"If you don't know what to pursue in life right now, pursue yourself. Pursue becoming the healthiest, happiest, most healed, most present, most confident version of yourself. Then the right path will reveal itself. " - Quotation source
At a certain point during December, after the busy social whirl of the festive season began to abate, and I had finally managed to clear my desk sufficiently enough to start to feel that I was now “on holiday”, I found myself somewhat disturbed by a thought that I had made a rash decision.
Instead of cosying up in my wonderful home literally 3 minutes’ walk from my beloved ocean – site of one of my favourite pastimes: ocean swimming, and instead of relishing opportunities to have long leisurely walks and talks with the incredible tribe of my women friends, I had booked myself to go first of all on a Buddhist retreat, and then to a nearly two week stint of solitude miles from the sea in the heart of the Klein Karoo.
I felt uneasy. What was I thinking?
In retrospect, I know now how sane my decision was. For a start said tribe of girlfriends were themselves, for the most part, also out of town or otherwise occupied with their own families and visitors, and secondly, I really needed to rest.
This newsletter is an ode to rest, and something of a “note to self” (and maybe to you, too, dear reader?) to figure out what it would take to sustain the practices of rest in the living of day-to-day life.
After my Buddhist retreat which I wrote about in my January newsletter, and having snuck in 3 days with one of the tribe of wild, juicy women referred to above at her beach-side home in De Kelders, I headed off in my wonderful Orange VW Polo called Marigold up the N2, through the Tradouw Pass, into Barrydale and beyond to the magical d'WaenHuis Cottage on the Wolverfontein Farm, welcomed by two of life’s most charming hosts: Andre and Ashley.
There began 12 days of solitude, stillness and quiet.
I had many thinking sessions leading up to my time away. I arrived at my cottage with scores of bags (I am a notorious bag lady, and inevitably behave, when packing, as if the place I am going to will not have a kitchen sink and therefore I had better take mine!) and with high expectations that I was going to paint every day, go back through a decade of old notebooks, write my memoir and levitate – preferably all at once.
Such is the internalisation of rush and urgency of our modern lives, that my approach to going on holiday felt more like I was planning to train for an ascent of the Himalayas. (Metaphorically speaking, you understand!)
Fortunately, thanks to the wonderful information shared at my Buddhist retreat, I had the presence of mind to be able to slowly, day by day, peel away these layers of expectations I was placing on myself and settle down instead to that good old-fashioned concept of taking it easy.
And so, slowly but surely, the marathon of “restful tasks” I had laid out as my agenda for my time off was replaced with a profound slowing down. All the way down. I unwound. Completely. I got back on my yoga mat. I meditated. I did go through one notebook, I did do two paintings. I read 5 novels. I slept for 9 hours every night. I ate light and healthy. I spent hours on my stoep watching weaver birds playing in the bird bath. Every now and then I slipped into my little plunge pool, especially at night under the stars.
I made fires and stared at the flames until there was no wood left in my wood pile till Andre replenished it the next day, and then I went to bed and slept some more. I did not set an alarm, I woke when my body said “enough”.
By the time I left, my body had internalised, at a deep cellular level, the experience of being rested, at ease, still and peaceful.
And then I came back to my life in the “real world”.
What came with me was a sense of how seemingly magical life is. It appears I have an innate superpower (and I don’t think it’s personal), to know what is possible and allow it to happen. When my broken car key got stuck in Marigold’s ignition so that her battery ran flat 24 hours before I was due to drive back from a “Visioning Our Work Going Forward” gathering I attended in Sedgefield before returning to Cape Town, I figured I would be able to get the help I needed, even though it was Sunday. Somehow I knew help was at hand, even though I had no idea how. And, guess what? It was.
My heart is wide open, and connections keep occurring – unexpected, tender, inspiring, courageous, powerful, serene, robust, substantial interactions happen daily. And none of it feels “woo woo” or fluffy. It seems inevitable. That this is how life is actually, when we are not stressed, when we are not anxious, when we are not rushed. When we are rested. (And, of course, when our basic needs are met: this is another topic for another day).
The challenge is, I suspect, that because we are deeply connected to our surroundings, after any “time out” we return to our daily lives and become infected. We are surrounded by conditions of rush, urgency, hurry up, and chaos. At the weekend I heard a fellow facilitator replace the well-known VUCA acronym of volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous with vulnerable, under-resourced, chaotic and anxious. Palestine and Israel, Russia and the Ukraine, Trump and Musk.
I could feel the impact of this in my body immediately upon re-entry. An embodied tension that I realise now I live with nearly all the time, that gets progressively deeper and more impactful on my ability to be creative as the year progresses. From where I am standing right now, I can see that this cumulative stress and strain creates an experience of being stretched tight and rigid as a way of being. The resulting inflexibility does not make me a good dance partner to the flow of life. Thankfully, at the moment, I am accompanied by the muscle memory of my time away and by meditation. I am confident I can retain and nurture and grow the benefits of the seeds sown on my Karoo sojourn.
But I need to be eyes wide open to accomplish this. I know that it will require more than willpower. It will require continued rest. And already that is threatened. I am getting six or seven hours a night mostly these days. And my body knows that is not enough. My mind and my body are one system. I am facing a clear mandate from myself to figure out how to insert rest, relaxation, sleep, stillness, quiet, solitude and sanity into the day-to-day living of life.
Therefore, I’m calling out to all of us, Brave Hearts, to find ways to be pilgrims of being wound down. Let us walk slowly and steadily through our days, and share with each other whenever we find gems of insight into how to practice being Vital, Unflappable, Calm and Authentic.
From my brave heart to yours,
With love
Trisha
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