building a deeper life
a restorative alternative for those tired of the empty aspirations of our culture
While I was living on the sailboat, you might say that I was living a simple life. There, the concerns of the day revolved around the sky, the wind, and the weather, and the values of western society were drowned out by the sound of the ocean. In this regard (and many others), it was a dream.
But the longer we sailed and the more places we saw, I started to notice how difficult it was to establish relationship with a place because we were always on the move. It felt like it was an incredible opportunity to amass experience and see things I would never have seen otherwise, and while I cherish all of those experiences, much of it felt… shallow because we were never in one location long enough to truly get to know it (with one or two exceptions, which remain the highlights of the whole adventure).
Which reminds me, did you know that in the decade between the ages of 17 and 27 I moved 18 times? Sometimes just to a new apartment across town, but often it was to a new city, a new state, a new coast altogether — from downtown Boston to Martha’s Vineyard to Colorado to California to Maine to New York to Seattle, to name a few. My time on the boat was far from my first time being perpetually on the move.
Even when I was living the simple life, I realized that it could, in its own way, be an extension of our culture's big life values: travel and ‘freedom’ can easily be another version of detachment and individualistic independence; collecting as many experiences as one possibly can and seeing it all and doing it all can be just another version of having it all.
My time as a nomad was a study in breadth — it was about going far and wide with experience but never deep. Last summer when we returned to land, living in the cabin my great grandfather built in the (very, very rural) foothills of the Adirondacks, I got to witness something truly incredible:
Every day I'd wake up and see the same view out the west-facing window: the tall grasses, the forest in the distance. I'd walk the dogs in the woods on the same trail, I'd walk past the same trees and stones, and I watched, in real time, as the earth tilted further from the sun and the land responded by turning summer into autumn. I got to know the local ecology intimately, and I studied it with awe as it shifted subtly, every single day.
This couldn’t sound more ordinary to most — but after four years of traveling nonstop on the open ocean, witnessing this was a spiritual experience, full stop. It brought to my attention just how much I’d always had one foot out the door everywhere I've ever lived, never really looking closely at where I was, never really feeling I belonged to it, never looking back after I left, and how I've never, truly, gotten to know a place in this way before — and how much my heart was longing to, for the first time, stay.
Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer
[Kimmerer’s work, among others who write about bioregionalism, indigenous cultures, and being a person-of-place, have all helped me understand why, in fact, this experience was so profound — but more on that later.]
I’ve chased and achieved many of our culture’s celebrated milestones and I have lived, in some regards, a “big” life with traditional “success” — and I traded it all in for the simple life that took me far and wide with experience. But now, as I return to America and am once again within earshot of its incessant noise and advertisements about what I should want and who I should be, I’m finding that a rigorous intentionality about how I want to live is required in order to not fall into the trap. I’m no longer interested in going big, I’m no longer interested in going wide, I want to go deep.
And while I’ve of course come at this from an ultra-specific path, I believe there’s something in this approach to living that can be radically restorative to anyone currently trapped in or disillusioned by the inherited empty and cookie-cutter aspirations of American culture.
A deep life, simply put, is the intentional honing of attention. It is one that might be planted in one small place, but its roots reach far down into the soil of that which sustains your spirit, connecting you (returning you) to the essence of who you are.
Whereas a big life is one with an outward focus and easily identifiable markers of success, the riches of a deep life hide well under the surface, invisible to everyone but you — it’s not about accumulation of wealth or status, it’s not about quantity of experiences or achievements, it’s about connection and the quality of relationships to various components of self, environment, and your place within the bigger web of life. To the outside world, it may seem boring, unambitious, or even conventional. But oh dear reader, it’s none of those things.
A deeper life is one where urgency, anxiety, and overwhelm are traded for the integration of awe, embodiment, and enchantment. You move at your own pace, determine your own milestones — there is no ‘behind’ because your path is your own. It’s a life where busyness, grinding away, and intellect are gently dethroned and a fluency in the quiet language of the heart, body, and natural world is slowly, deliberately learned.
In the big life we’ve been told to want, bodies are status symbols, health is performative and moralized, and ‘wellness’ is a list of things to buy. In a deep life, the human body is revered not for it’s appearance or abilities or how it’s decorated but for the mere way it breathes and buzzes and beats all on its own, the way it heals itself, the way your bones are home to your ancestors and your cosmic origins, the way your own awareness is a portal to mystic realms and felt truths.
The deep life is one with an attentive eye always turned to the energetic currents that pulse through your flesh, where you take the art of feeling and expression both very seriously and entirely playfully. It’s a life where imagination, creativity, curiosity, purposeless play are invited back into the fore, because these childlike channels of discovery nourish the soul more than productivity, profit, or distraction ever could.
It’s a rejection of the ubiquitous myths of scarcity, inadequacy and independence — the kind that tells you you’ll never have enough, that you aren’t enough, and that you must do it all on our own — and it’s a relaxing into your inherent wholeness and embracing our unbreakable interconnectedness — not just with the humans who make up your various communities, but with the ecological totality of where you stand.
You didn't come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.
―Alan W. Watts
It’s paying less attention to what the billionaires and shareholders want from you and more attention to the myriad species you share your Place with — it’s knowing where your water comes from and where your trash goes and which way is north. It’s learning the rhythms, weather, myth and lore of the region you inhabit and letting these cycles influence you more than a calendar or clock. It’s closing the apps and turning off the screens so you can develop a trust in your own intuitions and ancient knowing as you navigate the terrain, both inside and out.
The big life has a distaste for the ordinary, but in the deep life, portals into the mystery are found everywhere, especially in the ordinary. Magic exists in the way the sun moves across your wall, in the stillness that unlocks inner chambers, in the maple tree dancing in the autumn wind. It’s an understanding that we are all carried by one another and your relationships with people matter — and so does your relationship to the moon, to the sky, to the air in your lungs, to the soil beneath your feet.
In a world where everyone chases youth (or the appearance of it), a deep life is one where you hold a steady gaze with your own finitude and mortality instead of fearfully running away from it — where aging is allowed and you live like you know you will die. It’s slow, contemplative and collaborative, sustainable and wild. It’s a life that nourishes the spiritual realm more than the ego’s desires or society’s demands. It’s an opting out of the endless, empty cycles of consumption and competition sold to us as the path to happiness, and it’s a swan dive into the depths of intimacy, presence, play, and wonder.
At its core, a deep life is a full-bodied sense of belonging to where you are and the body you exist in and the communities you are a part of, and most importantly, it is found wherever you stand right now. To be clear, I still fully believe in the beauty of travel and having a broad range of experiences on this earth — these things do not preclude one from building a deep life, to be sure! But as someone who has tried living a lot of ways, I can also tell you this: you don’t need to move into the forest or onto the sea to build a deeper life.
All it really requires is that no matter where you are — physically, emotionally, spiritually, ecologically — you slow down, really see the fullness of it, you feel it all the way through, you converse with it, you belong to it, and you root all the way down into it like it’s yours, like it holds the secrets of the universe, because it does.
xo
Taylor
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I love reading your writing! Thank you for sharing <3
I had a similar revelation last year. I took a 3 month break from a high stress career to drive and camp along the Baja California Peninsula, hoping to restore my sense of self and wellbeing. Just prior to leaving my mother died, and then I broke my foot and could not walk for 4 months. The challenges I faced during that time certainly changed my experience - some bad, some good. I thought traveling would allow me to recover and be ready to jump back into my world at home. But with not being able to walk, I was forced to get still. No running on the beach or swimming, just camping on the beach, enjoying the views and letting the days pass. Two and a half months in, struggling to take my first steps on crutches, and still in a cast in the deep beach sand, watching the tide rush the water back and forth in front of me. I had a moment of clarity, humility, awe, and surrender. The power of the universe and the life that it sustains is infinite and immensely rich and it is here without our intervention or summoning.
I realized that there was nothing more I needed to achieve or learn or overcome or control to find joy and contentment in life. Just be present and observe the world unfolding all around me. I can find awe and inspiration of the natural rhythms of the world and the miracle of all that exists - that which is beautiful and welcoming and that which is foreboding or unknown. Taking that trip was a huge dream of mine. But in that moment, I realized that traveling doesn't have to take you to that place you are seeking. Being connected, rooted anywhere, is the amazing secret to getting there that we unknowingly keep from ourselves. It remains one my most valued lessons in this chapter of life.
Thanks for sharing your perspective and inspiring us all to do the same.