Texture over thought

I can’t stop thinking about something I did last Friday.

It happened on a clear, chilly evening on an empty beach in Little Compton, Rhode Island. The setting sun glistened off the water while I ran back and forth between a 175-degree sauna and a 65-degree ocean.

I know people go hotter, and I know that water temp is wimpy by cold-plunge standards, but it was enough to jolt me into another realm.

I stayed in that realm for my one-hour session plus about 20 minutes into my drive home—feeling totally in my body, simultaneously relaxed and energized. Then slowly, my thoughts started coming back online.

It was like waking up from a dream, which in ways felt more like going back to sleep. As my thoughts multiplied, I lost connection with the blissful experience of being fully in my body.

This felt like a revelation: Oh! That’s what it feels like to be present.

I needed reminding.

Recently, some big changes in my life have nudged me into a heightened state of figure-it-out energy. I have felt trapped in my head, my ego working overtime to make sense of everything and arrive at the “right” decisions.

Maybe you can relate?

You don’t have to be going through big changes to be heavily, if not exclusively, reliant on your rational mind to guide your life. This is how most of us have been conditioned to make decisions, relate to people, and pursue success.

If you spend a lot of time in the realm of ideas, words, and screens—engaged in cerebral work, hobbies, and interactions—you may be experiencing a similar craving to mine:

I’ve had an increasingly acute yearning for my life and work to exist more in the physical world. Less thought, more texture.

Going between the steamy sauna and the crisp ocean was all texture.

I was blown away by how differently I experienced myself, and the people and things around me, when texture got louder than thought. I was living in reality instead of inside a movie scripted by my ego.

The sauna–swim experience was the first time in at least a year when I’ve felt truly free from my own thinking.

Which—naturally—got me thinking:

What if the only thing any of us had to “figure out” or “improve” was our thought-to-texture ratio?

Less thought, more texture.

If our only job was to proactively pursue things that made us feel good—energetically, and in our bodies—instead of pursuing things we think should feel good or we think will eventually lead to something that feels good.

What if we trusted that as our barometer for being “on track” instead of outsourcing our choices to whatever dogma, algorithm, or opinion has captured our minds?

Immersed in texture on a Rhode Island beach, I glimpsed a world shimmering with love instead of stagnating with fear.

Is there a more worthwhile pursuit?