Depth over Distance: How to Surface When Life Pulls You Under

As I surface from divorce and grief and a self I've sometimes lost along the way, I'm learning to plumb the depths, find focus and flow, and pay deeper attention to what truly matters.

Two summers ago I sat on the deck of a private yacht on the Adriatic Sea in Croatia surrounded by some of my oldest and dearest friends and yet feeling very much alone. In my journal, day after day, I was telling myself a story I didn’t know if I was ready to hear: the end of my marriage.

I looked down into the turquoise water, thousands of feet deep, its surface so lovely and inviting, yet with a bottom I could not see or fathom. And I wondered, how deep could I go? Could I go the distance and find the courage to end a union that had long been submerged by all that could have been and would never be? Would I be able to stop trying to plummet the depths of us, where I had come up empty-handed so many times, and instead dive deep into those waters to find myself?

Sailing on the Adriatic Sea in Croatia. Photo by Inera Isovic on Unsplash

The answer was yes. It would not come without anguish, pain, tears, and sadness. The dissolution of our long marriage would test me in every way, as I have shared in several essays including this one.

Divorce is an unraveling. The hardest part is putting yourself back together again.

But as I look back at my journal from July 2022, I see that I kept my promise to myself:

“Broken hearts do heal, as long as I keep my heart open and my arms wide open for a future that I cannot yet see. I welcome its cleansing rain. I welcome the river, washing through me, carrying away things no longer meant for me. I will no doubt cry as I watch those things and people go—but I’ll be steady on the shore, anchored in my lion-hearted stance, ready to face the world.”

Last week I asked subscribers a question about what “D” words spoke to them, as Living in 3-D evolves beyond what has defined these early years of my 60s—divorce and dementia caregiving—into the many ways in which Destiny continues to show its beautiful, varied face.

I particularly appreciated the comment from subscriber

Alecia Stevens

who writes the lovely Substack

A Renaissance Life

about her Big Leap to buy a house in Tuscany and move there, fulfilling a 20-year dream:

“Depth is the word that resonates for me. Its where I want to spend my time- in conversation, in my work, the depth of inner work, in relationship, in relating to the planet, the universe. It feels related to the preciousness of our lives.”

I have been turning this word “depth” over in my mind this past week. It feels particularly resonant for me, too. I am fascinated by the etymology of words. “Depth” from the 1400s came to be defined as "the part of anything most remote from the boundary or outer limit" and from the 1520s as the "quality of extending a considerable distance downward or inward."

This seems exactly right. There’s a fall downwards as we reckon with the truth about ourselves and our relationships. But just as vitally—and this is the thing that saves us—we go inwards. We find our ability to swim and not just sink into those depths. We learn the secret of depth over distance, as Ben Howard captures so poignantly in this song:

Depth over distance every time, my dear
And this tree of ours may grow tall in the woods
But it's the roots that will bind us here
To the ground hmm
Depth over distance was all I asked of you
And I may be foolish to fall as I do
Still there's strength in the blindness you fear

I’ve been a deep-sea diver for the past few years, no longer content to skim the surface of things. I want to plumb the depths of my relationships. I want my curiosity and creativity to go deep and wide. I want to feel and notice and experience everything, not just in my mind but in my body, with a reverence that can only come from deep focus.

But in our distracted world, with our devices constantly beeping and buzzing, how can we truly focus in order to feel and experience our lives deeply? Last week in

Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert

she prompted us to ask our inner voice of love: “Where do you want my attention? What should I be focused upon? In which direction shall I stretch my heart?”

Here’s what my voice of unconditional Love told me:

“Your attention is sacred. It is divine. It is a gift and a responsibility. You can lose it so easily; it's a slippery, fickle, immature thing at times…you fall victim to the lure of devices in our Age of Distraction. I see you picking up your phone before you pick up this journal to talk to me. Can you challenge yourself to reverse that order? Attention will reward you for it. There is so much to see, dear one, so much to feel, taste, hear, experience. Don't let the gift of attention slip from your fingers as you hold that device. You don't want to miss a thing.”

I have been learning how to resist the distractions of our world, and particularly our devices as I read journalist Johann Hari’s brilliant book Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again, in which he goes on a three-year journey, starting with his own three-month digital detox in Provincetown, to explore the breakdown of humankind's ability to pay attention. It’s a wonderfully written, accessible book which I highly recommend. The main premise is that our inability to focus is not a personal failing but has been done to us by powerful external forces. Our focus has been stolen—but we can get it back, if we fight for it.

One of the ways to do that is to cultivate “the flow state” that we are all capable of and which many of us have experienced. That is when we are focusing happily for long stretches of time which for me, it is when I am deep into my writing and the world falls away. Achieving “flow state” comes down to three things, Hari learned from talking to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, known as the Father of Flow, who coined the term “flow” to refer to the psychological state of optimal performance. This is how Hari briefly summarizes his body of work:

“To find flow, you need to choose one single goal, make sure your goal is meaningful to you, and try to push yourself to the edge of your abilities.”

For me, the goal is to write creatively, every day, whether in essay form, as I do here, or in my fiction—a goal that carries more meaning than ever in my life. And I am challenging myself to push my edges by writing more honestly and viscerally than ever before (and a big shout out to

Writing in the Dark with Jeannine Ouellette

for helping me do that).

We can find our edge, too, by living in our Zone of Genius, as author Gay Hendricks describes in his book The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level, another source of inspiration for me as I seek to live deeper in every way.

Knowing you're ready for the next big leap

On the evening of the summer solstice, I floated on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico under a brilliant orange and pink sunset, thinking about depth and distance, focus and distractions, and big leaps that can come from following tiny breadcrumbs.

For years, especially living in Sweden, the land of Midsummer maypole dance and endless sunlight on that longest day of the year, I had learned to mark the solstice with both joyfulness and solemnity. As

Katherine May

beautifully reflected in her recent The Summer Solstice essay: “This moment matters, the time between planting and harvesting, the time when the year yearns to pause.”

And so floating on my back, looking at the sky, I paused. I listened. I made my way up to the sand to lay on a blanket under the stars for Moon Yoga at Venice Beach here in Florida. Our teacher Julie played the crystal bowls for a sound bath and we watched the Strawberry Moon rise in the sky.

The night felt vast and full of possibility—and I was paying deep attention.

My photo of one of our glorious Gulf of Mexico sunsets, Venice, Florida

LET’S CHAT

Share in the comments: How do you cultivate depth, focus and attention in your life and what are its rewards when you manage to do so?

And to my paid subscribers: a special thank you for your support and I hope you enjoy my personal voice-overs of every essay!

Three Songs for 3-D

Divorce

“Relationships,” Jon Batiste and Cory Wong

Sometimes we need only the music, not the words. There is something so wistful in this beautiful piece, embracing the loss, longing, pain and beauty of relationships.

Dementia

“Blue Sky Mind,” Trevor Hall

How you gonna get through this time?
Falling into a blue sky mind

Mother standing right next to me
Showing me what I need to see
Rain is falling into my mouth
Flowers blooming all up and down

Destiny

“Depth, ” Rising Appalachia

Depth we seek
We must be still
Take heart breaks
Soul Fire
Flood lines
And Earthquakes

Take time
Take a breath
Make it physical