Just found out that Mexico City is 2.2km above sea level while Baguio City is only 1.5km! So that is why it is so cold right now and possibly why my AirBnB host has no airconditioner or even an electric fan in the house.
It is 3:14 AM on a Wednesday morning in cool Mexico City (14C today). I have been awake for the last hour trying to shake off the jet lag from 4 different planes over the last 30 hours.
This is my 2nd time in Mexico but if feels like the first because the first one was in Year 2000 for my 2 week training with CEMEX Center for Technology of Cement and Concrete in Monterrey. How time flies!
This SECOND trip has opened up a space for me to observe how life occurs to me.
With just a large suitcase and handcarry luggage with me, I was able to go on quickly from plane to airport to where I choose to go. I cherish the freedom this rare feeling of moving light, with no attachments to perceived requirements and have tos. Perhaps this is what I also love about running- you cannot carry much and as a result, you have much more, you can be more.
With much more limited choices on what to do as compared to Manila, I actually have more.
During the frequent airport transfers and long lines during this particular journey to Mexico, it struck me why travelling to another place, especially to a different country, is a choice that transcends generations. Travelling is a want, not a need, for millennials, Gen Ys and even for the old guards like me.
I now believe that travelling creates such a different physical context that is unfamiliar, new, uncertain than when we are at home. As such, each first encounter with a person, restaurant, a way of doing things is both stressful and invigorating. Its like a first date, where the awkwardness and clumsnines is what makes all of it memorable and if you are lucky, transformative.
For me, the greater realization is that while travel to a foreign country is indeed an option for everyone, it is not an activity we can always do. What is available to each of us, everyday, in every way is to shift our context, how life occurs to us, so that each encounter with your wife, your children, your students, your clients is respected and enjoyed as if it were the first time. (READ as: put your cellphones and gadgets away and be with them 100%) While it may be true that it is not really the FIRST time in the philosophical sense, the way it occurs to us creates infinite possibilities. I create the possibilities for the life I want for today.
I have goosebumps and a unique joy as I write this because now I cant wait for the first encounters of the transformative kind that will occur for me today.
So travelling to new, uncertain places is no longer wanderlust. Staying at home and with the familiar and certain is no longer wonder-lost. I choose to shift my context and my world to wonder + curiosity + possibility and LIFE regained.
#Wanderlust #WonderLost #WonderRegained #InfinitePossibilitiesEveryDay #Transformation
Hey! I am meeting my fellow coaches tomorrow in Mexico. #Grateful #Excited
More info here… https://slsretreat.com/
Check out my previous wanderings about it…