107
The place we end up going on vacation is a tiny island called Gili Meno, located off the
coast of Lombok, which is the next stop east of Bali in the great, sprawling Indonesian ar-
chipelago. I’d been to Gili Meno before, and I wanted to show it to Felipe, who had never
been there.
The island of Gili Meno is one of the most important places in the world to me. I came
here by myself two years ago when I was in Bali for the first time. I was on that magazine as-
signment, writing about Yoga vacations, and I’d just finished two weeks of mightily restorative
Yoga classes. But I had decided to extend my stay in Indonesia after the assignment was up,
since I was already all the way over here in Asia. What I wanted to do, actually, was to find
someplace very remote and give myself a ten-day retreat of absolute solitude and absolute si-
lence.
When I look back at the four years that elapsed between my marriage starting to fall apart
and the day I was finally divorced and free, I see a detailed chronicle of total pain. And the
moment when I came to this tiny island all by myself was the very worst of that entire dark
journey. The bottom of the pain and the middle of it. My unhappy mind was a battlefield of
conflicted demons. As I made my decision to spend ten days alone and in silence in the
middle of exactly nowhere, I told all my warring and confused parts the same thing: “We’re all
here together now, guys, all alone. And we’re going to have to work out some kind of deal for
how to get along, or else everybody is going to die together, sooner or later.”
Which may sound firm and confident, but I must admit this, as well—that sailing over to
that quiet island all alone, I was never more terrified in my life. I hadn’t even brought any
books to read, nothing to distract me. Just me and my mind, about to face each other on an
empty field. I remember that my legs were visibly shaking with fear. Then I quoted to myself
one of my favorite lines ever from my Guru: “Fear—who cares?” and I disembarked alone.
I rented myself a little cabin on the beach for a few dollars a day and I shut my mouth and
vowed not to open it again until something inside me had changed. Gili Meno Island was my
ultimate truth and reconciliation hearing. I had chosen the right place to do this—that much
was clear. The island itself is tiny, pristine, sandy, blue water, palm trees. It’s a perfect circle