Another Time When Life Came to a Sudden Halt

There was another time in my history when normal life stopped short, and I was left in this strange stillness, wondering what was next.

That time, it wasn't an external force that brought everything to a screeching halt.

It was me.

After years of considering it, I had quit my job and shed most of my possessions and responsibilities to take some time off to be in nature and to travel.

In the first weeks, I found myself in this strange pause that so many people in our world now find themselves.

You might find it odd that I'm comparing our current confinement to a sabbatical.

I do too.

Yet, I keep seeing similarities and wanted to share them with you, because that strange pause taught me some of the most important lessons of my life.

*****

The first three months of my year-long sabbatical, I spent mostly in a kind of stunned daze.

I was freed of work and everyday responsibilities: What a dream! Yet I didn't feel victorious. I didn't feel liberated or lighthearted.

Mostly, I felt like I was emptily going through the motions of my plan, which was supposed to be fun and adventurous. I was waiting for my psyche to catch up to my reality.

Everything had shifted so abruptly. I was no longer employed. I no longer had a home. I was suddenly outside the status quo of what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

I was tired. I'd been burning the candle at both ends for a long time.

I was scared. I was in uncharted waters and didn't know what would happen to me.

I didn't know if it would be good. If it would be bad. If I'd regret it, or if I'd finally find what was missing.

I was also often alone. I'd planned the first part of my sabbatical to enjoy the summer backpacking, camping and taking road-trips with friends in the Pacific Northwest. I did that, yet was alone more than I'd anticipated.

Friends were busy with work, partners and family, and other social engagements. Despite best intentions, they weren't able to join me for as many outings as we'd hoped.

In August, I drove alone across Oregon toward Idaho, where I'd visit with my dad and then continue on to a friend's cabin in Wyoming.

Before leaving northeastern Oregon, I stopped over at Eagle Cap Wilderness for a weeklong solo backpacking trip.

What I found, over and over again in my sabbatical year, was that nature was an unfailing source of solace and wisdom. Whenever I wavered on what was next, going outdoors was always the right move.

I climbed the steep trail miles into the mountains. On the friendly advice of a bona-fide cowgirl astride a dusty chestnut horse -- also riding alone -- I found the perfect camp spot at a secluded alpine lake.

One day, sprawled on a wide stone perch above the lake's deep turquoise waters, I’d closed my eyes. The sun’s rays thrummed red through my eyelids, the gentle songs of the birds filled me, and the firm earth held me.

After trying for weeks to make sense of how I had arrived at this place in my life, a vision came to me, by way of explanation.

It was as though I'd on a train — a runaway train that represented my life, my career, my ambitions, my expectations ...

That train had been hurtling along its one-way track toward everything that was up next: a better job, more money, a more luxurious lifestyle and home, and hopefully a family to fill it.

When I had quit my job, I’d leapt from that train. I had fallen to the ground.

As the train rushed on and its mass and roar faded away into the horizon, suddenly I could see its breakneck speed. I could hear now how its roar had crowded so much else out.

In this vision, thrown from that train, I pulled myself up, stunned at first to find myself at a dead standstill, entirely alone.

Then, my senses started returning.

The sun was warm and the dome of the sky was blue and cloudless. The songs of the birds and hum of insects began to fill the quiet left in the train's wake.

I was in the middle of a prairie land that stretched all the way to the horizon, unobstructed.

I could walk in any direction, in any manner, at any pace that I wanted.

This is what I was beginning to grasp:

The wideness of the world’s possibility.

The gift, of no longer being on that runaway train.

There is no one way to live this life, I thought. This might be the simplest truth of life, and the easiest to forget.

*****

Several days later, when I arrived back at my car in the trailhead parking lot, I felt different. A bit lighter and more free. Definitely stronger.

Everything about my new path was different, and would oftentimes be scary, but I could make a new start, and it was going to be okay.

Our current situation is obviously so much more huge, complex and emotionally layered than this personal moment in my own history.

Yet, I wonder if this sensation -- of suddenly being ejected from our runaway train, individually and collectively -- might also be important for us to notice today.

In all the emotions you've experienced in these days, have you also noticed relief and rest?

Have you noticed possibility?

In everything that is happening, it is there for you too.