Is It Selfish to Step Away?

The world feels unhinged and scary. The level of insanity is off the charts. 

In light of the above, I find myself wondering if offering people a space to go completely offline into the Karoo for 5 days is actually the ‘right’ or best thing to do at the moment. I had many thoughts about this again on Friday morning.

I wonder about it because it can feel indulgent, extravagant and selfish, to step away and go on an ‘inner adventure’ when the world is in chaos. When I witness the devastation of people and the planet and feel the weight of it through my own experiences and the many different individuals I encounter, it is clear that the current state of affairs affects us all in a multitude of enormous ways. When I pause for long enough, something in me says ‘I should be doing something, I should be doing more’…whatever that means. 

Maybe there is an element of truth in that, but during a conversation I had with a client that morning, I realised that we actually need these spaces because we cannot do anything or be with others when we are under-resourced ourselves. We/I cannot hold space for others if we cannot first hold it for ourselves, and we cannot bear the intensity of what the world is asking of us now if we are running on empty.

“We cannot bear the intensity of what the world is asking of us now if we are running on empty.”

I know this well both intellectually and through experience. We all do. Yet it still feels almost impossible to deliberately carve out that space when things are literally burning around us and we are all being impacted in different ways simply by virtue of the fact that we inhabit the planet together.

I am planning my own personal Inventure for mid-year as I often have to remember this for myself, because I tend to lose sight of its necessity with relative ease. Yes, we need our daily practices that sustain us, as extended time offline is not a one-hit-wonder if we cannot resource ourselves in the daily living. I have also learnt that the hard way, but I believe that we need these offline experiences too, to reset and recalibrate before we re-enter. 

“We need spaces to reset and recalibrate before we re-enter.”

If you too need a space to breathe, to be in community, to have conversation, to enjoy the stillness and quiet, to gather yourself and be rejuvenated by the natural world, come to the Karoo with us this May.

To commit to your Karoo immersion put your belongings in a box and give yourself the space to rest, recover and resource so that you can return and contribute to this world from a renewed place and expanded space within yourself. 

It is both radical and necessary.