self-reflection

The Refuge We May Find in Beauty

/ Greta Matos / 2 Comments

The words I read in the headline burn my eyes. I click the “x” in the right corner of the browser, closing the news article, feeling full of its toxicity, disgusted and saddened, ashamed at the level of political discourse in my country has sunk to- between candidates yes, but also between one another.

I log into Facebook and send a little note of love to a dear friend, and before I know it, I’m caught up in the quicksand action of scrolling through my newsfeed…again the toxicity of the posts I read feels tangible. So many people sharing the next obscene and ridiculous thing that has been said, and possibly done. So much expression of outrage. So much conflict and argument. So much talking and declaration, so little listening and asking.

I log out of my account and close my computer.

I sit for a moment quietly, taking a few deep breaths with my eyes closed. My eyes continue to burn as I rest them, the words and images plastered across the various articles, screaming for attention, pop up in the darkness of my mind, continuing their torment.

Dishes from breakfast beckon for cleaning and I have work to do, so up I go. I turn on my NPR One app to catch the morning newscast. Why? I’m not sure…a small part of me wants to further engage with the drama, perhaps?

Why are we so easily addicted to the things that do not truly nourish us?

The newscast offers up what I expect it to…and suddenly a stream of horrifying reports is flowing abrasively into my ears while I scrub off the remains of egg from my frying pan.

After several minutes my heart can no longer bare it, and begs for retreat. My ears feel overwhelmed by all the junk I’ve just consumed, like a guilty child who’s eaten too many sweets and now has an awful tummy ache. If only my ears could vomit all of that poison back up and release it from my body.

We are so much larger than this…I know we are.

The overwhelm of my senses is collectively gathering and I feel physically heavier as each moment passes.

I suddenly pause, and realize I’m starving for beauty, gasping for sustenance, aching for kindness.

I grab my jacket and step outside into the pouring rain, heading toward the forest that leads down to the river. Fresh apple blossoms greet me along the way, splashing their obvious beauty across my view, demanding I take pause to study their delicate, delicious and brief existence.

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I let the beauty of the forest fully embrace my eyes, soaking up every inch and detail of the vibrant green mosses and delicately dripping leaves. The spring (yes, it’s spring in Chile!) rains have been falling heavily for hours, and the leaves shimmer and shine brightly, reflecting the bright white sky above.

My eyes no longer burn.

I pause beside a thick tree trunk, suddenly lost in its web and variety of mosses and ferns that have claimed residency on its living, growing, breathing real estate.

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The green vibrance of the freshly-born leaves hanging from the trees invoke a sense of wonder. Each day their hue changes ever-so-slightly as they age from their spring birth into their midlife summer.

But now they catch the freshly falling rain with a full and delicate vulnerability. The rain splashes upon their new skin and they bounce under its weight; and they are resilient, these bold little leaves are not discouraged by the constancy of this heavy spring shower. They continuously reach upward, toward the sunshine they know resides behind the clouds.

Perhaps we can be as resilient as these bold little leaves, we can continue to reach toward the sunshine in the midst of this heavy downpour.

Before moving on I close my eyes and turn my face to the sky. The rain falls freely, delighting my skin with its fresh and delicate kisses. Each raindrop laughs as it collides with the leaves above, sliding down onto my skin, rolling onward from the clouds to the thirsty soil. I revel in the joyful journey of these little drops of water.

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I smile quietly and continue to follow the path toward the river, breathing deep the smells that the rain has encouraged forth. It’s so wonderful that rain produces such lovely smells in wild places.

How lucky are we for that? Very, I think.

And how delicate the smells are, they’re unnameable and unseeable, like fairies ducking beneath the leaves and emerging quickly and elegantly here and there, only to disappear again when another wishes to tickle our noses with delightful scents.

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Just down the hill I reach the spring where an underground creek gushes forth in crisp, pure form, traveling with great intention to join the Liracura river that runs along the property.

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The sounds of the forest pour into my ears- the gurgling rush of the water mixes sweetly with the pitter-patter of the heavy raindrops falling onto the fresh spring leaves. Various birds sing to one another and their calls mix with the lonely call of our dear rooster who seems to have lost his hens.

My ears seem to froth with gratitude for such lovely offerings, and I sit quietly, simply soaking in the beautiful sounds that surround me.

I dip my hand into the water, it’s icy cold and as I splash it on my face it takes my breath away. I cup the fresh water in my hands and take several deep sips. The cold, clean water washes its way down my throat, into my body, caressing my organs and my cells, sharing its vibrance with me.

My body, my senses, my heart no longer feel heavy, or full of the abrasive things I consumed earlier.

The world is a mess. And it’s also overflowing with beauty.

All too often we’re not conscious of what we’re consuming, nor are we aware of how the things we consume impact us. These delicate bodies of ours, they are strong, and powerful, and resilient, and yet they are affected by all things we consume. We often use the term “You are what you eat”- but we are also, in many ways, what we consume in these other forms as well. We are what we hear, what we see, what we smell, what we taste, what we feel. Perhaps that’s why we feel such exhaustion and repulsion from an overload of negative and disheartening things…our bodies and our hearts are crying out to keep this out, it is poisoning us.

And yet we are incredibly resilient, how quickly we are rejuvenated when we consume things that inspire us, that lift our hearts, that delight our taste buds and sooth our ears.

Food is not the only thing that nourishes our body. All of our senses are attuned to receive from our environment, and if we aren’t aware of what we are exposing them to, we risk losing ourselves amidst the toxic and damaging realities of our world. In order to find the creativity, the curiosity, and the resilience we need if we are to overcome these negative realities, we must offer all of our senses nourishment.

So where might we find this nourishment?

We find it in beauty.

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I wholeheartedly believe in the undeniable power of beauty. I offer refuge to myself, by choosing to engage with beauty when I need regeneration. Despite the undeniable chaos and darkness we are exposed to all across the TV and computer screens, despite all of the products for sale that have done incredible damage to the environments and communities where they were made and discarded, despite the availability of foods that are full of toxic pesticides, chemicals and hormones that have damaged our soils and polluted our waters, despite the outrage we are witnessing and probably feeling in our communities about social injustice and corporate and political corruption- despite all of this we have beauty awaiting us at every turn.

It’s waiting for us, waiting to offer us the replenishment we need so desperately so that we can carry on.

We can all be more mindful about what we consume. I believe in being an informed citizen, and in participating in our society in order to move collectively toward a more positive and regenerative existence on this planet. And I believe in being a wholesome person, who listens to the needs of her body, who seeks inspiration and opportunities to serve in a positive way, who knows that she was not made to carry the weight of the world and therefore there are times I must retreat from it. When I must retreat into it.

And when I retreat, I retreat to beauty.

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Nourish yourself. In the midst of all the embattled dialogue on our screens and public stages, take time to listen to beautiful music; make a colorful meal with fresh ingredients that is so beautiful to look at you can hardly dare to disturb it with your fork; step outside and breathe in the fresh spring rain, or the crisp fall air- both will be swollen with the life of leaves- breathe in that life. Walk up to a tree and get lost in its trunk for a few moments, oh what wonders await us when we look closely at the bark of a tree! Embrace a friend or a loved one with gratitude and appreciation. Beauty is all around us, the ways in which we may uncover it are truly endless!

So, how might you take refuge in beauty? What simple beauties invoke a sense of wonder and joy in you?

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The More You Know, The Less You Need

/ Greta Matos / 2 Comments
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Stuff…so much stuff

“The more you know, the less you need.” These eight words stared back at me as I chewed tirelessly on them, sitting on my couch in my 400 square foot apartment in Hong Kong after a long day visiting factories in China. In my lap sat Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard’s “Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman“. I leaned back in the uncomfortable couch, taking my eyes from the page to stare out the window, almost in a daze.

The more you know, the less you need. Oh how true those words suddenly rang in my ears, how heavily the tugged at my heart. The more you know. Let’s start there. The experiences of the past year had been beyond any limits my mind may have constructed in terms of what I thought I would know by now; as well as all I thought I knew. The “education” I received that first year out of college working in Asia had challenged every ounce of my fortitude, my agility, my comforts. It had rocked my pre-conceived perceptions of how the world worked that had been constructed mostly by society and the consumer-driven mentality of my country. It exposed me to the way things were, rather than the way marketing agencies and departments had portrayed them.

Stuff. It is actually a heavy word, “stuff”, taking on the feeling of something unloved, not wanted enough to be cared for or properly named. Images of little things tossed in drawers and junk closets, ending up in the garbage or boxes at the thrift store. I intimately became aware of the weight of “stuff” at this time, spending countless hours in factories churning out millions of components and products that would eventually end up in the grouping of “stuff” when referred to by their owners. Promotional products, toys, mugs, pens, too many items to list, but items all the same that were made with no real purpose.

The point was, the more I knew, the more I realized no one really needed this shit. We were here, negotiating to the half a penny, pushing suppliers for unrealistic timelines and cost points that would encourage outsourcing, overtime, poor wages and bribery, in order to make more “stuff”. And we were just “doing business as usual” in comparison to the many other random companies purchasing products from China.

At the end of the day, the products coming off those production lines would be wrapped in plastic, shipped thousands of miles and eventually find their way onto a store shelf or product promotion bag. Once purchased, the owner might find delight for a brief moment, or perhaps the item would just be something given along with some marketing brochure in a product promotion; either way, the life of this thing would be fairly short without much love. The toxic chemicals used in the manufacturing process, breathed by the workers and dumped in the nearby river…those chemicals would actually sustain a much longer life.

The more I knew. I continued with this work for another year, justifying that the work experience was too unique, too priceless to let go of. What other 22 year old did I know who was based out of Hong Kong working by herself to establish a sourcing devision for a US based company?  What other 22 year old did I know who had access to realities only otherwise hidden behind closed doors, who could learn first hand the ropes of doing business in China?

None. I knew that I had a team in the USA that was trying to sell products to our clients and needed factories to do so. I knew I had a team in China who was trying to place production in factories so that we had product available to sell. But I also knew the beginning of the life of these products, I knew the challenges of tracing where the raw materials had come from, I knew the working conditions in which they were made, I knew the lax enforcement by the local government of environmental and labor laws. I knew we could do better. But I also knew that we were making things that I didn’t want or need. The more you know, the less you need.

The less I need. Aside from the full-speed-ahead consumerism that threatened to suffocate me, I also began to know more about the simple lives that those around me were living. The tiny living quarters of the workers, cramped dorm rooms where several workers lived, their small pile of belongings neatly stacked in the corners of each bed. One bathroom with two sinks available for the 100+ workers living in the dormitory, all of whom were expected to arrive to work on the production floor at precisely 8am- and would wait over an hour each morning to reach that bathroom. Simple meals consisting primarily of rice with the occasional vegetable, prepared on the floor of the bedroom or around a small fire on the street.

I began buying less things. As I would stroll through the countless markets in Chinese cities, I would find myself retracting inward, find myself pulling back, leaving empty handed. There were many moments when the volume of stuff that surrounded me would be absolutely overwhelming. The neat, far-extending production lines filled with countless workers, heads down, hands quickly and precisely moving were one thing. But the markets, the malls, the shops and stores, the trade shows, all simply overflowing with stuff. The result of our collective efforts. Meanwhile I strolled down streets choked with pollution, crossing bridges over rivers that smelled so putrid I held my breath as I passed.

I began to look more closely at my own belongings, the items I had collected over the years, some gifted, many bought. At the time I was living quite light as I traveled all the time and only had my small apartment in Hong Kong; but I still considered how much “stuff” I had acquired over the years. I thought about my car, sitting in the USA, awaiting my eventual return. I thought about the boxes of items I had moved back to Pennsylvania after I graduated college and put almost immediately into storage. I went through my wardrobe and my books, through my household items and my memory boxes. I looked at my bank account, at my credit card debt, at my loans and my income. I evaluated what I needed, why I needed it and what purpose every single thing was serving. It wasn’t an easy task, it wasn’t a comfortable process, confronting all of my stuff, confronting my motivations in acquiring that stuff, my methods of acquiring it. Yet I had to acknowledge it, I had to confront it, in order to truly understand what it was that I needed, now that I knew what I knew.

A year and a half after I read Yvonne’s words, I found myself in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, traversing the Presidential range around the fourth of July, a little over a month into our five month long Thru-Hike. On my back I carried my little bear, as I referred to my Gregory backpack, containing literally everything that I needed.

I wore boots that protected my feet from the rocky trail, and dry during the rainy days. I had gators to keep the sticker bushes from scraping my bare ankles and to keep the dirt from tumbling into my socks. I had shorts that were made from quick drying material and could be converted into pants. I had a t-shirt and long sleeved shirt that offered UV protection and a hat to shield my face from the strong sun. In my pack I carried my rain jacket, a fleece, a shirt and pants to sleep in, 3 pairs of socks and 3 pairs of underwear, a warm hat and gloves, a water pump, my camelback bladder filled with water I had taken from the stream, 6 days of food,  sunscreen, toilet paper, biodegradable soap, a spork, a rain cover for my pack, a pocket knife, headlamp and a plastic baggie I used as my “wallet” containing my license, cash, and debit card. A pair of crocs hung outside my pack by a single carabiner. Oh, and of course my journal and a pen. Ale’s pack had similar contents but also held our hammock that we slept in and a lightweight tarp for the rainy nights. That was it. Well, that and countless moments of laughter shared with people I loved, surrounded by the incredible beauty and magic of the wilderness. I knew that I had exactly what I needed, and it was way less than anything I could have ever imagined.

As the years have passed, the simple act of knowing how little I actually need has made it so much easier to pursue opportunities to make memories rather than acquire things. It has motivated me to invest in myself and my life experience rather than investing in stuff. It has inspired me to take big risks and let go of things that I might have loved once, but have moved on from. I may not know entirely what inspired Mr. Chouinard to write those words, but I sure as hell know that I can relate, that they ring true to me and the way I choose to live my life, and that I continue to hold them close as I consider what I really need these days. As my work in the industry continues, and I have gained more knowledge about issues in countries far beyond China, and about the impact of products across many industries, I continue to take comfort in my steadfast understanding of how little I actually need, and how liberating it can be to be free of too much stuff.

It’s easy to be saddled with stuff, even if you are trying to be conscious of your consumption- and especially around the holidays! If you do want to confront those drawers, those closets, those accounts and the motivations behind all that has gathered there, I encourage you to do so. It isn’t always fun, or comfortable, and it takes consistent effort, but it can be incredibly liberating and enlightening.  You might actually feel lighter once you begin letting go.

If each of us starts here, if we each begin to examine what we have, why we have it and take a stance to limit the consumption of stuff we don’t need (or really even want), then maybe, just maybe, we can begin to influence these companies placing production orders to start making things that matter. It takes more than not buying things, it takes action, it takes communication, raising your voice, telling your friends and family what you believe and telling the companies you buy from the same. You might feel insignificant in this effort, but you are not. You are essential. And now you know. So, what do you think, when you look at your life that you’ve lived, and you look at the future you hope to live, what do you really need? Do you see a lot of stuff in that picture?

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Living light in the White Mountains along the Appalachian Trail, wearing or carrying every single thing that I needed 🙂

 

The Fears That Dwell In The Break

/ Greta Matos / Leave a comment
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Crashing waves along the coast of southern Chile, the surf just beyond the rocks awaits.

The cold water wraps itself all around my body, threatening to find a way into my wetsuit and overwhelm my senses further. I paddle hard toward the break, the heavy waves crashing upon my head and back as I work to overcome them. Suddenly I’m lifted from below, my surfboard abruptly torn out from under me, my ankle roughly pulled to the surface and my body thrown into a backwards somersault. I swim to the surface, gasping for breath; another wave crashes down on me and I again find myself under water- eyes closed, holding my breath. I kick hard, back to the surface I go, frantically grabbing my surfboard and sliding atop it, just in time to be rolled over by another wave.

I have to get past the break, I have to get through the crashing waves to the calmer waters beyond, where I can sit upon my board with a clear, quiet mind and watch the ocean as she moves. In this moment, I must dig for every ounce of strength to keep coming up for air while being rolled over by the heavy, powerful water.

I feel fear creeping in, slowly, like the cold saltwater entering my wetsuit, making its way through the hood of my suit as I’m barreled once again. As the water rushes down my back and legs, my mind begins to feed into the fear and discomfort.

I should get out, I’m not strong enough. I am tired, the ocean is too rough today and I cannot do this.

The comforts of the shore beg me to retreat- I can feel the ease of the motion of the wave pushing me forward instead of against me, feel the relief to those first few solid steps as my feet touch sand again, feel the warm sunshine on my face without the spray of saltwater burning my eyes. My mind pulls my attention to the warm towel that has been gathering heat on the dashboard in the front of the car, I long to feel the liberation of my skin as I pull myself out of the heavy, flooded wetsuit. It would be so easy to swim back to the shore, it would be so easy to just come back another day, to try again some other time, when the break isn’t so long, or the waves aren’t so persistent.

Pulling us into the present, I write this post in the midst of confronting my own moments of doubt and fears and longing for the comfort of the familiar shore as I embrace the act of “paddling through” the break. And by break, I mean literally, as I’m currently on a “break” from my career. It’s one that I orchestrated myself, even with great opportunity at a great company, doing work that I loved, I decided to walk away.

While I’m a passionate believer that you should do work that matters to you, I also believe that we are more than our careers, and that there are times that we need to reconsider what we value most in our current state of living.

We have one life. One.Precious.Life.

We’re on this planet for an incredibly short amount of time, in the grand scheme of things, and therefore if you don’t feel that the dots are connecting in your life, and by that I mean ALL the dots, it’s up to you to change that. For me, there was a restlessness in my heart, an intuitive “knowing” that it was time for some significant evolution, it was time for me to look beyond the safety of an “employed” status, beyond the comforts of a steady paycheck, beyond the familiarity of a daily routine. Innately, I knew that I needed a break, I needed an abrupt challenge that would push my boundaries and would usher me to the next chapter of my life, one that could not be statistically predicted based on my income, my age and my marital status. Perhaps I could see too far down the road of my future for my own comfort. Perhaps I really did just miss spending hours on end in wild places without the constraint of a two day weekend window. The point is that I decided to choose the path with no road map, and as a result I now face all the opportunity (and the challenges) that this decision brings.

Just because I chose this path doesn’t mean that moments of fear don’t creep in. They always do, and always have whenever I have embarked on a journey such as this. At every large crossroad I have faced in my life, there have been fears dwelling in the break, fears that remain no matter how conscious I am of my own ability to overcome anything that lies between me and living the life that I love.

In this particular case living on the road does get tiresome.  There are days I miss having my own kitchen where I can cook up lovely things like freshly baked pies and yummy meals comprised of fresh ingredients rather than the standard rice or pasta mixture of the day.  Days I would love to simply wake up late, see the rain outside and decide to spend the day in bed with Ale and our dog Check. Although we’ve had a few days in the mountains where we awoke to rain and decided to stay holed up in the tent all day, the comforts of a soft bed and lazy movie remained absent. There are days I miss engaging in thought-provoking work that is familiar, where I can flex my expertise and eloquently communicate my thoughts rather than fumbling my way through a simple conversation in a language that still feels foreign on my tongue and frustrates me in my lack of ability.

And yet, it’s the break that pushes us in unexpected ways; it’s the break that can test us in exactly the way that we need to be tested, even when we are unaware of how desperately we need it. It’s in the break that we can retreat to the restorative practice of taking our minds away from the norms that we use as the foundation for the walls of “perspective” we’ve constructed to funnel our vision of the world. And when you are trying to “be the change you wish to see”, sometimes you need to tear down the funnel in order to shift your perspective enough to be inspired by that which you couldn’t previously catch in your peripheral.

Over the years, I find that I’m much more willing to face my fears head on, to challenge them and their substance when they feed on momentary doubts. Through meditation and yoga I’ve found it easier to connect internally with my intuition, to immediately reconnect with my “why”, and I can draw strength from this practice when I’m anywhere in the world. The point is not necessarily that the more balanced/energetically conscious/self-aware you are the less likely you are to face fear, although I do believe you are better prepared to face it, and better able to quickly disarm it before it wreaks havoc on your hopes and inspiration.

The point is that we should never choose not to do something simply due to fear- because the fear will always lie quietly waiting for us no matter what.  Whether we embrace the unknown or we choose the familiar, it will find a way to taunt us, to distract and discourage us; and sometimes, should we choose to perceive it as such, it can also inspire us. It challenges us to go inward, to understand our “why”, to understand what is driving us and what is worth living for. In that sense, I can’t help but dive headfirst into the pursuits that might draw these fears out, so that I can fully face what might silently be holding me back without my even knowing.

So, I pull myself from the tempting thoughts of the shore, the thoughts of comforts I know await me eventually, but currently only distract me from my present endeavor if given too much contemplation. I appreciate the fact that those comforts are there, when I need them. But I came into the ocean today to surf. I came into this ocean to push myself, to take myself out of my comfort zone, to face another challenge in a part of nature that still feels foreign to me.

I lie on my board and reach forward into the icy water, counting my strokes, focusing only on the strength of my arms as I paddle forward and scan the coming waves for the low end of the break. Once I’ve spotted it I paddle ferociously, with all my strength, powering the board forward swiftly, my eyes searching for the next wave on my left, calculating the seconds I have before I must turn again and face the wave head on. The water begins to pull; I point myself into the wave and push down into a duck dive as the water rushes at me. Without nearly as much grace as the duck dives you have probably seen in surfing movies, I somehow find myself still on top of my board when I resurface. I quickly wipe the salt water from my eyes and paddle hard, head down, body balanced, catching momentum. I face one more wave, this time smoothly sailing up over the top, and suddenly I have arrived, I am in calm water, the break is behind me now.

I take a deep breath, several deep breaths.

I pull myself up into a sitting position and blow warm air onto my fingers which are numb from the cold water. I smile. Broadly. My arms are burning a bit, but they feel good. They feel ready. The shockingly cold water that had entered my wetsuit has been warmed by my body heat and it no longer makes me cold. I look out over the vast body of water I now sit quietly in and I’m overwhelmed by all that lies before me.

The surface of the water about ten feet from me suddenly breaks and I see the large, smooth fins and backs of three dolphins pop up. They swim in quick succession, the third one significantly smaller, a baby. I laugh out loud as I see them catch the next wave, swimming into the shore just like surfers, with ever so much more grace and power. They pop up again after having swum back beneath the water’s surface, proceeding to play nearby for the next hour. I catch my breath, I rest my arms, I watch the coming waves.

As I see the water gathering, the wave building, I begin to paddle, my fears in the break have been silenced; my concentration with the experience at hand taking full hold of my senses. I am on top of the wave, it is time to tip the board, time to stand back up, time to drop in and ride this wave. There’s a very good chance I might fall, there’s an even better chance I may end up back in the middle of that break.

There’s also a chance that I will succeed, that I will move with the energy of the ocean, that I will feel the gorgeous adrenaline pumping in my veins, experience the beauty of this wave in a way that will forever live in my memory. But even if I fall, I know I have the strength to get back up. I know I made it past the break before and I can do it again. So, I take the chance, and I go for it.

Here in Chile I have my moments where I’m fighting for breath in the break. I have my moments of intense frustration with my challenges in communicating. I’m learning to dance with my uncertainty that when I do decide to stay put again, I will manage to do work that I love as deeply as before, that I will build the lifestyle that takes me out into wild places whenever my heart desires, that I will protect wild places I love and have a positive impact in the world.

At the end of the day though, when I go inward, the “why” is solid, the doubts and fears dissolve when I look back on what I left and why I left it.  At the end of the day, I can face my fears with a steadfastness that I believed I had, but have only now been able to put to the test. And for that, I have the break to thank.

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A photo I took of myself after the day I describe in this post, I was exhausted, but so blissed out from spending the afternoon in the surf with the dolphins.