“I would love to live like a river flows. Carried by the surprise of its own unfolding”
John O’Donahue
On an early morning in January 2025 I sat, green tea in hand, in my home office. The Parks Canada account open on my laptop, fingers hovering over keys, waiting anxiously for 8 am to come. The Westcoast Trail registration was opening for the summer of 2025. Another family and ours had planned to hike the trail in August, if we could get a reservation. With my wife, Stacy, on her computer, our friends on their own and mine all warmed up and ready to go, 8 am came upon us and we all scrambled to secure our dates, alongside thousands of other intrepid hikers from across Canada and the world…. Successfully securing 8 tickets on the Westcoast Trail seemed like winning the lottery and a flurry of phone calls and texts celebrated our accomplishment — a seed of adventure was planted for the summer to come.
It was in early July that I started noticing the achy pain in my calves. The pain would come and go — mostly on the left, sometimes on the right –worsening when sitting for a long time, or walking on pavement. Within a week I was limping. By mid-July, whilst on a family trip to Whistler, I had to stop after a short distance on a flat surface because the pain was so bad. I saw my physician and chiropractor. They both agreed with what I had already suspected — sciatica from an intervertebral disc herniation.
After several days postponing my wife’s pleas to cancel our upcoming trip, I conceded that a week in the backcountry with a heavy pack was not a great idea for me, nor for our crew, and so withdrew our reservation. Amidst our disappointment, Stacy and I rallied hope to find an alternative for our week of family vacation. However, in the mid-summer in BC, campsites, parks, Airbnbs and hotels alike were all fully booked. One morning I awoke suddenly with the thought of a friend who had offered her home on Pender years ago, while they were away for the summer. Though we had not connected in some time, I texted her while still in bed. Her quick response welcomed us to their home for our summer vacation dates! I write this newsletter from their sofa… On August 13th, 3 days before our planned hike, Parks Canada advised all those with reservations to cancel their Westcoast Trail trip due to the Mount Underwood Fire still burning out of control, threatening the area around the trail and compromising amenities and power in the town of Bamfield…. Life seemed intent on steering us away from this trail for now.
A few years ago, I was teaching the Art of Living Mindfully course for BCALM to a group of community participants. We were discussing our meditation practice from the past week, as well as the home assignment, which was to invite a greater sense of lightness and play into our lives. One of the participants recounted a story of a recent visit to the local rec centre pool with her family. She was sitting on the deck contemplating this question of play, and how her life had insidiously become so serious. Interupting her thoughts, a small child in a bathing suit approached her and asked, nonchalantly, “Excuse me. Can I pour a bucket of water on your head?” Irritated by the intrusion she retorted, “No, you may not pour a bucket of water on my head” The child shrugged his shoulders and walked off. As she sat there letting the moment sink in, she smiled, walked over to the child and said gently, a sense of lightness in her heart, “If you would still like to pour a bucket of water on my head, I am ready”.
It was June of 1998 when I sat with my medical residency matching applications in front of me. I had painstakingly narrowed it down to two choices — Thunderbay, Ontario, or Prince George, British Columbia. As both seemed wonderful family medicine residency programs, I felt unable to select one over the other. And so I remember closing my eyes, flipping a coin, and letting Fate decide…. I met Stacy in Prince George — a physiotherapist in the hospital there — and fell in love. We took a trip to Vancouver Island for a residency learning in my first year, and I fell in love again. 26 years later, Stacy and I have raised two kids in Victoria, we have a beautiful community of friends and family here, and I have been a family physician to over 1500 people over this time. Millions of moments of connection, challenge and blessing have since transpired. Relationships, learnings, growth, hardships…. What if I (or the coin, actually) had chosen Thunderbay? How would my life –and every one and thing it has touched — be different?
John Lennon wrote, “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans”. How many choices have you made in your own life that seemed small at the time, but have changed everything? In our overly rational world it is easy to see life as a series of random, unrelated events. We make our plans and to-do lists. We organize our days, and map out our year to come. We celebrate when all goes as expected, and lament when it doesn’t. We are born, life happens, and we die…
But what if life happens for us rather than to us? What if all of the myriad blessings and challenges we experience each have their place in the complex and beautiful interweave of circumstance and grace that colours our world? How would we live our lives if we could rest, with absolute faith, in the certainty of our belonging? How would we treat each other if we knew that everyone we met was our teacher? How would we relate to the world if we recognized everything as alive and precious — every tree, river, lake, mountain and stone imbued with the essence of the Divine? Each building, chair, glass of water, or piece of clothing reverberating with the lifeforce from which it arose?…
It was Albert Einstein who reminded us that ‘”there are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is a miracle'” It is only from the surface that things seem disconnected. A table, stone or tree may seem solid, and yet we know that, at the sub-atomic level, all things are mostly space. In quantum physics entities behave both as particles and as waves. The closer we look the more uncertain — or mysterious — quantum phenomena become.
In ecology, the idea of competition as the foundation of the success and survival of species is quickly being replaced by a humbling recognition of just how much cooperation and interdependence are more accurate understandings of the natural world. Trees cooperate in a forest to inform other trees of disease, fire or drought. Plants depend upon mycorrhiza to obtain water and nutrients, and to share these nutrients with younger plants. Mycorrhiza, in turn, obtain necessary food as plants sugars produced through photosynthesis.
The closer we look at Nature, at sub-atomic particles, and at our own lives the more complex and mysterious Life reveals itself to be. The miracle is the Mystery. This interconnectedness of all things is not something we can always see or understand easily with our rational minds. However, our experiences — if we pay attention –remind us of this truth, and fuels our faith in times of doubt and uncertainty. Inhabiting this place of equanimity we can choose to be ‘carried by the surprise of our own unfolding’, rather than fighting the current. We can ‘go with the flow‘ instead of trying to swim upstream.
It has been a lovely week on Pender Island. Reconnecting with an old friend. Quiet time with my family. Exploring the natural beauty of the area upon land and water. My back is feeling better and my sciatica is mostly improved. Rest, time in nature and yoga have been healing for both my mind and body. Maybe I could have completed the trail? Perhaps the fires would not have affected our trip? Maybe this opportunity to visit Pender could have happened at another time? And yet, I know in every cell of my being that this is where I am supposed to be. How do I know? Because I am here.