Retreat Day

I’m sure most of us feel lacking a lot of the time, in ideas or inspiration or direction. It’s often a struggle, but then sometimes a moment of clarity will come overnight or in the shower. It’s so critical, so fundamental, that we make good choices and know we’re putting energy into the right projects. And yet we devote so little time to thinking rather than doing.

A friend of mine recently went on a short solo retreat, to get away for a couple of days to think and pray and plan out his business ideas. On a beach in New Jersey in the middle of winter.

I’ve been struggling to formulate personal goals for 2022, goals that really reflect the direction I think my life should be following and, maybe more than that, that reflect who I really want to be. So I decided to do something similar, to go on a little retreat, although just for a day. 

So I left at 5:30am last Saturday and drove down to Sandy Hook, a thin peninsula at the north end of the Jersey Shore with views out over the lower New York harbor to Manhattan.

To my surprise I wasn’t alone. It was 6:30am and -10C (14F), and there were other cars parking by the beach at the same time. So not exactly the solitude I was aiming for, and I soon discovered that there had been a sighting of a snowy owl nearby so photographers and ornithologists were arriving early.

It didn’t really matter that there were a few people around though with so much space. But the cold made me think I’d made a mistake. It was a battle against the cold wind to even get to the edge of the ocean, and I walked back to the car considering driving back home. But then I sat in the car and ate a little breakfast and started reading. And I thought about finding a rhythm, of a little time outside, a little time in the car, a little time driving somewhere else if I needed to warm the car up again. A little time reading, a little time journaling, some thinking, some photography.

The first thing I realized is that it isn’t what I plan to do that matters most at the moment, but my attitude. I realized I’ve been chasing something, the next thing, craving success or progress, and not appreciating what’s here and now. Being dissatisfied.

I won’t go into more details here of what else I learnt, but it was a really good day. I drove on to Asbury Park and walked there by the sea, and then to Wharton Forest and sat by a lake. So a little exploring too, listening to some good music.

I guess we’re all different so your retreat might need to look very different to mine. I think it ideally should be at least a day though, so that there’s no rush. No deadline. No clock watching. No feeling of needing to get anything done.

I’ll do it again for sure, hopefully at least once every quarter.