An Unmindful Life
I had all the trappings of success measured by our culture. As a stockbroker at a Wall Street firm, I was set on a model of doing everything faster and better than any of my competitors. My life was very well calculated and moving at a planned, orchestrated pace, when one day—in a split second—everything stopped.I had landed at the airport as usual early Monday morning and grabbed a cab to the World Trade Center. I got out of the cab, entered the building, and headed for the elevator. All of a sudden, my chest was so tight I could hardly breathe. We were all packed into the elevator as usual, but this time as it sped up to my office, I thought I was having a heart attack. I lurched off the elevator on the 104th floor and leaned against the wall. Little did I know that would be first panic attack of many to follow.
Along with the panic attacks and insomnia, a new keen sense of awareness began to emerge. As I went to work each day, I noticed we all seemed to look and act like zombies. It felt like we were trained to do the same thing over and over again. I noticed how people were buying lunch from a sidewalk cart then mindlessly eating as they walked away. Everywhere I looked, everyone and everything began to look the same. It seemed as if we were all living in some trance. My well-designed life had started to unravel.
Later, still in New York, I was studying for my commodity boards when I stumbled upon an old copy of Thoreau’s journal in the apartment where I was staying. I dusted off the front of the book, turned to the first page and it read:
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.
Little did I know his words would change my life forever. My initial response to that famous passage was shock, confusion, and an indescribably immense sadness. Was I living deliberately? Was I living a mindful life? How in the heck did I know what the essential facts of life were? And if I die tomorrow, have I really lived at all? Is living in the middle of this rat race really living?
Thoreau’s words made me painfully aware that the course I had charted for my life was far from “mindful.” I had carved out an outwardly “successful” life, and it had become a prison of my own design. My life had nothing to do with my authentic self or with an awareness of my own desires and dreams.
I knew nothing about the realities of living in nature, and the mere thought that nature held the possibility of teaching me something both intrigued and terrified me. A fundamental shift occurred in that moment, and I knew there was no turning back. I made a choice that day that would change my life dramatically and forever.
