Retreat

Three Days of Nothing

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“I don’t know if I’m okay,” I told my Buddhist teacher.

“You’re in the dark night of the soul.” She told me.

That didn’t sound good. I had never considered myself to be a religious person, but it seemed I was having a crisis of faith. Faith in what? I didn’t have faith. I didn’t think I believed in anything.

“How long will it last?” I asked.

“Might be months, years. It’s not possible to know. It will be done when it’s finished.”

She must have seen the fear in my eyes.

“I want you to go away for three days and do nothing.”

She gave me specific instructions. No work, calls, TV, writing, meditation. Nothing. No doing. It sounded impossible.

I found a small bungalow Airbnb on Camano Island and a three-day stretch in February to block out my calendar.

I wondered what and how I would eat. Prepared foods. Cooking was doing. Was preparing doing? On Thursday, I loaded my groceries into the back seat and drove through driving rain, first east from Issaquah to Bellevue, then North around Lake Washington, up I-5 past the northern edge of Seattle, and across the small bridge that connects the mainland to Camano Island. The trees grew closer as the road narrowed. My bungalow was at the end of a winding dirt road at the top of a hill, overlooking the channel between Camano and Whidby Islands.

Driving North on I-5

I arrived at 3:30, put the groceries away, unpacked my clothes and toiletries, and sat down in the upholstered chair in the living room to get started. To the right, the view opened through the evergreens to Puget Sound.

Straight ahead was a white brick wall.

Midway up the wall, above the fireplace, hung a small clock. The clock showed 3:43. I hadn’t watched a clock since high school. I noticed the time pass, amazed at how slow it felt when it was the only focus of my attention. I noticed my attention span and the persistent feeling to check my phone or open my laptop. Seemingly every thought led to a fact I needed to look up or a task that needed doing. Time crept.

Minutes couldn’t possibly take so long. 3:47. Why was I here? How was I going to do this? The experience of doing nothing felt heavy. I squirmed in my seat without moving. Like I was being held against my will.

I thought about the minutes I had experienced and the days ahead. I instinctively segmented the next two days to ease my mind. 3:49. There would be sleep, meals, showers, and steps between the rooms. Walks were allowed, but my instructions were to have no plan or destination. Mindless wandering.

My mind raced and then swirled. I noticed my thoughts had disconnected from action. Thoughts appeared, stayed as long as I paid attention, and then left to be replaced by nothing or the next thought. They were relentless. I shifted my gaze from the mantle to the outside landscape to snatch a few moments’ freedom. 3:52. Then came the labels and stories. The tree reminded me of an investor I had to email. Every few moments, a new problem arrived from somewhere.

Gazing out at the water, I noticed a fighter jet flying in the distance. Then another. Had I missed something important in the news? Were these jets scrambling to intercept an imminent threat? There had been recent sightings of hot air balloons floating across the country and theories of espionage. Had the situation escalated in the hours of my news blackout? The jets were following a pattern. They were landing, one by one. Where were they coming back from? Was the problem in the Pacific? Was this something that demanded I break my information embargo? I felt a strong urge to check my phone.

The jets didn’t seem agitated. They were calm for fighter jets. Maybe this was normal. Wasn’t there an air force base on Whidby Island? Yes, that made sense. These were routine flights. Crisis created and averted.

It was early evening now, and the slow minutes had evolved into slow ten-minute chunks. Blocks of time that represented progress, towards what? Was I trying to get through this experience? Get it over with? To return to what? The jets blurred into each other and formed time-lapse blurs of light in my mind. I settled into feeling unsettled. I noticed how many problems there were in my mind. A steady stream of crises, though I sat alone in a quiet home. Nowhere left to go.

The last months had been hard. I tried hard not to let anyone know. A lot of people were counting on me. My family, team, and investors. People had always been counting on me, so I thought. To make them look good. I was the kid who should have been broken. Instead, I had persevered. I preferred that story.

Stay away from the darkness, stay away. Don’t talk about the hard things. Or talk about them once and then never again. People don’t want to hear about hard things. Retreat. Unrelatable. Maintain the presentation. Show people the mask. Make the story so tight there’s no space for questions.

They said the surgery was a success. Quintuple bypass. To the edge and back. Another story to tell of overcoming difficult circumstances. Heart surgery made sense. I was different because I could do hard things. Never complain. Get over it. Don’t talk. Heart surgery after twenty-five years of buildup. A lifetime stuffed inside.

If I talked about my surgery, I thought I sounded like a victim. If I didn’t, the feelings of isolation compounded and fed the disease. Recovery was successful in the beginning, but then it stalled. I couldn’t get my breath or my energy. Something was wrong. In November, four years after surgery, they found the reason. A heart attack. They didn’t know when it had happened, but my heart was scarred. Ischemia. Deprived of oxygen long enough to kill muscle in the lower chamber. That was why it felt so bad when I ran. Why I couldn’t seem to get my energy back no matter what I tried. It made sense and it was permanent. Nothing I could do. Final. Dead felt different than hurt.

I didn’t have solutions for the heart attack damage. I couldn’t try harder or impose my will, though I tried. The harder I pushed, the more drained I felt. I woke up dreading the day and the impossible list of problems. I’d reach for my phone before getting out of bed to confirm the emails I knew would be waiting for me. My chest tightened before I rose from bed. I knew I was hurting myself. I had seen the effects. Scars on my arm and chest. Arteries pulled and spliced to reprogram my blood flow. The only relief was closing my eyes at night, knowing sleep would quiet my mind.

I sat for hours. I tried different positions and eventually fixed myself a simple dinner as the light began to fade. After eating, I sat on the couch and turned my attention outward to the trees outside the window. A dance began to unfold. The branches swayed in the wind and flickered in and out of each other’s shadows. The wind sang a soundtrack. The marionettes danced an ancient story full of courtship and tragedy. I watched for an hour. I started to feel my mind reaching out of my body, into the trees, dancing with the branches. The silhouettes seared into my mind’s eye. The dance continued as I fell into a deep sleep in the blackout darkness of the windowless bedroom.

The Dancing Trees Outside the Window

I woke without alarm. I lay in bed, basking in the knowledge that I wasn’t allowed to work. After coffee and a light breakfast, I resumed my position on the couch, looking at the wall, out the window, and less frequently at the clock. I sat for two hours.

“I’m okay.” The thought appeared to me. Whispered from somewhere. I felt the thought settle in my body. “I’m okay.” As impossible as it seemed, I knew it was true. If I’m okay, that changes things, I thought.

The implications washed over me. I thought of all the energy I devoted to identifying and solving problems. Waking up with an overwhelming task list, then making my way through the list to get back to bed that night. Every day, a crisis and a rescue. If I were okay, then why all the effort? What was I doing?

If I were okay, that meant I didn’t need to protect myself. No one could hurt me. The realization wasn’t a thought to be considered and cross-examined. It was a truth - an acknowledgement. It had a different quality than a thought. It revealed itself, like it had been waiting for me to notice. It was in my cells as much as my brain.

Another realization whispered: “Everyone’s okay.”

I felt waves of relief radiate through my body. Nothing had ever been okay. A thought appeared, “Can this be right?” Yes, it was right. I felt the truth of it. I felt the difference between thought and awareness. I wasn’t thinking everyone was okay. I knew.

Everything’s okay. I wanted to stay in this feeling forever. It felt like there was a way forward. Something deeper than pushing myself harder and harder. Even heart surgery and a brush with death hadn’t changed my behavior or how I related with the world. I was still pushing. But if I were okay and everyone was okay, then all these problems I spent my life chasing wouldn’t be problems at all. I sat for an hour, not so much thinking as feeling the truth in my body.

I felt warm. It was a relief to know everything was okay. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt relief. I thought relief meant avoiding catastrophe. This relief felt like a warm blanket that covered me from the inside out. I didn’t have to try so hard. I could relax.

I went for a walk. Through various qualities of rain, along the waterfront to examine stones and shellfish, and then along the country road, wondering about life on Camano Island. Locals greeted me with cautious charm. Cars and trucks sloshed and hissed as they passed.

I peered down driveways into rural properties, farms, retreats, landscaping companies, and homes. Who lived there? What were they doing today? Should I live here?

I walked slowly. The cool rain kissed my face. When I felt I had gone far enough, I crossed and walked back, marveling at the different lives unfolding on the West side of the road.

It was dark when I arrived back at the bungalow. I fixed a simple dinner and, after eating, returned to my window seat to watch the branches. We were friends now. I felt part of the evening’s performance and swayed silently with the dancing trees for three hours.

On the third day, after a quiet morning, I packed and swept and closed the bungalow door behind me. I drove back to Issaquah in the rain, which grew heavier.

When I arrived home, I knew my wife would ask me how it went. I wondered what I would say.