Are We All Just 12 Hours Away from Clarity?
Lately, I’ve been reflecting on a quiet tradition I used to keep: solo camping trips.
I’d pack up a hammock, some dinner, and my sleeping bag, then hop on my mountain bike and ride out into the hills near my home in Marin. No real plan. Just me, the trail, and whatever patch of nature felt inviting that evening. I wouldn’t bring much—maybe a journal, maybe just a playlist. Sometimes I wouldn’t write or listen to anything at all. Just sit still long enough that the wild things started to forget I was there.
I remember one night, perched on a rock as the sky dimmed, I noticed a rustle in the bushes beside me. A deer—just ten feet away—had been silently holding its breath until I’d stopped moving. Now, slowly, it began to nibble on the leaves, relaxed by my stillness. That kind of thing happens out there.
When you slow down, the world starts to come alive.
But in the months since becoming a parent, those nights have been harder to come by. The rituals that used to nourish me—long walks, meditation, journaling, the occasional silent retreat—have been pushed aside, not out of neglect but necessity. It’s a beautiful season, but also a full one. And recently, the cost of going too long without those rituals caught up to me. Overwhelm hit hard. My mind felt cluttered, my body wired, my heart distant.
My wife Katherine and I sat down together and realized something simple but profound: if we don’t make time for the things that keep us well, we can’t show up for each other, or for our little one, in the ways we want to. So we made an agreement—to trade off, to give each other space, to prioritize what restores us, not just what sustains the household.
And something unexpected happened: the scarcity of time clarified the value of it.
I’d always known those solo nights were good for me. But now I know they’re essential.
There’s something deeply ironic about how modern life talks about self-care. It's often framed as indulgent or optional. We’ve been taught that what matters is the work, the bills, the errands. That stillness is a luxury, not a need. But what if we’ve got it backwards?
What if the most practical thing we can do is pause?
What if sanity is only ever 12 hours away?
That idea has stuck with me. That for most of us, we might just be one night—or one uninterrupted morning, or one half-day hike—away from coming back to ourselves. Not because everything gets resolved in that time, but because something inside us gets re-centered. We remember how to listen. We remember we are not the noise in our heads. We remember the feeling of awe.
And when we do, something unlocks. We become more spacious, more patient. We soften. The world feels less like something to manage and more like something we get to be a part of.
Even now, I’m not back to full overnight trips. But I’m reclaiming little windows—three hours here, four hours there—to slip into the woods, to journal under a tree, to walk until something in me settles. The other day I found this hidden path next to a stream just 20 minutes from home. Salamanders, crawfish, cold water and sun. I felt like a kid again. And afterward, I felt more myself than I had in weeks.
So I’ve been wondering: what would change if we all took just 12 hours a month to do the thing that reconnects us?
What might return to us—what clarity, what creativity, what capacity—if we treated these practices not as luxuries but as lifelines?
I don’t think these things are “nice to haves” anymore. I think they’re medicine. And the good news is: the prescription is simple.
Twelve hours. Once a month.
To remember who you are.
To listen for what’s here.
To be.
