As I write this, it's 1:40 in the morning, and I can not sleep. The good thing is that I am not distressed about that. Probably because I am, mostly, retired and don't have to worry about dealing with the myriad of challenges a career brings when the sun comes up in a few hours. That is no doubt one of the blessings in my life these days.
I have said many times that I felt like there was a version of Chris before publishing Seeing Clearly and a version after doing so, and I like the latter more than the former. I feel I grew more in the three years I spent writing it than in the three decades preceding it. It was unquestionably an inflection point in my life.
A couple of weeks ago, I attended a week-long "Silence and Stillness" vipassana meditation retreat in the mountains not far from my home here in Colorado. It is something that has long intrigued me but just never fit into my life. If I could rewind the clock in my life, I would have tried to find a bit more silence and stillness many years ago, but I will save that topic for another day. The thing that caught my attention this morning was a thought, or perhaps more a feeling, that came over me during that retreat.
The retreat took place at the Rocky Mountain ecoDharma Retreat Center in Ward, Colorado, just 40 minutes west of Boulder. The lodge was built in the 1930s on an incredible 180-acre mountain setting. Right behind the lodge runs a tranquil mountain stream through aspen groves in peak fall colors. The last few nights, there was a moose right under my bedroom window, and the Milky Way was obvious to even a guy with my horrible eyesight. I couldn't have picked a better place or time of year to attend.
Three or four days into the retreat, I was standing on the back deck overlooking the property when a I suddenly realized that I was at another inflection point in my life. Not that particular day or week but the period of my life. Some people talk about reincarnation. I am not sure what that means, but I realized that in my life, over the last 65 years, I have been "reincarnated" at least a few times. Who hasn't at my age? We all grow and evolve in our lives, and I have learned that if we pay attention and listen closely to what's in our hearts, the growth can be incredible.
For the last couple of years, I have been circling around the idea of writing another book. I can't imagine the number of hours I spent banging on the keyboard, trying to figure it out, only to hit the delete key at the end. I want to say that I love writing, but that is not always true. Sometimes I hate it. I tend to be a precise guy, a byproduct of my military influence and engineering background. When asked how much I weigh, I am more likely to answer "198.7" than I would, "about 200."
When I sit down to write about something that happened in my life, I feel the need to be equally clear in my understanding, which requires a lot of self-reflection and discovery. That’s what I love about writing—figuring me out. The fact that I sometimes share what I write is genuinely only secondary. It has been a fantastic journey for me, and I recommend everyone try it.
So I finally did it. I started my next writing project. This time, it is a novel, which I am aptly calling Begin Again. I get the irony of what I just wrote: because I love figuring myself out, I am writing a work of fiction. I will spare the details for now, except to say that the concept of Beginning Again has been a theme in my life. That is true for us all, isn't it? What in this world is truly permanent other than change?
I am amazed at how deeply I know the characters in my story, probably because when I look closely at them, they are all around me or within me on some level. I once heard that the difference between a novelist and a memoirist is that the latter is the only one willing to admit who the story is about. I am beginning to see the truth in those words, and I can’t wait to see where this cast of characters takes me.
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