You know, I thought I was doing fine handling all the stress of the last several months.
Then I had this phone conversation with my friend Alana. In her best girlfriend way (really, how would we ever make it without girlfriends?), she gently suggested that I was a TEENY bit stuck in whining mode.
She told me one of her favorite stories:
Down the road comes this horse, galloping very fast. It appears that the woman on the horse is going somewhere Really Important.
Another woman, standing alongside the road, shouts, “Where are you going?” The first woman, hanging on for dear life, shouts back, “I don’t know! Aaaask the horse!”
Whoa, I thought, in the silence after Alana finished the story. My horse is galloping 90 miles an hour. That horse — my anxieties, my stress, my grief for the world — is definitely in charge, and not exactly taking me home. And making me very cranky and frenetic in the process.
I thanked Alana for the story, and went and sat.
Just sat. Golden Indian summer sunlight filtered down through the Japanese maples in our garden. Kabobble the cat came and curled up on the top of the sofa next to me.
It was quiet, quiet, quiet. I started to quiet down. I realized I’d given the reins over to that horse. And I was the only one who could take them back. Or better yet, dismount.
I decided to take the next weekend, Friday through Sunday, as my own private spa/meditation retreat.
At home. Simple and easy.
I ran the details by The Husband — I’d only do those things that I’d do if I were staying at a retreat cottage somewhere, i.e., washing my own dishes — and let go of everything else. I’d have friendly, minimal contact with David, who could generally pretend I wasn’t there. David gave me a whole-hearted thumbs up (thank you, sweetheart!).
Thursday I went to Whole Foods and picked out three days of delicious deli food. I restocked my Pleasure Basket (What? You say you don’t have a Pleasure Basket by your bed? If not, read about it below this article). I pulled my car into the driveway and said goodbye to it until Monday.
And started my retreat.
Sisters, it was wayyy beyond heavenly. My intention was to reconnect with my own desires and internal rhythms. For three full days, I only did what I felt like, when I felt like it. I meditated. I slept. I read. I ate delicious, nourishing food (that includes chocolate). I did yoga, and plenty of nothing.
During a windstorm on Saturday I walked the wooded trail by my house that winds down to a Puget Sound beach. I stopped for a moment on the trail to look up, and saw hundreds of winged maple seed pods twirling down in the stiff wind. It was like the delight of looking up when it’s snowing, the sweet dizziness of watching flakes emerging from the great empty sky. Only this time, it was spinning samaras (that’s what David tells me they’re called), hundreds of them winging through space and time.
At that moment I knew I had dismounted. That galloping horse, bless its frenetic heart, had left me behind.
I strolled on to the beach and stood with the waves and wind for almost two hours, just being. A seal played in the waves, watching me. I watched back.
I got it that my just-right life, right now, would include a 3-day spa/meditation home retreat once a month, every month. I didn’t think I had the audacity to commit (who me? deserve that?), but I tucked it away as a possibility.
Watching the gulls ride the wind, I thought about how this play of designing a just-right life after 50 takes courage, a taste for improvising, and a sweet bucketload of curiosity. We’re making this up as we go along, sisters.
There’s no blueprint in this poor beleaguered world for living a life of love and pleasure, a life that makes our post-50 toes curl in delight. Ain’t nobody gonna give us permission to create such a life, so we might as well do it ourselves.
And with that I told the seal: Heck. Why the hell not. I am gonna do one 3-day home retreat a month, for as long as my body and soul call for it.
I think the seal smiled.
The next day, snuggled under my comforter on the couch, I read a great line in Life Is A Verb (highly recommended): “The American Revolution was not financed with matching grants from the Crown.”
Woo-hoo! We don’t have to wait for an Official Sanction to live our best, just-right lives. So why not start, right now, this very moment?
* * *
Here it is, Monday morning, and I’m back. And with a lot more to offer other folks in this challenging time, from a place of sweet gratefulness.
The horse, the galloping-fast-to-nowhere-horse, still isn’t here. God knows where she’s gone.
She’ll return, given the present insanity of the world. But when I do get back on that horse (and I’m about 100% sure I will), I know how to dismount once again.
Hey — if you see me careening by, hanging on for dear life, please don’t ask the horse where I’m going.
