My wife Elaine and I just returned from a two-week vacation in Panama. It was clearly time for us to get away after the launch of the Clown Town Healing Fest (CTHF) which drained my time and energy. I promised her that as soon it was over we would go anyplace she chose, which was a place with beaches, warm weather and sunshine.
The inaugural CTHF was the fulfillment of a dream that would help shift our healthcare culture from an interventional model to one that focused on prevention. It was an enormous success… (see
http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/humankind/2016/03/02/81198444/
…and a week after its conclusion we left for Panama, to an archipelago on the Caribbean coast called the Bocas del Toro. We found a tropical paradise on the isla Solarte called the Garden of Eden. This extraordinary B&B provided just what we needed…quiet, comfort, great service gourmet food, early morning yoga in this silent mangrove jungle magnified every bird call and splash of the incoming tide. After yoga, a snorkeling swim enraptured by this aquarium.
This is as close to Nirvana as I can imagine, and I wondered how long I could live like this in such splendid isolation? For a short time maybe a week, but I can’t conceive of living here in the Garden forever… (just as I can’t imagine living on the golf course, playing every day, or cruising around the world endlessly). There is something in my nature that makes such pursuits seem self-indulgent. I am driven by the pursuit of productivity, a need to make a difference and leave the place at least as good as I found it.
For me, at least in this life, the Garden of Eden is not a place one lives in forever; in this life there is an impermanence to everything. I just hope I’ve learned not to wait until I am depleted and exhausted to bask in this soul-nurturing place of peace.
We were in Costa Rica and Panama around the same time, Carl, but not in your Garden of Eden. Your message of replenishment is so important given the rising burn-out rate of psychiatrists to an almost epidemic level of about 50%. If we don’t take well enough care of ourselves, how can we help others as much as we can?
Pura Vida!
Stevie
Glad to hear you had a refreshing time, but agree with you and Viktor Frankl that meaning comes through connection that generates purpose. As for leaving a legacy, that’s where Erik Erikson says we old guys should be and you’re doing a superb job of that! Peace– Tom