“I want to be a hermit.” I remember making this singular declaration in reply to the usual adult query of what I wanted to be when I grew up (I see now why I was confused for so long with the idea that doing and being were the same thing…)

I was probably under ten years old, but I remember that this was my bona-fide answer. I’m not sure I would have been able to describe what exactly a hermit did, but I knew they lived alone up in the forest somewhere. And alone was what I wanted.

Flash forward a few decades. I forgot that aspiration, and although the act of writing looks suspiciously hermit-like, I have been living very much in the world.

This past weekend was spent up at Whistler with a great group from the BC Chapter of the Travel Media Association of Canada (TMAC). We had amazing sessions, honest conversations and lots of snorking laughter. I enjoyed it all immensely, but I also noticed that I checked out a little earlier than usual, content to tuck into my big quiet room with my latest book and a mug of tea.

And then I skipped out of one session completely and and went back to my room to meditate.

Later, I found myself looking up at the dusted-with-snow mountains and imagining solitary walks, long steady walks, up on high ridges. Walks without shops and the latest this or that. Just trees and super-saturated forest-breathing air.

That thought reminded me of pitching a tent with Kevin on the big Island of Hawaii, waking early early in the morning to the sound of the shuddery-boom of the exploding volcano. The mist, the damp, the orchids, the composting-new-earth, the lava and the incredible beginningness of the moment.  I felt like we were at the start of time. Just us. His Adam to my Eve. Starting out, not an apple in sight.

The subject of meditation came up this weekend. Initiated, I might also add, by others…not by me. Yet when I responded, I found myself more animated, trying hard to convey the respite it gives me; the interlude, the chance to sink into letting everything just be, and the stretchy-spaciousness of time and breath it allows.

And, because I have been trying to pay attention to how I am when I’m talking about certain subjects or people, and because I am trying hard to be the detective in my own life, I paid strict attention to this response. I have been trying to be ever more curious to see what feeds me or gets me excited and which paths (or persons) have the ability to feel like my soul is being sucked out of my body by a large vacuum.

Am I energized or enervated when I think about this? Animated or barely ambulatory when I’m with this person? Nourished or knackered? High or low? Yin or yang? I’m sure you get the picture.

This leads me to conclude that it would appear that my childhood yearning to be a hermit is finally finding some traction (this is not to say that I’ll never again wear a lampshade on my head…please don’t ask…suffice it to say I no longer drink Rusty Nails).

This does not mean a retreat to a cave and no more interaction with my fellow-beings. Instead it is a chance to honour those hermit-longings.

This too, is a reminder about how to treat others. Because, if I’m still discovering what I’m about, than how on earth can I ever presume to know anyone completely, and certainly never enough to decide who they are and what they’re all about.

In other words, we should always be careful about placing people in a box, non?

Life is getting curiouser and curiouser.