The weekend retreat experience, part 1

 

 

How to put into words what is unspeakable? When every word ushered takes us a step away from truly grasping the experience?  What if it’s actually only through the experience that one can begin to grasp the magnitude and simplicity of it?  What I see, is that my identity, that part of me that wants to be acknowledged, recognized, and feel significant, truly wants me to start putting it all in writing, for there is a great fear I will forget, time will go by, and things will go back to normal, and it will all fade away into distant memory. The usual little questions arise:  Should I record this instead of writing it?  Perhaps on video?  Or just audio, yeah, like a podcast.  How about writing?  DO people still read, or do they prefer to listen to stuff on the go, in their car, during their walk or exercise?  And then I laugh, now present to how insignificant these considerations are on the bigger picture, and how they are purely motivated by what I can call “inauthentic” motives. I say inauthentic not from a right/wrong perspective, but more from an unconscious-hidden/aware-choice point of view.  As humans, it is simply being alive and mortal to have needs. Some needs are more physical like food, shelter, water.  Other needs are more of the mental intellectual plane, like learning, understanding, feeling useful.  Others are of a higher plane, like the need for love, to love, to connect.  So I ask myself, WHY do I delay in doing this? Why do I hesitate between one media or another?  If I’m honest with myself, its nothing more than:  what will me look good, what will have people admire me most, what will give me most visibility  or what minimizes my risk of getting rejected.  So I smile, simply being aware of this, I pause, close my eyes, and breathe.  And I then simply open my laptop, and start typing.  Just because.

I feel the tension in my neck, having fleeting thoughts about how to get rid of it.  I now actually stopped writing, wondering to myself if this is even interesting, does it make sense, will I be able to build a long term project with this, etc….  And I smile again.  I’m amused at how many considerations constantly cloud my judgement and my ability to assess and do things.

And here I go googling “how to create a blog”, a welcome distraction from actually WRITING it J And I laugh!  My what an experience this weekend was!   Oh, and yes, I will be writing this in English.  Yeah, I know, why not French?  Because 95% of the readers will speak English, and very few French, and just the thought of having to do both languages just kills the idea for me.  Unless maybe, I write a few just in French.  Or even mix both?  Hey, its my damn blog, and I can write whatever the hell I want. I might not write swear words, but that's about it.

Yes, you are probably thinking, man, he’s supposed to write about hisexperience, I’m still waiting!!  This is it though, I am writing about my experience.  Oh, you mean an actual description of the timeline of events?  Where we were, what time, the temperature, where we were sitting, and all that?  My oh my how irrelevant that is to the actual scope of the experience itself!  Don’t get me wrong, context and environment are ABSOLUTELY decisive in having a good experience.  So don’t try this at home (I mean it).

Now I have a little twinge of anxiety creeping up.  Is this long enough for a first blog post?  Too long? Too short? How do I do this now?  I SHOULD be able to do this on my own (damn male identity thing)  People wont care, I wont do this right, and bla, bla, bla.  I laugh again, at the persistence of these defense mechanisms. But you know what?  It doesn’t matter.  Really.  I will all play out perfectly anyway. That just might be a hint to what one of the big lessons I got was. On the grand scheme of things, its all masterfully perfect.

I’m now fidgeting in my chair, feeling some pain on my left T7 rib ( see how important that makes me look?  I’m a doctor and I know my anatomy!)  So perhaps, for now, this could be considered enough for day one.  Unless its not?  I just smile.

Ok I just googled “how many words should a blog post have”, and it seems mine is a bit short, so let me fill in a few more lines here just for me to feel more secure.  Now don’t worry, plenty more to come about this, as I will share more and more about this experience, and about plenty of other stuff.  Leave your comments, ask questions, and I will be glad to respond J