No one is coming to save you

A few months back, I went — for the first time — for an isolation tank session.

(In case you don’t know what that is, you basically float naked in saline water inside a blacked out chamber. And then you float like that, devoid of much of sensory input, for an hour).

As you can expect, a million things went through my mind, especially at the beginning.

But then, and this is similar to my experience of meditation, after a while, my mind quietened.

Thoughts came and went, but I had a greater awareness of them, more time to watch them as they chartered their path across my brain.

Then, as if out of nowhere, a thought popped into my head with a forcefulness that I still remember it now, a few months later.

“No one is coming to save you.”

That was the thought, nothing more, nothing less.

It’s hard to convey in words the impact that thought had on me. It was like a cold slap in the face.

It was a complete, embodied, realization.

No one’s coming to save me. Fuck.

Not only did I understand the meaning of this insight, which, let’s be honest, isn’t exactly ground-breaking; I felt it deeply, as if it had permeated every part of my being.

What’s interesting is that that thought came from within me.

I must have been holding onto it deep in my subconscious and the experience of the float tank had allowed the layers above it to be peeled back.

“No one is coming to save you.”

It sounds ominous, but I actually didn’t take it that way.

Because, behind the bleak truth of the statement, stood the utter acceptance of my responsibility.

I’m utterly responsible for my decisions, for my actions — for my life!

And that felt so freeing.

If no one is coming to save me, it means it’s on me to seek to live the life I want for myself. I’m that person knocking on my door.

It’s on me to take care of myself, my health and my relationships.

And no one else.

Till next time,

Ben

ps. If this resonated with you, do let me know. What kind of epiphany have you had lately?