Digital Detox: isolating yourself to look for others among the hills of Umbria

I booked impulse, driven by an undefined desire to reduce the sound of my head to zero. Four days without mobile phone, without connection, In a hotel that looks like a monastery, set in the Umbrian hillsto find peace, or at least this is the declared motivation. In fact, in these places you go there because you have finally found The courage to go deep into yourself And you know that it is so frightening that absurdly it is better to do it far from everything, with a handful of strangers for witnesses.

I arrived atERMITO HOTELin Parrano, province of Terni, with a small luggage of comfortable clothes, shoes to walk, no make up, and many many books because my terror is and will always be boredom. I had to park the panda for hire a few kilometers away, the road is imperviable without the appropriate means. A man on sixty with a contagious smile, a veiled Umbrian accent gave me a passage: he deals with the vegetable garden of the hemite and maintenance. It lives not far away, every day runs 20 minutes of holes, dust and stones to get to the ruin that Marcello Murzillifounder and former owner of the El Charro fashion brand, has transformed into a “contemporary monastery“, So he defines him himself.

Marco Ravasini

Entering Ethemiito means crossing a corridor that separates you from the world physically and metaphorically and metaphoricallyit is in stone, vaulted, dark, long and narrow, illuminated by candles, in the air they resonate Gregorian songs in stereophony that will accompany a large part of the stay. The impact is suggestive, but also a little intimacy. On the other side of the corridor, the journey begins, even if you don’t go anywhere for the days to come.

Marcello Murzilli It is at the reception, shows sixty years but I will discover that he has spent 75, wears a wide pole, a little unguarded, raw linen trousers, sandals, stares at me, even before saying goodbye asks me what’s wrong . I answer him embarrassed “still nothing”, dribbling what at the beginning of the adventure seemed to me a rude attempt of intrusion, but that after four days I would have read differently.

I learn the rules of the withdrawal in a few minutes: Wake up at dawn, meditation, yoga, community breakfast, walk in the woods with optional immersion in the natural pools of cold water, community lunch, time in solitude, new yoga, dinner in silence in the monastic refectory, herbal tea and conversations in front of the bonfire , bed. You eat vegetarian.

Marcello accompanies me in my “cellness”, this is the name of the residence of a few square meters with a be wrought iron French bed stuck in a niche, a linen curtain that reveals another tiny niche where to store clothes, a desk of Stone under the small window overlooking the green as far as loss, a very small stone sink, another linen curtain that hides the bathroom with shower and toilet. Essential, minimalist. Above the bed there is a wooden panel with the history of San Benedetto, each cellness has its own saint. The father of Ora et labora touched me. I smile because my psychologist always says that I have to stop working and enjoy life more. Precisely.

The stone desk in the cellness

The stone desk in the cellness

It is during the first dinner in silence that I meet my retirement companions. We are 7 people. For an hour I can look at them eating, but it is forbidden to interact. We are sitting on stone benches along the walls of the refectory, all facing the center of the room. We are in the dim, illuminated by the lights of the candles on the tables. In the background the sacred songs in Latin echo in loop. There are those who look around in an evident embarrassment, those who play with the napkacular door to avoid the looks, those who close the eyes by leaning at the back in an attempt to meditate. Then the food comes. There are those who sniff him and hang him slowly as if he chewed for the first time. During Dinner in silence I saw people who know each other, melt in the cries to Dirotto, or enter a catatonic state, fixing a point in the void. I simply observed how the naturalists of documentaries do with wildlife.

The refectory
The refectory

Evening I begin to socialize with the others around the bonfireunder an incredibly bright starry sky and with a cup of terracotta in hand with an artisan herbal tea made of apples and spices.

Luca arrives from Naples, he is 35, he continues the family pasta factory, He came to the Eastito with Francesco, his childhood friend who now lives in Turin and works in a public body, even if his dream remains to be an actor. Paolo, 28 years old, He started from Milan where he works as a Chinesiologist, he has a super athletic physique; there is then Alberto who needed to detach after months of the election campaign in Brussels, works for a political group at the European Parliament; Then there were the guests who did not participate in the retreat, some of their habitués of the EastitoI met a Dutch entrepreneur who returned for the twelfth time (yes, twelfth), a Roman company manager who takes a few days every summer to retire here, then Vanessabout forty -year -old who came to us for the first time because he fired after 13 years in the marketing office of a well -known fashion house and is now looking for herself, to understand what to do with his life, finally there is Ornellapharmaceutical entrepreneur who has chosen to spend all the summer holidays, ten days, at Ethemito.

Three hours of yoga a day to reconnect the body and mind

Three hours of yoga a day to reconnect the body and mind

With everyone I talked for a long time in the moments when it was granted, To understand what had pushed them to look for a hermitage without any connection with the world and what they hoped to take home From the days spent like this, in contemplation of nature, reading or walking. It may seem obvious, the simplest answer is precisely the desire for silence, to make space, to return to essentiality. And at the beginning that silence on me had the effect of a violent wave, Of those who invest you by surprise while you are slowly entering the sea to get used to the water temperature. I ended up on the ground and the wave has overwhelmed me, I also drank.

I dealt with boredom, I had to look my inability to be without stimuli in the face, To rest my brain without leaning it on any activity, no distraction, no object of research, study, leisure. And in that forced emptiness everything emerged. And the most unexpected thing is that while you are there that you can rely on you also reel and you find yourself without even knowing how to trust with the perfect strangers who for a series of coincidences found themselves looking for loneliness with you in a remote corner of world. This is the paradox of the modern hermitage: you go to look for silence and solitude, but Perhaps – or at least it was like that for me -, go to look for those authentic and deep relationships that in a hyper -connected company they paradoxically became rare goods.

Digital Detox isolating themselves to look for others among the hills of Umbria
Digital Detox

All the people I met at Ethemito told me that the greatest value of this experience is given by human relationships that are formed in a short timesometimes a few hours. The same level of sharing with everyone is not reached, the group dynamics each time are different, but in some way everyone finds their soul a little bit. Without devices that steal the attention, we return to look at others carefully. Note an expression of sadness, a sigh, a silent tear, an mentioned smile. Listen to any conversation with dedication, reflect on the words said, but above all on those not pronounced. Observe the wandering of the mind, understand where it often supports itself, too, insistently. Give voice to doubts, anxieties, expectations.

Who make us a handful of young thirties hidden inside a her of stone in the woods? They are looking for what they cannot find elsewhere, in everyday life, seek someone who raises their eyes from the smartphone and who see them really.

Source: Vanity Fair

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