Choosing Our Time to Go

I find myself saying to people over and over that so often we choose our own time to leave this earth. Now this may not be true in tragic, unexpected moments, but with loss of function, dementia and illness there does seem to come a turning point where a decision is made to simply leave. There is something very unburdening about that decision. But it also represents a truth that we often forget. It is when we are facing the unknown, the confirmation or denial of our beliefs, of the truth of our words and our decisions. It is our time to take stock of this life.

The need for time to reflect is something so many people never experience until their final moments. But just imagine if you could take that time much earlier in your life, even on a regular basis. What kind of realizations would you have? How would your decisions change? How would your life look?

Particularly now, in this world of social media, 24 hour news cycles, internet answers at the click of a key, we don’t realize how much we are “on” all the time. We don’t realize how all of our time is being spent processing or receiving information instead of being a living, active being, initiating our own destiny.

I recently gave a lot of thought to this when my brother in law, Raphael Engel, had his most recent book published on monastic life experience “Rencontres au Coeur dur Silence”. In September of 2019, he and his production crew did a documentary piece on the abbey of Hauterive, a monastery still following a life of silence. In the following two years Raphael returned many times to the monastery because he found what all of us have lost in our world of constant communication … the essence of communion. Communion is not an audible experience, it is often a silent experience, where the world is set aside in order to experience something that is beyond the noise.

We have the choice, at any time, to set aside our day to day experience and be alone with our thoughts to allow time to process our feelings, our dreams, our fears and our guilts, in order to move forward with less of a burden, with a different outlook. This is a process that is not only mental and emotional, but also physical. By allowing ourselves the opportunity for freedom of thought, we also give permission to our bodies to take the time to heal, to process, to detoxify, to breathe.

Throughout history people regularly went to health sanitoriums, healing water spas and retreat centers in order for their body and mind to experience daily life without the daily life requirements. Special foods, hydrotherapy, healing therapies and long walks would often be essential parts of this healing time that would be impossible with a person’s normal daily schedule.

In Japan there is a concept known as shukubo which literally means “sleeping with the monks”. It is a practice that is done regularly in Japan and it was one of my most memorable experiences in Japan. Attending their prayers, eating their food, sleeping on tatami mats on wooden floors, all gave you the feeing that time stands still. It is a feeling that belies our constant life of schedules, deadlines and expectations. Taking time out for a shukubo visit feels like a reset, a clearing of priorities.

Our body by its very immune process has a deep belief in shukubo.  During periods of illness, the body creates severe fatigue and sometimes debilitating symptoms. It does this not only to confront and resolve the illness, it does this to force us to stop, to step out of our lives and into our beds, to rest. I can’t tell you how many cancer patients not only are trying to process the news of their diagnosis, but their doctor wants them to immediately start treatment, schedule multiple procedures, all without even a thought about their family, their job, their responsibilities, or how they will financially survive without working. So cancer patients are forced to have to not only manage their treatment plan and the ensuing symptoms, they have to figure out their lives. It’s not just surviving the cancer, it’s surviving the loss of their ability to function normally.

We need to create lives that allow time for reflection, for connecting with our thoughts, processing feelings and emotions, becoming a part of communion with all the parts of ourselves and our world that we never have the time to see or touch or experience.

Who knows how much illness you would avoid or how much healing you can accomplish by simply stepping out of your life from time to time. It’s worth finding out, just as my brother in law did.