Last week, I decided to take a vacation. What I’m about to describe, to most people probably wouldn’t call a vacation, more like a torture session. For 72 hours, I went to a one-room cabin in the woods. I chose not to have any amenities: no bathroom, no air conditioning, no coffee, no food, no phone, no people.
However, I did structure my day around activities. I brought a book, my hand pan (a steel drum you play with your hands), a drumming pad with practice sheets, tea pot, journals, and a laptop (for journaling only). A typical day would start after a sleepless night of tossing and turning. I’d do my core exercises in the morning, meditate, make some tea, nap, read, journal, play the hand pan, and use the drumming practice pad then go a for a mindful hike.
The days were loosely divided into three parts:
Morning (when the sky was no longer dark)
Midday (when the sun was just about overhead)
Afternoon (before the sun could no longer be seen on the treetops)
Each day ended with a fire and a phone call to my wife. Simple, right?
What I didn’t anticipate were the bugs—lots of them. I’m not used to things crawling on me and trying to bite me. Nor did I anticipate the heat. It was 90+ degrees the entire time, and not sweating only happened briefly in the early morning or maybe after night fell. But I’ll tell ya, I acknowledged every cool breeze and even the slightest drop in temperature.
The goal was simply to exist and observe myself. I joked that I’d come back enlightened, but in the moment of hardship and discomfort, you’re merely trying to keep it together. In those moment you can’t really see the light at the end of the tunnel; you just got to remind yourself things will be better at some point. Each time I felt a break in the heat, I was grateful. Each time I dozed off without the paranoia of a bug crawling on me, it was blissful. Each time the fire was blazing, I was intoxicated by its aliveness.
Each moment of suffering reminded me that it’s a luxury to eat, to sleep in a comfy bed, to have air conditioning, to use a bathroom without huge spiders crawling everywhere.
I learned that no matter how much you imagine something, you’re never truly prepared for it unless you’ve done it over and over again. This was my first time doing something like this. With everything in life the first timers usually have to bear the worse of the worst when it comes to discomfort, not just physical but mental; that’s how life goes I initially thought it would be relaxing and enlightening but it ended up being cumbersome and extremely challenging.
This trip made me appreciate what I have and shined a light on areas I simply take for granted. Coming back into my regular life, I plan to hold myself to a higher standard, being present, mindful, and truly grateful for what I have. I no longer have reasons to complain about anything, because those are choices. True discomforts lie in what we cannot control in our lives, we either learn to live with them or allow it to eat away at us.
I believe it’s very important to allow ourselves to go through voluntary hardship. When everything is paved for you, planned out and put on a platter, you never get the perspective shift that allows you to look within and ask: Is my current life really that hard?
Choose the path less traveled expose yourself to discomfort and get the perspective that will allow you to grow.