This never happens lately. It was 4AM and I was driving south on Interstate 91 to the lower tip of Vermont and crossing the Mass border. Coffee in hand brewed at my house at 2AM and I was an hour away from meeting Chris for our annual Goose Island BCS Black Friday and suddenly, this wave of clarity came over me. I turned off the Shins album playing over the car’s speakers and sipped my coffee and just sat in silence. It was this fence-straddling between meditation and contemplation and this continued for half an hour.
Finally out loud I said, “why the Hell don’t I feel like this anymore? Why is this so rare?” Seriously what happened to me in the last 10 years where moments like this never happen. I wanted to write this that same day but I waited 2 weeks because it’s something that had to be processed and maybe happen again but it hasn’t. It’s that feeling you get when your eyes meet those of a stranger and yet instead of each of you looking away, you both keep staring because it doesn’t feel awkward it feels like you’ve known them all of your life or that feeling of applying for a job you know you’ll get because you’re perfect and then everything aligns and you get the job. I really don’t know why these sort of things never happen to me anymore and I believe it’s because I never give myself time in silence. Even in the middle of New Hampshire, this is actually really hard but in 2020 I’m going to try and do more of it. My house is full of tech equipment the basement is a data center with a de-humidifer running and upstairs, I have fridge drone from the compressor and the heat will kick on and blow hot air throughout the house and a big truck barrels down the road or a Harley’s V-Twin shakes my windows. I have to go out into the woods with my dirt bike, kill the engine, take off my helmet and get a little bit of silence before I’m swarmed by mosquitos.
That kind of clarity is insanely rare these days and I’d like to find a way to get it back because in that short-lived moment driving down the road I felt invincible like I could do anything, build anything the encumbrances and limitations of adulthood where responsibility and fiscal shackles cloud all of that pure thought you have as a kid. I don’t say this was some life changing moment where I’m going to take up yoga or join a freedom cult out in the woods but it was a feeling I haven’t had in so long that I sort of crave getting it back. It’s so fresh in my mind how that felt that like a drug, I’d like to find that feeling again and hold on to it for longer. Maybe that’s what meditation is? I’ll let you know in time.
For now, if you have this feeling naturally like I used to when I was in my teens and 20s, hold on to it. I remember as a kid on the bus having this feeling the entire ride to school and I’d have it on my daily drive to Jacksonville to work at Apple and I sometimes had it on my 20 minute walk to work in SoMA SF. I’d sip my coffee, pop in my Shure SE530s (the same ones I’m using right now still) and walk and reflect. It’d be good to get that feeling back instead of feeling cloudy all of the time.