when a car smashed into him from behind at seventy miles an hour, and then sped off. Miraculously, he wasn’t killed, although he had to be cut out of his demolished car. Glenn sustained very serious injuries—his back was broken in two places, and he fractured his ankle. For almost a month, he was unable to move. Slowly, with rest and rehabilitation, his body began to heal, although it would never be completely normal again.
The first time I saw Glenn after his accident, he could barely walk, stand or even sit, and he was in horrible pain. I recalled so many other conversations in which we’d talked about his life, his desire to make a drastic change, and the lack of clarity he felt about what to do. Now the decision had been made for him. Glenn’s doctors told him what he already realized—he could never work in emergency medicine again, due to its intense physical demands. His career as he had known it was over. “I did say I wanted some time off to re-create my life,” he joked. But beneath the humor, we all knew the truth. Glenn had been hit by a dramatic wake-up call. In the span of a few seconds his entire life had changed, unexpectedly, radically and irrevocably.
A year and a half has passed since Glenn’s accident. During that time, he’s been writing a book, developing holistic health and integrative care models that can be used by hospitals and physicians, and producing a series of CD’s that offer relaxation and meditation techniques for waking and sleeping set to his beautiful playing of the Native American flute. I just saw Glenn a few nights ago, and he proudly handed me his first CD. I’ve never seen him look happier.
There are many ways to look at Glenn’s story. Some might say that the accident was just that—an accident—and that it was purely coincidental that Glenn had been contemplating leaving emergency medicine. A more psychospiritual view would argue that perhaps if Glenn had taken the initiative to make the changes he wanted to, he wouldn’t have been “forced” to change by the universe. Another theory would explain that this was just the way Glenn’s life was meant to unfold, and that he was already feeling the change coming but wasn’t sure what it was going to be. I’ve often teased Glenn that he was hit by his destiny, and he agrees.
What is most important is not that the accident happened, but what he has done with it since it happened: Glenn is using his wake-up call to renew and re-create himself in every sense of the word. He has discovered the gift hidden within the crisis and is enthusiastically and gratefully unwrapping it. The healer is healing himself.
Waking Up from the Inside
That’s the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they’ve been all along. —Madeleine L’Engle
It is nighttime. You are fast asleep in your bed. Your everyday reality still exists around you. The wind blows the branches of the trees so that they rustle outside your window. The cat makes her way from the living room to the kitchen for a 2:00 A.M. snack. The clock on the wall in your den ticks as it keeps track of the hours that pass. But you are completely unaware that any of this is going on. You are in another world, dreaming of other realities. You are riding a horse in a beautiful meadow, or looking for something you can’t remember on a familiar street, or having a delightful conversation with someone you love, or running from something frightening that is chasing you, or visiting a relative who died many years ago.
Suddenly, from far away in your waking world, you hear a loud ringing sound. It is your alarm clock. You’d set it, as always, to get you up in time for work. Instantly, your consciousness is whisked from wherever you were, and you become aware that you are lying in your bed. It is the morning of a new day. You stretch, yawn and open your eyes. You are back in this reality once more.
Sometimes our wake-up calls are not much different from the experience of being woken from a dream by our own alarm. In these instances, it is not something or someone outside of ourselves that is responsible for the radical shift in our awareness, but rather something that wakes us up from the inside out.
Some wake-up calls are not initiated from something outside of ourselves, but from within. It is as if a timer has been set to go off inside you at a certain moment, and suddenly, without any warning, it does, waking you into realizations that will be radical, disruptive and life-changing.
Why does that inner timer suddenly go off? Because it is time—some process has completed itself, and you are ready. Ready for what? That’s the thing you find out once you wake up.
Four years ago, I moved to Santa Barbara, California, from Los Angeles where I’d lived for more than twenty-five years. A move like this was a big deal and a major turning point for me—I was leaving behind the place where I’d spent most of my adult life, the location of my business, all of my familiar references and connections. “How did you come to this decision?” people would ask me, assuming I’d been pondering it for some time. The truth was that I hadn’t—at least consciously. I had always loved visiting Santa Barbara, but never could imagine leaving Los Angeles after so many years of living there. As far as I was concerned, I was in L.A. to stay.
Then one day, in one moment, everything changed. My partner was visiting me from the East Coast, and we decided to go to Santa Barbara for my birthday. I hadn’t been there for many years, and since he’d lived in Santa Barbara when he went to graduate school, I asked him to give me a complete tour. It was a spectacular California spring day, and the air was fragrant with jasmine blossoms. He drove me through the lush tree-lined streets, up into the hills, past eucalyptus groves, and finally to a beautiful beach where the ocean met the mountains in a picturesque cove. We got out of the car and walked over to the sand to take in the view.
I remember standing there bathed in sunlight, breathing in the exotic blend of sea, wind and mountain grasses, watching people having lunch at beachside tables. I was utterly intoxicated by it all. Then, as if on cue, I spotted a school of dolphins leaping in midair as they frolicked in the ocean, their silver bodies gleaming against the turquoise sky. Suddenly I felt something inside of me shift, and without even thinking about it, I turned to my sweetheart and said, “I’m moving to Santa Barbara.”
“When did you decide that?” he asked.
“Just now,” I replied, utterly surprised at my own answer. And it was the truth. I hadn’t been planning on moving. I hadn’t thought about the consequences it would have on my business. I didn’t have a place to live. I didn’t even know anyone here. But in that moment on the beach, I had somehow suddenly woken up and found myself at a crossroads that I hadn’t even been aware was approaching.
The truth about internal wake-up calls that seem to happen suddenly is that there’s actually nothing sudden about them at all. Looking back now, I can see that I had indeed been in a transition building up to my decision to leave Los Angeles—I just wasn’t consciously aware of it. For years I’d spent more and more time at home, with less interest in venturing out into the busy, bustling energy of the city, energy I used to love, but that I now found tiring. Very few of my close friends lived in the Los Angeles area anymore. The focus of my work had shifted so that I didn’t need to be there on a daily basis as I once had. Every chance I got, I found myself escaping to more serene environments out of town. The fact was that I was unhappy in L.A.—I just hadn’t wanted to face it.
In that moment standing on the beach in Santa Barbara, I woke up to the truth about what I needed to do. Maybe the alarm clock just happened to go off during my birthday trip. Maybe it had already been ringing, but I’d been too preoccupied or too resistant to hear it until I actually got some distance from my familiar world in Los Angeles. Or maybe something about that beautiful day triggered an awareness inside me suddenly to turn on like a bright light. Whatever it was, one thing was clear: I had woken up into a truth from which I could not retreat.
As we will see in the chapters that follow, all wake-up calls demand that we stretch ourselves beyond what has been comfortable and relinquish what has been safe and familiar for the promise of growth, deeper wisdom and fulfillment that may remain untasted for a while. My description of that moment on the beach may sound inspiring, almost romantic, but let me assure you that the impact this wake-up call had on