“The
real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself.”
~Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into
Values
In recent decades, we have moved beyond the time when mindfulness was a concept only known and practiced by saffron-robed monks shaving their heads on mountaintops. Nowadays, you’re just as likely to hear about mindfulness from a Karen marching studiously home from yoga class to slowly wash the dishes – paying close attention to the way the wet and soapy washcloth glides over the patterns on the porcelain – as you are a Buddhist text.
The word “mindfulness” gets thrown around in internet memes and coffee shop conversations. And like any other word repeated too often, it begins to lose its meaning.
Here Is What Was
In 2016, I experienced the lowest point of my life. My business, which had been struggling from day one due to decision making based more on ideals than good business sense, was dangerously close to failing.
My marriage did fail.
My fall was further punctuated because of the heights I had so recently been – my restaurant had made wildly publicized plans, which had been widely supported before falling through. My relationship, a decade long source of fantastic highs and brutal lows, left a vacancy I couldn’t even begin to process in the shadow of everything else going on.
Please return your seatbacks to their full upright and locked position.
I put everything into putting one foot forward at a time. I turned down opportunities that would have taken me away from my greater goals, even though they offered a much more lucrative situation and sense of security. I worked to keep my business alive, and my employees paid – as they slowly jumped ship for their own more lucrative situations.
“It is always darkest before the dawn.”
Nine months into a new year, plans were solidified – in black and white on paper this time – to re-open in an ideal location. Life moved forward. However, during those darkest of times, when I was turning down all the good ideas and stubbornly cleaving to the one idea close to my heart, I did sometimes open an atlas.
Lubec, Maine. Our country’s easternmost point, sixteen hours away, and in a part of the country I had never explored. In the worst of times, I would allow myself a fantasy – I would get on my motorcycle, and I would ride to Lubec.
And I wouldn’t come back.
It wasn’t what I wanted to do most of all. I wanted my business to succeed. That was the dream. But leaving it all behind without a backward glance? That was the second-most thing I wanted to do.
I did not do the second thing, and I’m still working on the first. Also, at the time, I made a deal with myself. In 2016, the Vagabond Kitchen was two years old. I would give it five years. If it wasn’t where I wanted it to be in five years, I would walk away. Meanwhile, I would do everything I could to get it to where I knew it could be – come hell or high water.
This year, 2019, marks the fifth year in business in beautiful downtown Wheeling.
The curse of entrepreneurship is, for me at least, one of time management. There are never enough hours in the day, days in the week, et cetera. Every moment gets scheduled, double-booked, over-filled, overwhelming. Both ends of the candles are burning. There are ten candles. One of the candles caught the curtains on fire.
What I wanted – more than anything – was some unmitigated time. Oh, and I still wanted to see New England. Honestly, I had been dreaming of the postage stamp area of our country for years. Whenever I’ve traveled, I’ve almost always been drawn to the West. And as much as I love New York City, I had never seen an inch of the rest of the state.
So, when events, staffing, and everything else added up, and I knew I could treat myself to my first vacation in six years, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
Here is What Is
Just like my Vagabond Chef project, the culinary travel blog I started in 2013, drew together all of my loves: travel; motorcycles, food, connecting with other culinarians, and writing.
Those ingredients would pull my trip together so, finally, I would have the chance to enjoy New England: serious chunks of unmitigated time, riding my motorcycle, and being completely anonymous.
I was able to set aside 13 whole days of travel with only the barest of bones when it came to a plan. Just a vagabond and his motorcycle in the landscape. Perfection.
I thoroughly enjoy sitting in mediation. Yet, like anything else, it’s difficult to find the time. And what I’ve found is achieving that same mindset in the saddle of my motorcycle.
The hardtack road inches beneath the soles of my feet, the wind in my face and hair, the smells of the terrain, it is the merging of man and machine. No time for thought – the motorcycle becomes an extension of impulse, and muscle memory creates life-saving reaction time. Everything outside somehow both melting away and augmented to eleven at the same time.
I am the rock in the river, the landscape rushing past me. I am a mirror reflecting the landscape and reflecting my experience of it. The mirror, however, does not record. The mirror sticks to what it’s good at. It reflects, nothing more.
But along the way? Mountains, bridges, ferries. Restaurants, bars, roadside shacks. Mile after mile of soaking up the setting and being subsumed by the moment.
I’m not a patient man. I’m a doer. I want to go-go-go. I want to embody Jack’s quote about the “mad ones,” so it’s very easy for me to focus on the horizon and ignore the now. I tell my kitchen staff all the time, “Slow equals smooth. Smooth equals fast.” When things are at their busiest, it’s most important to slow down. It’s hard to remember that when you’re in the weeds.
But we get one life. Let’s not rush through it.
Here Is What Will Be
In May of this year, as I looked at our five-year anniversary coming in June, I re-assessed my plan. I had stuck to my goal and fought through the battle, but it’s by no means won. There are new battles every day, and winning the war would mean a successful business, a prosperous downtown, and a ton of expansion.
Still, five years is five years, and I’m certainly not quitting now. It’s time for a new plan, a new deadline.
In May, I turned 42. My new plan is to give the business until I’m 50. Eight more years of putting everything I have into it. Eight more years of grinding as hard as I possibly can. If, at the end of those eight years, we’re not where I want to see us, then I’ll walk away and be a homeless man on a motorcycle. I’ll ride around the world. But until then, for another twenty-five hundred and some odd days, it’s full steam ahead.
At the heart of it, mindfulness is the matter of making the most of your life. It’s putting a halt to the moments as they rush by. Life is made up of moments, and if we ignore them, they’ll be gone.
And so will we.
“If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not “washing the dishes to wash the dishes.” What’s more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact, we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can’t wash the dishes, the chances are we won’t be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future -and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.”
~Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness
