On retreating and the practice of “home-cosmography”
Turn your eye inward into the recesses yet to be explored, yet to give you solace and inspiration.
A quick re-share of an oldie but goodie article. Time flies, but the truths remain:
At times, I find the insatiable need to wave the white flag on life. I take a beat. A deep breath. And I stop. Just for a solid 45 minutes, just long enough to catch my breath and put the outside world into perspective.
Things I specifically retreated FROM during this pause:
My inbox, the pile of dishes near the sink, climate change, the dread of looming middle age and do I have enough in my savings account.
Things I specifically retreated TO in that precious 3/4 of an hour:
A phone call with a friend, trashing my out-of-ink pens in the kitchen pen mug (satisfying) and holding my dog in my lap while marking articles in the New Yorker with torn up Post-It notes to read this weekend.
This was a tactical retreat — in miniature. A chance to regroup, reflect and plan for the next battle before I was too weary to continue.
It did the trick, helping me to unstick the stuck bits, and it made me curious: What did retreat mean to people back in the day? Like, George Washington and Henry David Thoreau’s day?
Then I thought, “Wait. I can literally just see what those two did,” and here we are.
George Washington: The Irish Goodbye That Saved America
While a retreat may help you clear the fog in your life, George Washington and his 9,000 men owe a crucial, successful, literal retreat entirely to the fog after losing the Battle of Brooklyn to the British.
A mere two months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Army conducted a massive nighttime water evacuation through the fog to escape certain death. The most epic Irish Goodbye of all time, the troops got sneaky — padding their oars to minimize splash, keeping fake fires burning and even banning coughing to avoid catching the sleeping British troops’ attention and reactive slaughter.
While their example is pretty extreme — you can’t avoid sneezing to not draw your boss’s attention to the fact that you’re at your desk — you can use their example to evaluate any “peace out” points in your life currently.
Ask yourself:
What are the assaults on you or your time that you are defending right now?
Is it time to hop in your metaphorical paddle boat and get the hell out of there before sunrise?
Because it’s one thing for your survival instinct kicking in to escape certain death, but it’s another to retreat from an unnecessary battle in your daily life. Now that’s revolutionary retreat.
Henry David Thoreau: Finding Respite Within
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
Thoreau’s two-year stay as a homesteader on the waterfront is interesting (even beyond your high school English classroom walls), but his simplistic al fresco lifestyle is far from the true point of Walden; or, Life in the Woods. In fact, his cabin was far from secluded — it was only a mile from his neighbor and a couple of miles from his family’s home and was regularly full of visitors and admirers.
Thoreau’s real respite was in choosing to retreat for time to himself and of himself, finding something brilliant and glowing inside because he took the time to search for it.
“Direct your eye right inward, and you’ll find
A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be
Expert in home-cosmography.”
Like the stars at night that disappear under glaring city lights, you’ll never see your own inner constellations through the haze of of your own thought pollution. Those multitudes you contain will remain hidden as long as you obscure them through busyness, stress and screen-worship. #unplug
You: Moonwalking Toward The Exit
So, now it’s up to you: How will you retreat?
Tactical retreat is not hiding or shirking your responsibilities — use it, instead, to throw off the shackles of unnecessary stressors in your life.
Whether you turn to your nearest idyllic natural spot or lay down in a canoe and float across the Hudson — the act of making off like a jewel thief with your own time is your own adventure to choose.
