to my apartment today hardly recognizing it. Hundreds of miles of driving, hours of hiking, and the majesty of the great outdoors will do that to you.

And it’s hard to convey that to others when you show them pictures of your trip. Photographs of the sights may be beautiful, but they show the fantasized version of the adventure, not the sweat and blood and trials and tribulations. 

We are forever changed by our experiences, if we let them do so. Travel creates new dimensions to our reality, that can make home seem a new excitement.

Life, Earth and Human

Road tripping through Utah this past weekend has reinvigorated my passion for travel and exploration. But it’s also reinforced just how sublime life can be, how magnificent the Earth is, and how wonderful it is to be human. 

The trip wasn’t perfect; I was often tired, it was a lot of driving, and it didn’t always bounce our way. But there’s so much beauty in this country and we got to see lots of it, Americans showed how friendly and warm they can be, and it was just an all around adventure. 

Visiting different parts of the Earth just builds upon your perspective. We have an amazing home, and we can be good to each other—appreciating nature makes it all the easier. 

Humanity’s Harbor

If you were Martian and landed on Earth, you’d be stunned by the natural beauty of the blue planet. Even more, your first impressions of Earth’s splendor would vary significantly depending on where you set down; much of the American Southwest resembles Mars itself, while the grassy plains, lush rainforests, and arctic hinterlands would truly feel an alien world. 

There’s so much breathtaking beauty all around this planet, it would be a shame not to explore it, to experience it. How enviable those Martians would be, that we happened to inherit a world full of life, water, and wonder. 

Maybe we would look upon each other differently if more of us traveled, maybe we would better understand that our presence here is a privilege. Humanity could not ask for a better base, a more magnificent domain, from which to experience the universe. 

Remote Beauty

It was a wonderful return to the Coyote Buttes region of southern Utah and northern Arizona today. It’s amazing how many more people have “discovered” the area’s sublime beauty. 

When I visited this place in early 2017, there were perhaps 15 people total; today I passed 15 families while exploring Buckskin Gulch. And there’s good reason—this remote area of the American Southwest features some of the most beautifully rugged desert terrain on the planet.

It’s been a hard year especially for the rural parts of our country, but today served as a reminder that many of them are the gateway to some of the prettiest places on the continent. Welcome to Kanab, Utah and Page, Arizona. 

America on the Road

Road trips that start with traffic aren’t fun, but it’s also the name of the game when you live in the city: it takes a while to get away from it all, and that’s part of the allure of getting away. Once you settle into wandering the great wide open, the never ending horizons bring the feeling of possibility.

So crank up the Americana and reflect on all that is the United States as you cross the continent; there’s something uniquely American about hitting the road and collecting mile markers. The technology to do so has existed for decades, so there’s something fundamentally unchanged about the whole experience. 

Today it’s teaching me to take the bad with the good, to slow down and settle in (to my American heritage). Here’s to expanding landscapes and perspectives. 

Pre-Trip Thrill

There is nothing like the excitement when on the verge of a trip. Humans are incredibly curious creatures in many ways, only one of which is to explore new places.

How satiating that investigation is, whether it’s of new geographical worlds, a new web of culture and community, or simply the unknown. Knowledge and perspective gained from travel can fundamentally change one’s way of life for the rest of their life experience. 

Planning and packing and anticipating; the initial stages of discovery. It’s wise to embrace it while it lasts, as eventually, undeniably, there comes a yearning for home. 

One Social Group

We’ve been so starved of social interaction, in many ways the lifeblood of our species, that now when we experience companionship outside our home it’s almost an abnormal experience. And yet the smiles and laughter and conversation don’t seem so foreign. 

We are social creatures, and enduring this pandemic while having access to modern technology has exacerbated that fact. The next step as a civilization is to recognize this important trait of our collective biology and make it easier for us to interact, to exchange, to connect. 

We face many challenges ahead; they will be much simpler if we face them as one race, the human race. Disregarding this very clear distinction would be our greatest folly.