You may have seen my social media post on Christmas Day, when I stood on a cold English beach watching waves.
I wrote about finding the still point - that pause between surges where renewal lives.
But something else struck me that has been circling my mind since. The waves never tried to stay at the crest. And this reminded me about Alan Watts.
How I first found Alan Watts’ Work
I discovered the philosopher Alan Watts in the depths of burnout.
After almost twenty years as an NHS GP, I was utterly depleted. A friend living abroad suggested I listen to a talk of his called "Life is a Dance."
I was sceptical. In my work, I see how differently psychoeducation lands for different people - a book or podcast that transforms one person leaves another cold. I'd experienced this myself. Not every recommendation finds you at the right moment.
But I had nothing to lose, so I put it on while walking my dogs.
Something in that talk broke me open.
Watts said we make a fundamental error. We treat life like travel - always trying to get somewhere. The next milestone. The next achievement. The destination that will finally mean we've arrived.
But life, he said, is actually like music. Like dance.
"We think of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end... But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played." - Alan Watts, "Life is a Dance" (from the lecture series "Out of Your Mind")
He pointed out that “If the purpose of music were to reach the end, the best conductors would be those who played fastest. Composers would only write finales. We'd go to concerts just to hear one crashing chord - because that's the end.”
But that's absurd. The point of music is the playing. The point of dancing is the dance.
I stood on that muddy path, in tears, dogs circling my ankles, and realised I had spent all this time racing to the end of the song. Always focused on the next patient, the next shift, the next thing that needed doing, constantly reminding myself about the concept of deferred gratification. I was at risk of missing the music entirely.
The crest and the trough
Since then, I've returned to Watts again and again. And this week, watching those winter waves, another piece of his thinking surfaced.
He talked about how life moves in waves - crests and troughs, peaks and valleys - and how our suffering often comes from forgetting this.
"We see the trough go down, down, down and think it keeps going forever - that it will never rise back up again into a crest. We forget that trough implies crest, and crest implies trough." - Alan Watts, Out of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game of Hide and Seek
You cannot have one without the other. Nobody ever saw a wave that was all peak.
"The crest and the trough of a wave are inseparable. Nobody ever saw crests without troughs or troughs without crests. Just as you do not encounter in life people with fronts but no backs." - Alan Watts, Out of Your Mind
And yet we exhaust ourselves trying to stay at the crest. Always productive. Always okay. Always rising.
We treat the trough as failure - something to push through, medicate away, or hide from others.
But the wave doesn't work that way. It can't.
What burnout actually is
When I burned out, I thought I was broken. That I'd failed to keep up. That everyone else was managing the crest and I alone had fallen into the trough.
What I couldn't see then is that burnout is often what happens when we refuse the trough.
When we try to be all crest. All output. All rise.
When we race through the music trying to reach the end, instead of dancing while it plays.
The wave can't sustain that. Neither can we.
The wisdom in the trough
Watts said something else that changed how I think about difficult seasons:
"The slower the wave goes, the more difficult it is to see that the crest and trough are inseparable." - Alan Watts, Out of Your Mind
A single breath - in, out - moves so quickly we don't fight it. But the longer rhythms of life? The months of struggle. The years of rebuilding. Those feel like they'll never end.
In the trough, we forget the crest is coming. We forget we've been here before and risen. We forget that this low point is creating the conditions for the next rise.
The trough isn't punishment. It's part of the rhythm. Part of the music.
What the waves taught me
Standing on the beach this Christmas, watching wave after wave, I noticed something.
The trough is where the wave gathers itself.
It's not empty. It's not failure. It's the in-breath before the next surge. The gathering of energy. The necessary rest that makes the crest possible.
Without the trough, there is no wave at all. Just a flat line.
And a flat line, as any doctor knows, isn't life.
Learning to dance
Recovery from burnout, for me, wasn't about finding a way to stay at the crest. It was about learning to trust the rhythm.
To stop racing towards some imaginary destination or self-inflicted deadline and start noticing the music that was already playing.
To let the trough be the trough - not fighting it, not rushing it - knowing that it's part of the dance.
I'm not saying I've mastered this. Sometimes I still catch myself sprinting towards the finale, forgetting to enjoy the song.
But I return to Watts (and it’s not just his words, there is something very calming about his voice). I return to the waves. And I remember:
The point of the music is the playing.
The point of the dance is the dancing.
And the trough implies the crest.
For anyone in the trough right now
If you're reading this in a low season - depleted, struggling, wondering when it will lift - I want you to know:
You are not stuck. You are gathering.
The crest is already implicit in where you are, even if you can't see it yet.
And if you've been racing through life trying to reach some destination that keeps moving further away, maybe this is your invitation to stop. To notice the music. To let yourself dance, imperfectly, right where you are.
That's not giving up. That's finally joining in.
Sources:
* Alan Watts, "Life is a Dance" (lecture, from the
Out of Your Mind
series)
* Alan Watts,
Out of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game of Hide and Seek
(Sounds True, 2017)
If this resonated, I'd love for you to share it with someone who might need it.
If you're struggling and would like support, I offer therapy for burnout, anxiety, and life transitions from my practice in Surrey and online. Book a free 15-minute call.