If you’ve been following along, you know I spent Q1 in constant motion.
Back-to-back peak experiences. Snow-covered mountains. Surfboards. Helicopters. Catamarans. I lived the kind of calendar that looks great on Instagram but starts to feel unexpectedly hollow from the inside.
Eventually, I hit pause.
I came home, cleared my schedule, and spent nearly two months grounded. I worked. I wrote. I stayed in the mundane and found joy in the space between.
I discussed that season in a previous newsletter: The Hidden Rhythms Of A Rich Life.
Which brings me to Peru.
Last week, I found myself in the heart of the Amazonian jungle. It was the beautiful kind of adventure trip that strips away comfort and reminds us of our humanity.
We slept in a rustic treehouse, perched 100 feet above the rainforest floor, immersed in the jungle’s heartbeat, high enough to watch squirrel monkeys swing through the canopy at dawn.
By day, we floated down narrow river channels, swallowed by green. The forest leaned in around us, dense and alive. When the way forward vanished, our guides forged one – machetes in hand, slicing through vines and shadow.
This wasn’t an escape. It wasn’t a reprieve.
It was the next note in the rhythm.
I didn’t go to the Amazon looking for clarity. I already had it.
What I found instead was something rarer.
Sitting in the heart of the Amazon, I suddenly felt wonderfully small. Not in a diminishing way, but reminded how vast the universe really is. Surrounded by five million acres of living, breathing intelligence, I could feel the weight of time pressing in – the kind that measures itself in eons, not years. The forest didn’t care about my story of who I think I am, what I’ve built, or what I’ve accomplished. It simply existed as it always had: vast, ancient, and completely unbothered.
There’s a moment that keeps replaying in my mind.
We were out on the river in a narrow canoe. The air was thick, like breathing through velvet. The trees towered overhead, ancient and unmoved.
Suddenly, the motor cut.
Silence.
Not the quiet of noise-canceling headphones.
The kind that’s alive with the symphony of nature.
The kind of silence that has been listening longer than you’ve been alive.
We drifted for what felt like a blissful eternity. No words. No movement. Just presence.
And in that moment, something inside me stirred. Not in a dramatic “my whole life changed” kind of way.
More like a soft reminder from the soul:
“You are not the center. You are part of something beautiful and wild and eternal.”
And it was in that space that David Whyte’s words dropped into my awareness:
We love the movement in a seeming stillness,
the breath in the body of the loved one sleeping,
the highest leaves in the silent wood,
a great migration in the sky above:
the waters of the earth, the blood in the body,
the first, soft, stir in the silence beneath a strident
voice, the internal hands of our mind,
always looking for touch, thoughts seeking other
thoughts, seeking other minds, the great arrival
of form through all our hidden themes.
Whyte wrote this piece, A Seeming Stillness, in a tiny café in Granada, Spain – a place he once called his “personal cathedral of silence.” It’s the kind of spot that doesn’t advertise itself. The kind of place that finds you.
He would sit there for hours, letting the energy of the Alhambra hum in the background while he listened – not just to the world around him but to the voice inside that only gets loud in stillness.
The kind of knowing that only wakes up when you step out of the algorithm and into the unknown.
I’ve noticed a pattern with a lot of us high performers.
When we finally give ourselves permission to slow down, we expect the calm to deliver answers.
And sometimes it does.
But other times, like this one, it simply allows us to remember.
The Amazon didn’t give me clarity.
It gave me context.
It reminded me that reality is vast. That my mind isn’t the source of wisdom. The deepest truths usually show up when you stop trying to find them.
It’s ironic – we spend so much time trying to control our environment.
But the most powerful environments are the ones that undo us. They peel back the layers we didn’t know we were wearing. They show us that our “edge” is usually just a suggestion.
Coming home from Peru, I didn’t feel enlightened.
I felt reverent.
The way you feel after a funeral where something true was said.
Or watching a sunrise that reflects off the red rocks in that particular kind of way.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll keep saying it:
True wealth is multidimensional.
It can only be experienced in the present moment.
Letting yourself touch the edges of what it means to be human.
Sometimes, that means spreadsheets and team meetings. Sometimes it means tuning in to the daily rhythms of routine.
And sometimes it means letting an ancient river carry you until you remember:
You were never meant to outrun life.
You were meant to experience it.
I don’t know what your version of the Amazon is.
Maybe it’s a mountain. A stretch of coastline. A local trail. A two-day silent retreat.
Maybe it’s as simple as a long walk without a podcast.
But whatever it is—
Go there.
Let yourself be held by something older, something deeper.
Let it remind you that being fully alive doesn’t always come from understanding.
Often, it comes from awe.
To feeling wonderfully small,
mb
