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| I made it! Here's my "before" shot. |
I've hinted about the fact that I planned on going to this retreat in earlier posts, but I haven't really discussed at length what it is or why I'm doing it. The explanation never really seemed to fit in anywhere until now.
A few years ago, a very good friend of mine, KA mentioned to me that she had attended a 10-day silent meditation retreat in Thailand and that it was a really positive experience for her. At first (as I'm sure is the case with everyone when they hear about something like this) my reaction was, "you couldn't talk for 10 days?!" Impossible. Just... impossible. Can you imagine? But listening to her talk about what she had experienced and learned was fascinating to me. At that point in my life, however, the idea of traveling to Thailand was so far out of the realm of possibility that I never really thought twice about it. I had barely done any international traveling. The little that I had done was to Canada (which doesn't count), or with family/friends on vacation to nice, resort-y places, or for work. Plus I was in this great job and I'm not a planner when it comes to personal things so big vacations just never happened for me.
Fast forward a few years and I've decided to defer business school for a year to do... anything I want. And I knew at the very least that I wanted to do this retreat. No, I needed to do this retreat. Not a ton of people know this, but the last seven months or so I was at Google was one of the most personally difficult periods of my life. My best friend, who I saw pretty much every day, very precipitously became not my best friend in kind of a messy way. There were some non-ideal aspects of my work environment. I wasn't really involved in any extracurriculars because I had been spending all of my "spare" time slogging through essay after essay after application after application after interview after interview with business schools. And throughout the whole thing I was coming to terms with the fact that very soon I would have to leave the city I love, the company I love, and the friends I love to move into the next phase of my life which honestly, I just didn't feel ready for. All of this meant that while on the surface I kept a big smile on my face (Google is great! I love San Francisco! I'm excited to go back to school next year! Everything is rainbows and sunshine and puppy dogs!), in reality I was going through one of the most severe depressions of my life. And it just kept dragging on. And on. And on.
What made it all the more difficult is that, well, on the surface, my life actually was awesome. And I will absolutely be the first person to admit that. I lived in one of the greatest cities in the world, I worked for one of the greatest companies in the world, I had graduated from one of the greatest schools in the world, I had a family that loved and supported me, I had tons of friends that loved and supported me, I was financially stable, I was young, I was healthy... honestly, everything kind of was rainbows and sunshine and puppy dogs. Which made it all the more difficult to deal with something like this because it's sort of like, "cry me a river, your life is so hard." I felt guilty for not feeling happier when I had so much going for me already. But I just... wasn't happy. I was stuck.
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| Surat Thani Province, Thailand (map courtesy of Wikipedia) |
When I thought back to what KA had told me about how the retreat had helped her, I knew it was something that I needed to do because living life like this, putting up this front, just wasn't sustainable. And I'm sure the people closest to me could see that too, even if we never talked about it. When I found out that the business school I had decided on was going to let me defer for a year, this meditation retreat became the number one priority on my agenda. It was the whole reason I came to Asia in the first place. And it's why I'm so excited to be here right now. I hope that after these 10 days, I'll be in a place where I can let go of all of those things that I feel have been constantly weighing me down and start to enjoy life again. It's. Been. So. Long.
The retreat takes place at the Suan Mokkh Buddhist monastery in the Chaiya district of the Surat Thani province in southern Thailand. More accurately, the retreat is organized by the monastery but takes place down the road at the International Dharma Hermitage and is run by a mix of Western volunteers and by monks from the monastery. The retreat is designed specifically for Westerners and all talks are delivered in English. It starts on the 1st of each month and lasts for a full 10 days. The website for the retreat states that, "The retreat allows us to withdraw from our usual activities to a quiet and secluded place and devote our time to study, contemplation and meditation." Secluded is right. We are literally in a forest. Which is the perfect place for something like this.
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