By Ella
Dancing in the pouring rain with people I’d met a week ago. Rolling in the dirt to classical music at 9am. Watching shooting stars from a wooden bridge in sleeping bags. Having a spontaneous snowball fight. Swimming in the ocean under a full moon. Sitting alone in one spot in the woods for six hours. Taking a boat to an uninhabited island and wandering off alone. Climbing a tree. Warming up in a tiny wooden sauna then running into a freezing pond. Interviewing a retired congresswoman while peeling garlic in her barn. Cooking our favorite family recipes for each other and eating together at one long communal table. Discussing the meaning of life on walks through the woods. Befriending an old man who made paper by hand, and then inviting him to dinner. Meditating for an hour straight. Learning the life stories of local artists and snapping along to musical performances. Making art with absolutely no purpose or goal. Foraging for mushrooms and making ice cream with wintergreen leaves. Camping together in Acadia. Learning to dig for clams and balance on an oyster cage. Digging up sweet potatoes at a local farm. Sitting in a circle during class, talking about our hearts’ deepest desires.
This was Seguinland. I began my gap year here—ten weeks on the coast of Georgetown, Maine, at the Seguinland Institute’s Good Life Gap Semester. Twenty strangers moved into cabins along the marsh and, for one semester, built a life together. We took three consecutive classes—philosophy, creative writing, and art—in a treehouse classroom immersed in the natural beauty of Maine. We practiced mindfulness and yoga, ate dinner together every night, and filled the spaces in between with field trips, excursions, and conversations of all kinds. Underlying all of this was one central question: What is a good life?
A year before Seguinland, my life looked very different. I was very sick with Long COVID, and “a good life” felt like something out of reach. My days were filled with headaches, dizziness, exhaustion, chronic pain, medications, and a never-ending sense of stress and anxiety. But at Seguinland, for the first time in a long time, I was truly happy.
At the end of our philosophy course, each of us wrote a manifesto on what we believed, in that moment, constituted a good life. Here is some of what I wrote:
Treat life as one big adventure. Be wild and free. Eat pine needles and wintergreen. Look for mushrooms and mycelium. Feel the moss under your feet. Remove any barrier between you and the natural world—socks and phones included. Learn the names of the plants around you. Remember that with each step you take, you’re not only touching the ground—the ground is touching you, too. Once a month, be in solitude in nature: just you, a journal, a snack, and nothing more.
Get lost—both within yourself and within the world. Don’t regret your past actions or detours. True wisdom comes from experience and often from the unplanned twists in life. Don’t resist the unknown; rather, embrace the discomfort of it. Always ask questions, even—especially—the ones without answers.
Find awe. Be a bower bird; let the beauty of this world catch and entangle you. Gratitude is presence. And presence requires slowing down—time is not our enemy.
Laugh at yourself. Life is only as serious as you make it. Jump in the cold water, get stuck in a tree, play capture the flag, and howl at the moon. Find friends who unlock your inner child and your innermost self. Make time for friendship. Compliment the barista, give your neighbors a baked good, help strangers whenever you can, and expect nothing in return other than the feeling of community forged from their “you’re welcome” (into my life).
Be compassionate toward yourself. Meditate most mornings. Journal each night. Hug yourself. We are—and always will be—stuck with ourselves, so become your own built-in best friend and stop fearing silence. Love yourself. You deserve it.
To be honest, back home in New York City, it is much harder to follow the advice of my manifesto. The world outside Seguinland is louder, faster, and full of responsibilities, and it is easy to get pulled back into the feeling that I should always be productive, and always be doing more. But I did bring parts of it back with me—small habits, ways of paying attention, reminders of how I want to live—and, more importantly, the sense that a good life is possible.
Before Seguinland, I always had some kind of input running in the background—a podcast, an audiobook, a sitcom playing while I brushed my teeth, walked somewhere, or even fell asleep. Silence felt uncomfortable, like wasted time, and my own thoughts felt too overwhelming. Seguinland gave me the ability to truly be present.
I arrived in Maine thinking I was going to find myself. I left understanding that was never really the point. The point was to pay attention—to the moss under your feet, to the stars above your head, to the person across the dinner table, to the thought you keep pushing away.
So that’s what I’ll leave you with: an invitation to slow down a little. Maybe write a loved one a card today—not a text, but an intentional handwritten note. Start a conversation with a neighbor. Sit in silence for five minutes. And maybe spend some time thinking about what would belong in your own good life manifesto.
Perhaps the main goal of life is simply living. Be wild and free.
