This is how my day normally unfolds: I tiptoe lightly to my studio just as dawn is breaking, leaving behind the soft snores of my sleeping better half. Some days I go for a run but many days I reach guiltily for my phone, like a child stealing a cookie before dinner time, taking a peek into my inbox and social media feed even before breakfast. The moment my fingers tap the screen of my palm sized link to the world, it’s a downward spiral into a digital existence in which I can’t quite completely disconnect from for the rest of the day.
They say our life’s accomplishments is created in the mundane, everyday moment, in the things and situations we give most of our attention to and it is with this sobering thought that I feel a deep soul shudder.
Yes, I work from home, yes my inbox, my social media feed, my digital gadgets and software play a gargantuan role in what I do as a modern-day creative entrepreneur-it’s how I connect and market my work, how I manifest my imagination. But the real question is, how big of a role do I want it to be?
Truthfully, I fear for my limbs and senses going into atrophy. I fear for my (and others’) loss of tangible, real life experiences. I fear for a world whose children have opted for tapping screens over building, making and creating from imagination. I fear for what it would do to our creativity, to our ability to react to difficult world problems, to read and gauge body language. I fear for our disengaged communities, each member in a digital world of his own.
And I fear for how much I was consuming more than I was creating. Reacting more than I was acting.
Despite my concerns, already it’s a constant struggle for me to disconnect and de-screen and creativity is fast becoming something conveniently done from the safety of Pinterest and Photoshop. What about those who are going about their virtual feasting distressingly unaware of what they are losing?
I want more of the joys I experience pressing my nose against 500-year-old shop windows during enchanted travels I indulge in when money and time permitted, the wonder-filled play that was the backbone of my childhood days-imagination and pure undiluted creativity in just a few pieces of paper and pens. I miss feeling deep curiosity of magic unseen, as my friends and I gathered to play pretend among the trees. I miss cycling to work, dining in twilight with friends and family, brainstorming world-changing ideas in the studio as we toss hand-folded paper airplanes around in fits of laughter. I want to feel the mist on my face, the moss under my feet and delight in strange new plants. I miss gathering in real life.
I’ve realized that because it’s not realistic to travel to magical lands on a whim to indulge my desires, I am often tempted to escape vicariously through the pages of a book, digital screens and social media feed, comfortable in the novelty of someone else’s joy. But you know what, life is meant to be lived.
We are meant to feel alive, all of our senses tingling from tactile experiences. It scares me to think that one day I will wake up and 20 years would have gone by and when I ask myself what I’ve been doing most of these 20 years, the answer would be that I’ve been staring at an inanimate object.
I’ve known this to be the truth, felt it deep in my heart, and yet I reach for the phone, the blue buttons on my screen, lamenting my days spent chained to the inbox and social media and digital software. All this changed in a recent retreat to the land from the Mists of Avalon, a pilgrimage to the mysterious land of Glastonbury, England. The one of Arthurian legend, ancient druid practices and centuries of mystical gatherings.
Within a circle of compassionate witnesses bound by ethereal kinship, my dream self, the one of my childhood days and future visions emerged, shy and fragile like a butterfly from a cocoon coyly unfolding its delicate wings. It was like a door to my soul had opened and I had walked through it. We spent 5 days in a sort of alternate, suspended, magical reality in which we were nourished from inside out. We shared stories, built our own, climbed the hill to the Tor, dined on soul food and most of all, listened. To ourselves and to each other.
We lit candles, clutched crystals, and mapped. Mapped as much as we could, as furiously as we could, like an explorer capturing the sights, sounds and emotions of virgin land yet unseen by his fellow men. We mapped so we could remember. We mapped for when we would have to walk through the door out to reality again. And we hugged, oh did we hug. Often, gladly and with our guards down and hearts wide open.
And when we left it was like being torn from safe, warm, maternal arms. It hurt. My heart ached for a week. But deep inside me a candle was lit. A hole was filled and I had lived it in person. It was real. It was tangible. And this meant I could recreate it.
For the next 4 weeks I have set a challenge for myself to re-create the tangible, soul-filled enchantment I experienced briefly while within the Red Fox circle. There is only 1 rule: it needs to be a physical engagement with life and not just a virtual or paper-based observation. Why this challenge? Because I truly believe that living a creatively-inspired wholehearted life requires the full engagement of the mind, body and soul. Because I believe we all deserve to feel enchanted and deeply alive every single day.
Retreat soul work: learning about symbolism and creating totems for my story as it unravels