It is a Friday morning, and come noon I am going to sneak out of the office, drive up to Dana Point and catch a ferry over to Catalina Island. If you have not been to Catalina, it is like a Mediterranean desert isle with hillsides dotted in pastel colored houses, Spanish style tile and architecture, with the landmark Casino as a backdrop. Upon arrival in this magical place, time slows down and the frets and worries of day to day life seem to fall away. My brother is also sneaking away and we will catch up with my Mother who lives on the island. In this week’s blog, we take a break from divorce and all the stresses that culminate in life as we go through it, and take a moment to simply breathe.
Our special places. Catalina is a special place for me. My Father grew up on the island. He passed away a few years ago but when I go to Catalina, his memory is close by, running around chasing wild boar as a kid in the hills above Avalon, or diving off the old pier as the Steamer arrived from the mainland and tourists from the ship would throw coins into the water for my Dad and other island kids to dive down and gather. My Mother was drawn to move to the island because it is a serene and beautiful place to live, but also because it is the closest place on Earth to my Dad. I look forward to a quiet weekend with my Mother, Brother, and my Father.
I don’t need to go out to Catalina to find a place that brings me calm, or a place where I can pause, and just breathe. I can grab my surfboard and paddle out just beyond the break, and sit there and look toward the palm tree silhouetted shoreline, and just breathe there. There is a trail about 30 minutes inland that I go to and just disappear for a while. I can sit on my deck at sunset and look to the West and for that period of time from the sun descending below the horizon until the final reds and yellows and oranges fade into grays and blacks, breathe and enjoy and take a break from all the hurrying and scurrying and worrying.
Life gets so busy. Life is busy and hectic and challenging and full without throwing divorce into the mix. My kids are older now, but there was a time where all three of them had varied sports practices and games, musical instrument lessons and concerts, plays, birthday parties, play dates, and everything else under the sun mingled with my own board meetings, organization meetings, work, my own play dates, my coaching commitments and my own sporting endeavors. Never a dull moment but also almost never a built in moment to just breathe. Now that my children are older, I have found new commitments to take their place. I am committing long hours to getting a book written and many more hours developing an App with a couple of friends, all added to maintaining a busy mediation practice. Thankfully, I don’t have divorce to throw on top of it all, but finding moments of quiet is important all the same.
So today, just take a moment to breathe. We are taking the week off from delving into another divorce legal issue. We can pick that up next week and maybe the week after that. Consider sneaking out with me at noon. The boat leaves Dana Point at 2:30 for Catalina. Better yet, find some time to do something that gives you some time to breathe. It doesn’t have to be much. You just need to consciously think about it and step out of the rushing and the stressing that life was before, and now is all the more in the midst of a divorce. They say “Life Is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” It is hard to determine where this quote originated, but my message for this week is that our lives are also measured by the times we remember to take the time to breathe. Otherwise, we are spending too much time just rushing through.