At the beginning of this year, my two friends Bobby and David invited me on their annual, month-long trip to Colorado. We would drive across country for four days, leaving from Brooklyn and arriving in Frisco, Colorado, for a month of remote working, snowboarding, and recharging.
I kept calling this opportunity a hard reset — something that my body needed. This opportunity tugged on all of my heartstrings: snowboarding in great conditions, being in nature, hanging out with two good friends, and space to reflect on my life in NYC thus far, my work, photography, and my future. When I mentioned it to my best friends from home, they knew why I was going.
It reminds me of what Pico Iyer said in The Art of Stillness about how we’ve lost our sense of rest and why presence is the greatest journey of our lives:
“With machines coming to seem part of our nervous systems, while increasing their speed every season, we’ve lost our Sundays, our weekends, our nights off—our holy days, as some would have it; our bosses, junk mailers, our parents can find us wherever we are, at any time of day or night. More and more of us feel like emergency-room physicians, permanently on call, required to heal ourselves but unable to find the prescription for all the clutter on the desk.
As I came down from the mountain, I recalled how, not many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury; nowadays it’s often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize. Stillness is not just an indulgence for those with enough resources—it’s a necessity for anyone who wishes to gather less invisible resources.”
Here are five lessons learned going up the mountain and coming back down.
1. The privilege to go
The mannerisms and kindness outside of NYC is immediately palpable. Whether at the gas station or on the chair lift, people say hello and look you in the eyes. I think whenever an east coaster gets a dose of life outside of our bubble, we’re appalled by the kindness, almost to a fault, where we think the person has some kind of hidden agenda.
“Where ya’ll from?” or “You must be from the east coast” lead to conversations about our trip, and without fail, the follow-up question was, “How do you escape work for a month?”
We didn’t.
That’s the difference between our trip and a traditional sabbatical, where people take six months or a year off completely. Bobby and David run a design studio and I luckily had the privilege to go while having a full-time day job.
One, the nature of my job allows me to do so (all I need is my computer and some decent wi-fi); and two, I asked for the blessing of my boss and colleagues. We had conversations about it, figuring out my work schedule and upcoming projects. They were confident in my abilities to continue doing my job well — and at the end of it all, they encouraged me to experience something like this because I never had.
If you find yourself in a position where you can do something like this for a month or more at a time, I highly encourage you to go. Week-long beach vacations seem like the default trip to relax and unwind. But I realized that I only delay the realities that need untangling and that indulging in a ton of food and alcohol is merely another form of an illusion of escape. I’m not saying that beach vacations are wrong (in fact, it’s all I’ve ever done in my life), but when we feel that our bodies need a real disconnect — a long pause in our day-to-day grind — a longer, more intensive experience in nature might be the antidote.
In Japanese and Korean cultures, “forest bathing” has growing scientific validity. I read that article last year, brushed it off because it seemed irrelevant to me, and then of course the universe threw it back at me and got me to pay attention.
2. Cultivating stillness
Every morning, rather than hearing screaming babies and belching taxis and delivery trucks, I went on our balcony and feasted on this view.
Looking at mountains up close can make you feel like a child standing in front of a glass wall in an aquarium where a huge manatee floats by and waves at you. To hear nothing but the wind put me into a meditative state. Other times, thoughts of possibility would invigorate me.
Everyone has their way of disconnecting and dealing with the grind of daily life. Some people only need a weekend, others need to escape into a forest or a beach, and some — just some — can find inner peace in their present moment. That level of enlightenment is something I think we can all strive for. Pico Iyer calls this going Nowhere:
“The idea behind Nowhere—choosing to sit still long enough to turn inward—is at heart a simple one. If your car is broken, you don’t try to find ways to repaint its chassis; most of our problems—and therefore our solutions, our peace of mind—lie within. To hurry around trying to find happiness outside ourselves makes about as much sense as the comical figure in the Islamic parable who, having lost a key in his living room, goes out into the street to look for it because there’s more light there.
As Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius reminded us more than two millennia ago, it’s not our experiences that form us but the ways in which we respond to them; a hurricane sweeps through town, reducing everything to rubble, and one man sees it as a liberation, a chance to start anew, while another, perhaps his brother, is traumatized for life. ‘There is nothing either good or bad,’ as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, ‘but thinking makes it so.’”
My stillness was found in snowboarding. The daily phrase was “leave it all on the mountain.” Take my stresses, all of my problems, and with every run just empty myself onto the mountain — give it back to nature and she’ll know what to do with it. What I felt after a day of riding was pure clarity. It felt like a warm shower after a week of cold showers. I could hear a pin drop in my mind and all of my life’s problems, big or small, were placed in manila folders and filed appropriately in their own places. On the car ride home, I would whisper to myself, “What was I complaining about?”
And then it made me wonder why it was so difficult to tune inward while being in NYC (or as I’ve learned, any major city) in the middle of a daily grind. Was it the stimulus of the city? The fact that I’m trying to accomplish something in my apartment or room? As Seneca said in his usual tough-love, real talk way in Letters from a Stoic: “A change of character, not a change of air, is what you need.”
At first, I was disappointed in myself to claim that I needed to travel far away in order to find peace and to tinker with my character; that I couldn’t just do it over the weekend by unplugging from screens and meditating or walking all day. I realized this kind of mental clarity and ability to pull the e-brake on life takes immense daily practice and is always subject to change. And it’s never a final achievement but rather one that requires constant feeding.
3. The grudges of the past
By the second week into the trip, I almost didn’t recognize who I was before I left. Just reminiscing about the narratives I was telling myself made me chuckle.
In a city like New York, you’re on a treadmill that picks up speed incrementally without you being aware of it until you’re sprinting, wondering how you got there and how you’ll keep up the pace. For me, in the attempt of trying to slow down while being self-aware of my daily stresses, it felt impossible to do anything while huffing and puffing. It’s like trying to make smart decisions when you’re hungry.
The daily meditation, environment, and practice of snowboarding made me aware of how deeply stressed I was before the trip. Like putting on virtual reality goggles, it felt like I was in a room with all of my insecurities, doubts, and stresses. This time, they weren’t breathing down my neck or poking me with an hot iron rod. They sat cross-legged, in a circle, waiting for me to speak or make a move. The grudges that demanded immediate attention tapped their pens on their notebooks.
I observed each one with scrutiny like a jeweler studying a diamond — why am I feeling this, what’s the source? Why is it recurring? I would look at my journal entries from a few months ago and read thoughts that were still present — why? What’s one thing I can do for myself now that will put me on a better, more fruitful path?
In this podcast episode on Hurry Slowly with Matias Corea, he shares his project called Two Wheels South — a seven-month long motorcycle trip from Brooklyn to Patagonia in which he traveled 19,000 miles through 13 different countries. His thoughts on the experience and his need for a disconnect deeply resonate with me and make me feel like I am not alone [emphasis mine]:
“I didn’t have internet for most of the time and I disconnected from these routines of depending on outside sources of information — and then everything that has been packed away for a long time comes back and it’s just staring you in the face. I think that’s one of the biggest things about a trip, about spending time on your own — you can’t escape. You think you’re going to go to Bolivia and your problems are going to stay here, but they’re right behind you. They follow you everywhere.”
I’ve learned that the necessity for a change of scenery can indeed cultivate a change in character. Trying to find solitude and my center within my Brooklyn apartment with my phone on silent and cars honking outside just didn’t cut it — and that’s okay.
While Seneca errs on the side of extreme at times, I think it’s important to discover ways in which you recharge and refresh and to keep honing them. It might start with an expensive adventure like a meditation retreat in some faraway island with ten people. Then one day it might be something smaller like a weekend trip upstate by yourself. You might find it through fasting, walking, or a staycation. Then eventually, as Pico Iyer or Seneca mentioned, we can find the peace we seek in our present moment — without escaping or changing the scenery.
It’ll take time to get there — in fact, we may never get there — but I think the process of the pursuit matters. The attempt to shed dead skin and untangle chaos in our lives is a sign of a conscious effort of practicing self-compassion, enlightenment, and change. It’s reflective of our inner life and the life we seek to lead.
4. Shedding dead skin
My friend Bobby asked, “How do you move forward from all of this?”
The first step is to acknowledge your pain — give it a name. Eve Ensler in This I Believe says that when you name things, you give them meaning, an identity, and you can reclaim your power. Her harrowing experience of sexual and physical violence was suppressed for decades until she was able to sit down with her mother and talk about it. While my experiences are nowhere near the extremity of Ensler’s, I think naming any adversity is a fundamental step. She said in This I Believe:
“I believe in the power and mystery of naming things. Language has the capacity to transform our cells, rearrange our learning patterns of behavior, and redirect our thinking. I believe in naming what’s right in front of us because that is often what is most visible.
[…]
Naming things, breaking through taboos and denial is the most dangerous, terrifying, and crucial work. This has happened in spite of political climates or coercions, in spite of careers being won or lost, in spite of the fear of being criticized, outcast, or disliked. I believe freedom begins with naming things. Humanity is preserved by it.”
Another fruitful method is to journal about it, not on the computer, but long form by hand. By tuning inward, your hand almost becomes like a seismograph that can read the intensity of earthquakes from miles away — your hand begins to move on its own and what’s produced afterwards has to be studied with intensity.
To make this example tangible for you, I’ll be vulnerable and say that one of my stresses that I carried with me up until this trip was my failure in developing better financial habits, especially in an expensive city like New York. For the first time in my life, I had faced a problem that I read about in magazines and blogs and was forewarned of by parents and older friends, only to be living it in its full narrative. I felt like a fraud — someone who had the opportunity to not fuck it up but did. What did that reflect in my character? Something that I despised. I was in a hole that felt like the more I tried to climb out, the deeper I got. I then blamed this on laziness, my income, my inability to change. It all piled on top of each other.
While on the mountain, looking as far as my eyes could see, I realized that I had to simply accept the reality of this. I realized I wanted to bury this problem and ignore the series of events, desires, and behaviors that got me here in the first place. I didn’t want to feel like a fraud or a typical millennial. I felt like I was better than that, but the truth was — statistically and realistically — I wasn’t.
Do I need a plan to get out of debt? Yes. Does income impact well-being and habits in a city like New York? Absolutely. My problem was not knowing where to start — or rather, starting in all the wrong places. And although in hindsight it’s obvious that I knew better, I realized I had to start with my habits — dissect and rewire them. In the month in Colorado, that was my practice — eating in, reading more, meditating more, exercising, drinking water. The basics. It was about going back to basics and humbling myself.
5. Staying accountable
When we’re stressed and tired, it’s easier to amplify adversity far bigger than it is.
It’s not to undervalue the experiences we’re going through; but when you’re in a bad mood, it’s easier to stay there than it is to be optimistic.
Therein lies the habit — the self-awareness to be in touch with your feelings and the courage to change your narrative. It determines if our demons have horns and breathe fire or if they’re merely shadows that disappear when a light is shone on them.
While there are age-old principles that admonish us to simply change our minds and in turn our lives would change, I cannot discount the science behind how environment can impact our behavior, thinking, and moods.
At times, I feel like naming this experience a “reinvention” seems grandiose, but the more I think about it and as I write this, the more it’s true. Personal reinventions are about revelations, and revelations are cultivated through stillness.
I am different than I was four weeks ago. Being near the mountains, 13K feet up, away from the daily grind of NYC, snowboarding, eating well, and meditating more opened up a dusty box in my mind’s cellar. Whether I kept it there or threw out the clutter, the decision was clearer than ever before.
Valuing rest and creating spaces in which we can digest and reflect on our experiences shouldn’t be a luxury—it’s a necessity for our well-being, creativity, and how we lead our lives. If we treat it like a luxury, we’ll only seek it when we’re at our wit’s end. That’s no way to live — like only drinking water when you’re thirsty versus staying hydrated and being in good health.
We greatly underestimate what some time off can do. I used to think that a week-long beach vacation was enough to digest and unravel months, even years, of working consistently and grinding for progress. But that badge is self-adorned and ultimately self-defeating.
If you’re looking for permission to just spend some time alone to think, to be away from life, to pull the e-brake and just reflect and allow yourself to imagine — this is it.
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