Hanalei Bay. The view on my daily walk.
Sixty Hours
My “houseless and happy” lifestyle continues and I find I am at home wherever I go. And there have been a lot of wherevers. Ft. Lauderdale to Portland, Green Bay to Houston, San Francisco to Washington DC and several dozen more. My friends have warned me about my “going-going-going” tempo. They have a point.
Actually, it is not the travel that has me spinning. I know how to travel. It is the number of delicious adventures that have come my way in speedy succession that keeps me apace. I did a PBS show in Houston, became a first-time grandmother to a little boy named Braxton who decided to join our family a month early, and endowed a scholarship in my mother’s name. The president of Mt Mercy University, Chris Blake, took her to a surprise dinner to tell her about it. She is still talking about how nice he was. I have worked off some serious karma on that one.
New friends have poured in: spiritual healers, professional comedians, and an American Indian who used to run both a sweat lodge and a national computer repair company. I’ve made friends with Germans, Vietnamese, Australians, Japanese, and Hawaiians – and with an engineer from Berkley, an investor/philanthropist from Florida, a midwife from Colorado Springs and a couple of stoner/surfer dudes.
After three months of pretty much rapid-fire travel I have landed on Kauai. I am house sitting for a friend in her beautiful condo on the north shore in Princeville for 11 weeks. The place is lush, serene and magically beautiful. I walk every day to Hanalei Bay. In the winter the waves are big- sometimes huge. Last week the island was abuzz with 35-foot waves pounding the shore.
I spent the first week on island getting settled in, answering the 406 emails that I brought with me from the mainland.
Then I took three days of silence in the condo. I emailed friends and family a day prior to inform them of my temporary unavailability and called my mother to reassure her that no, I’m not depressed. Quite the opposite, actually.
Then I turned off everything I could. My phone, computer, radio, TV, DVD, CD and ipod. I unplugged the clocks and taped paper over the microwave and oven digital readings. I did not pick up mail or read a newspaper. I did not leave the condo from Friday night to Monday morning.
For 60 hours my world went silent.
I have done this ritual a few times before. The first day I talked to myself out loud, even more than I usually do. I did a Zen cleaning, scrubbing every inch of the condo, and rearranging things for my comfort. My obsessive-compulsive side appreciated this surrender to beauty and order.
I read and napped and meditated. I played solitaire the old-fashioned way- with actual cards. I did my yoga practice and 368 sit ups. I danced.
Mostly, though, I just listened.
As my inner chatter lessened new “voices” spoke. I kept a special pad to write these epiphanies on. I got 15 in the first 24 hours. In the next two days deeper, more powerful ones showed up, almost always accompanied with a whack on the side of the head-like comment from me, “Geez, why didn’t I think of that!”
On the second day I woke up in the dark, and without a clock, it felt like 2:30 am. But it must have been about 6 because soon I was watching the 6:30 sunrise out my bedroom lanai door. The days seemed longer without knowing what time it was, maybe because I couldn’t constantly set unrealistic goals about how much I planned to accomplish in the next hour or so- and then lament when I didn’t finish “on time” and I felt “behind.” Letting time flow instead of trying to manage it for a change was a much-needed respite. It turns out it passes quite nicely without my constant vigilance.
I had to frequently remind myself that I was not striving to accomplish anything that weekend. Which is funny because that meant I had to be careful not to strive to not strive. Geez, humans are a funny species.
In the final hours I realized I was not so sure I wanted to come back to the noise. I loved the clarity of thought my silence had afforded me, the sense of appreciation for all the good in my life and especially the renewed energy I now felt having allowed myself this rhythm of renewal.
I wonder what the world might look like if we all got quiet- for 6 minutes or 60 hours or 6 days- got off the pods and pads, didn’t befriend or tweet or link in, and couldn’t hear the “news.” We just let the world run without us for a while. I suspect the planets would stay in orbit and we might find some of the inner peace that is so necessary in every way.
I know. You are not like me. You’re not on an island. You may even have a house. You have demands and priorities and obligations. You don’t have time.
Which is precisely why you need a rhythm of renewal.
What’s your renewal strategy?
