How a barn in Devon inadvertently prepared me for life in isolation
‘Sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything’
Abbas Moses
At the turn of the decade, the start of this year, I knew I was reeling, and I had been for a stretch. I didn’t know how to stop. I didn’t really want to. I was scared to.
Each sunrise signalled a new beginning, but the same unrelenting reality. An urban existence crafted to stop the dam from bursting. An alarm-to-lights-out thread of distraction that left little room for contemplation, scant opportunity to truly see my reflection.
In my experience, our modern agendas offer a precarious line between distraction and delight. Busyness has become a badge of honour. A badge that can easily double up as a shield. Offering anaesthetic from the pains of being human; the uncomfortable truths which hold the key to change.
There are the off-the shelf distractions; in podcasts that connect front to office door, bottomless iPhones that erode any opportunity of a shared smile or other such moment of serendipity. Over the counter come the prescription medications, creating calendars fuller than a peak-hour tube carriage; sporting obsessions, back-to-back meetings, hedonistic exercise classes, artistic excursions, insta-friendly escapes and, of course, societal soirees. Complementing these commitments are the artificial sedatives, should the self ever peer through the cracks.
Dawn to dusk distraction, should your ego demand it.
In search of respite, and a gap in the clouds, I headed to a meditation and gardening retreat in Devon. I flashed a wry smile at the thought of what myself of a decade ago, living in unworldly, friend-filled and worry-light contentment at University, would make of his older self, struggling with loss, purpose and mental wellbeing, paying for a week of monastic life in a Devonshire barn.
However, like with every experience that is an investment in myself and sits outside of my understanding, it made an enduring difference, and inadvertently has helped me in this essential but disconcerting collective pause that we are all experiencing.
My heart is with those who are grieving, those who are in physical peril and, of course, the courageous few who we applaud each Thursday. However, that is not my reality, currently. My national service is isolation, and here are three skills I was introduced to in January, which are aiding me now.
1. Learning to sit with myself
Arriving in Devon, having parted company with connectivity, I wandered down to the undulating banks of the River Dart. In that silence, in an alcove of nature, I stopped, fully, for the first time in a long time. There was no short-term distraction to hand. I had to look at my reflection in the Dart’s inky waters and tearfully began a journey of forgiveness, contemplation and kindness. I desperately needed to fall back in love with myself, so that I could fall back in love with the world around me.
Three months on, along with 23 million others in my homeland, I listened to the Queen — speaking to her nation outside of her annual address for only the fourth time in her 68-year reign — as she displayed her magnificent wisdom and empathy. She noted that this period of isolation was an opportunity, welcome or otherwise, for us to ‘slow down, pause and reflect.’
These unprecedented days still need signposts. This may be professional, or if that has paused or passed, an alternate occupation. The community-spirit, creativity and humour found in the answers to the latter, both in the UK and around the world, has certainly offered hope in an otherwise fraught reality.
However, in each of these and indeed all guises of isolation, the time in between is greater than it ever has been, and the open-ended term of this new normal, means we cannot project ourselves forward. We are implored therefore to sit in our cells and invest in the most important relationship in our lifetime. In any lifetime. That with ourselves.
2. Washing the dishes to wash the dishes...and to the help your household
Above the sink in the barn was a passage — abridged here — from Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist leader; ‘there are two ways to wash the dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash the dishes to wash the dishes.’
It was a lesson which resonated and formed a mindful thread for each endeavour we undertook that week; cooking to cook, walking to walk, reading to read, drinking a cup of tea to drink a cup of tea or listening to listen. This idea proved as enlightening as it was simple. It highlighted just how often my menial and even meaningful actions are a gateway, and how easily I might spend a day, a week, a month, even longer, with my mind a couple of stops further down the line than my body.
If ever there has been a time for a global practise of being present, it is now. There is no weekend, wedding or Wednesday night to ‘live for’, only this moment and every Groundhog Day which will follow. Yet there is a gift in this, in knowing that you are exactly where you are meant to be. It frees us from societal influence or fear-of-missing-out, and enables us to be our weird and wonky selves.
That act of washing the dishes, and the many others that formed the basis of the week in Devon — moving logs, gardening, cleaning, washing, cooking, baking, listening — were each an act of community. Fourteen people, who in background and belief had little in common, found ease and connection through acts of communal kindness.
In isolation the concept of ‘ships in the night’ is no longer. We are living in our own household communities, of many or of one, in a permanency that we have never before known. Just as we are doing our bit for the national health, by doing nothing at all, we can do our bit for our households’ health, by doing all we can.
3. Finding luxury in isolation
I am a fan of Deepak Chopra, the author’s, interpretation of luxury; ‘when you believe you are valuable, you surround yourself with luxury. It does not have to be a flashy car or an opulent home, it can be the fragrance of flowers, oil in a warm bath, a piece of rich chocolate or the sound of beautiful music. Know that by elevating the view of yourself, you elevate the quality of your life.’
In Devon where there was no room or opportunity for excess, a saunter in the warm afternoon sun, the smell of freshly baked bread, the feel of soil in your hands or the losing of yourself in a book by the fire, were luxuries which fulfilled. Luxuries which told your body; ‘I value you.’
In isolation, stripped of our more profuse luxuries and with little need or opportunity to pamper ourselves, we must look to other means of communicating the value and love we have for ourselves, and indeed one another. The guilt-free extra hour in bed, or extra episode of a favourite show, the cold drink at the end of a trying day, the vulnerable word of affection to someone you are holding in mind, or the enjoyment of the so-called low-brow page-turner you can’t put down. Each and every day, now more than ever, we need life’s enduring luxuries.
Even for me, who is yet to know personally the devil of this virus, the passage of this isolation has proven to be anything but straight. Its indeterminate nature and theft of physical connection and touch, have left me desolate, reaching for the crisps and diving under the duvet, but it has equally offered me glimpses of the meaning, hope and peace that I found in Devon.
The world as we knew it before will be changed indelibly by this virus, and we have been given the chance to do so also.
Find out more about The Sharpham Trust: https://www.sharphamtrust.org/