I came home from Alaska recently after two months on the "long wave". Over many weeks I lived unplugged, which allowed me to fall under the spell of direct time, and to fall out of virtual time.
This is very bad for business. I should be more concerned. I am as aware as anyone that if I'm not on Facebook or Twitter for more than a couple weeks consecutively, I've effectively ceased to exist. I'm gone. Disappeared. Poof!
Yet here is what it feels like on the inside. It's more like I've "fallen awake." I've "come to." I feel myself immersed again in the world that actually gave birth to my body, the world that will receive my body back into itself when I die. The world to which my mind and senses have the possibility of a direct relationship in real time.
Maybe that's good enough.
I realize that I've squandered whatever momentum I may have achieved with this blog, for example. It's been two months since I offered a fresh entry. But maybe that's okay too. To be honest, these blog posts often feel like putting a note in a bottle and tossing it into an unknown sea. Occasionally a boat picks one up. But it's not the same as actually being on that boat.
There is something thin about online communication. It is a powerful tool, for sure, and I will continue to use it. But it is never the same as actually being with someone, sharing the same piece of ground beneath our feet, feeling the same wind and sun on our faces as we exchange words and body language, hold each other's gaze, sharing our struggles and our successes in actual living presence.
So my goal this fall and winter is to stay on the long wave as best I can, even in the turbulence of a short wave world. To pull this off, I realize I am going to have to do less, to say "No" to more things, and "Yes" more robustly to the things that I still feel called to do. My family and friends certainly deserve that from me. My teaching is also at the center of what feels important to me these days. I love the direct connection with my students. The in-person nature of our encounters, the aliveness of our connections. Let there be more of that.
I will need to give less attention to the menu of daily distractions that keep me from my real work, and to the open-pit mine of psychological manipulation that masquerades as the daily "news". I will need to meet my restlessness and anxiety "at the door laughing, and invite them in", as Rumi put it, not fleeing into busyness or distraction to escape them. This is the hardest work of all for me - to turn toward what is difficult in my life, and invite it in as the essential teacher it surely is. There may be no other way, and I am learning to welcome the challenge of it.
So this is what I plan to do with this next season of my life. Whether it is good for business or not.