Though I have, of course, enjoyed all manner of breaks and vacations throughout my academic career, for I have felt for the first time these past two days that I really needed a vacation. Not from school or work or anything, but from the ridiculous life of someone from the North.
Yes, I'm still in the North. I'm technically more north than I normally am: Nayarit is way above Veracruz. But here in the small, touristy town of Sayulita, I have found a sanctuary. In the brief blink of time for which I've been here, I have seen the meaning of peace redefined to be, most simply put, this. I have ditched all thoughts of grad school, of high-yield investment, or even of community organizing because what I really want to do is live in a tent and work in a used book store and spend every day throwing a Frisbee on the beach.
Perhaps too many people are trying to change the world and too few trying to change ourselves. I think a lot of people, including me, are records that have spun off center and now cannot make anything remotely resembling music. We are obsessed with our environments, our plans, our studies, but not with our inner selves that beg the exploration we have been denying.
The people here are amazing. I met an arguably crazy friend of Nick's who sells goods on the street and seems to converse in a reality I have not yet discovered. One half of his face is decorated by tribal tattoos that are both beautiful and intriguing, yet I know that, if I wanted to, I could never do such a thing to my own face because of my sickening connection with the White, business-oriented world of the North. Concerns about how my choices today will affect my future lower my quality of life.
The conversations with Nick and with others here and my perusing of the Self Help section of this small bookstore have led me to the realization that I am a truly unhappy person. I have fallen into the trap of the college student, obsessed with my plans, my future, my degree, my earnings potential, my résumé. My life is a vortex of stress, that malicious presence that looms over North America, twisting us into unhappy and unsatisfying patterns of life while leading us to believe that we are better off the primitives who sing and dance around the fire.
In a few short days, all of this will be over. I will continue my break but end my vacation as I go to Cuernavaca, back to Xalapa, and then to Chiapas. But I cannot help but believe that I have been irrevocably changed by this place. The spiritual people here say that Sayulita is a center of power, and it is obvious that they are right.
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