Today, I wanted to run away. I began to dream of far off places, as well as some nearby places. Easy escapes are trips to the bookstore, where a cup of coffee and a browse around are a way to escape from the days responsibilities for just a few moments. Books, you see, have always been a big part of my life, and a way to lose the outside world. In recent months, I’ve done a bit of research as well, just to confirm my heart and my head are on the same page. They are, which is always a good thing.  But in a way, I digress.

I talked to a friend today, and beyond the fact that I wanted my friend to run away WITH me, the discussion turned to “where would we go”?   One such location that came into discuss is the BEACH. I’m not an athletic kind of girl, so it isn’t that I want to go swim or scuba dive or other such things; I just want to be. The photo above is from St. Croix; I spent an afternoon in that hammock with a book. Yes, I wore lots of sunscreen and a big straw hat. I was able to take in the sounds and smells of the ocean while doing what many would see as “nothing”. I mentioned the other day that I am reading the Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff and towards the end of the book, the author discusses “Nowhere and Nothing”. According to Taoists, the key that unlocks the doors of wisdom, happiness and truth: nothing. To the Taoist, Nothing is Something.  I’m really getting the Taoist perspective on life. Nothing is something.  Especially if I can roll in good friends and/or good books.

To follow through with the changes in my life, I cannot ignore the addition to meditation in my life. When I realized that running away to the beach today wasn’t something I could feasibly do, the thirty minutes spent meditating this afternoon brought me exactly back around to where I needed to be mentally.  Hoff reminds us that emptying your mind is the way to listen and that emptying your mind charges up the batteries of spiritual energy and ties to this “nothing”. While emptiness may seem lonely or scary, if you allow it, it actually become the blank canvas or a fresh sheet of paper: full or promises.

If I am honest, I will tell you that I still want to run away; not for the need to escape, however, but just for the opportunity it presents; the beach, where we can listen to the ocean, share books, and just be. Because doing nothing is really something, and like that empty mind, the way to recharge yourself in body and in spirit.