Mexico (a.k.a. so what do i really need?)

At 5 a.m. the sun is spreading gold through the air like margerine.

Something stirs Emiliano and I in our tent. Perhaps it's sound of pelicans, or just a call to beauty. I unzip our door, and move my feet out onto the sand. Through half-open eyes i see the blue water lapping the shore, hear its liquid melody, and feel my way out across the pacific ocean. Emiliano stretches out behind me, he purs. I lean back to feel the warmth of his skin.

view from the tent

We are sharing this rough perfection with Daniel and Santin, whose empty tent sits a couple hammocks away. They haven't spent a night in it yet. Daniel's sandy head protrudes from his blue sleeping bag on the beach. I wiggle out of my tent and walk over, squatting silently by his side. We watch the colors of sunrise.

daniel's bed

Santin has risen from his hammock, and sleepily walks over with his camera. Every day he tries to catch the pelicans surfing the waves. They catch the crest just before it rises, then glide precisely along its edge, rising and sinking with the wave, before arching their wings and taking off right as the wave breaks. A few minutes later I feel a light touch. Emiliano is up too, to worship the dawn.

Santin

In silence, the four of us gather. In whispers, we hint at our dreams, the only the things that have passed since we last gathered to share the dusk and the rising moon. Last night there was talk and laughter. Now, we are more still. We will return to our beds soon. But first, we will just breathe a while.

We are on Playa Paraiso, Mexico. The season is so low, we are the only people on this sandbank besides the locals. Nevertheless, the weather is perfect. In the shade of palms, we pass our days. Daniel carves pieces of wood he finds along the beach into gifts for the locals. Emiliano leads yoga in the mornings, and reconnects with his local friends; it is he who has brought us here. I also do what i do best: talk, and listen. Santin is much the same.

Daniel carving a chair

Santin has flown from Brazil to see Daniel. We have never met before, so we share our stories. Daniel, a roaming Argentian, I know from Toronto, but haven't him seen in five years, and before that another five. I came to know Emiliano, our Mexican ambassador, through letters over the past two months. We met in heart before we ever heard a voice.

We've all come together here in leap of faith, a YES to life. Each for our own reasons, and each because we believe in the healing powers of friendship.

We have little, and we want nothing more. We eat what the makeshift kitchen has found in the market, we sleep in the sand, we shower in cold water, we pull water from the well to flush the toilet. We're bitten by fleas from the local dogs. We share music from our ipods played on battery speakers. There is no electricity anywhere.

I feel happy and calm all day. We are all unwinding from the unresolved questions of our lives. We are all experiencing life without the expectations of others. For five days, we live in this way.

And as we drive back to Mexico city, carrying with us still the spirit of our utopia, i feel myself pregnant again with a sincere question:

What else do you really need?

This question is like a season for me; it comes around.

It was born first in a monastery in Nepal, where i found a never-before-felt peace in not wanting anything at all. It was soon reborn on an island in Thailand, where living in indulgent simplicity unlocked the beauty in people; and if not the beauty, the truth.

Again, i felt with total clarity, that there was no reason to live differently than this.

Now I am in living for a while in the colorful poverty of Havana, remembering Mexico, and thinking about the life I'm about to build in Melbourne; the life it will give me, and the life i will give away in order to live in it.

In the west, my needs will suddenly be many, and those needs will beget yet others.

And when my mind explores this question, i get this familiar haunting feeling, this haunting sensation... this sense of a deep loss, of a turning away from a life that's truly according my own heart.

In Mexico, i felt like there was nothing else i really needed. In Thailand, i felt the same.

In Melbourne, i feel like there are constantly things i need, and to have them, i have to give over large pieces of whatever time i have left; and with that time, do things that do not bring me joy.

Does that really make sense?

And then there is love. There is always the problem of love. Where will i find someone else who is living this double life? There aren't that many. Most people tend to choose, and later don't like to be reminded.

If i think of those I have felt love for over the past years, all of them have chosen the purer path, the path of a simpler life. It's not easy, they struggle; they have to make unconventional things work in a conventional world. But perhaps it is better for them than for me. I have to make my unconventional spirit fit into a conventional space. And i have to wonder what other life i could be living.

I cannot take a man like that with me into my western lair, however comfortable it is. I cannot ask him to give up his hard-won truth, so he can share my conflicted but comfortable hypocricy.

What is wrong with living a simple but beautiful life, not needing much, just sharing your days with those around you, and nature? Contributing to your community, doing good. Is there really something wrong with that?

In Mexico, Emiliano brought us to meet a man he knows, who lives under the open sky. We spent an evening with him. Let's call him Shilo. No one could tell me how long he's been living like that, or what happened to his legs, or eye. He moves around mainly on his arms, smiling widely, organizing cushions and mosquito nets for everyone.

Around us, people briefly hammer wooden pillars into the sand. Over that, goes a tarp. And there, he lives. With his drum, with his books, with the elements, with himself.

Despite his hardship, he seems at peace with his choices. Many would say he was happy, but i won't make that assumption. How could i possibly know; and what does that mean anyway?

What struck me about Shilo isn't what he projected, because we all do that, but simply that he is living the life he himself has chosen.

The morning of that golden sunrise, when i unzipped my tent, I knew I had chosen the life I was living. My joys, I recognize as my own. What I lack, is entirely my story as well.

That morning, I felt everything i really needed to be at peace was right there, already in place.

And it is only a testament to how free i'm really not, that after i return to western reality on Feb 1, it may be a long time until like i feel like that again.

Many moments over the past years have awoken in me a call for an authentic existence, away from social expectations, closer to nature, true to my own spirit.

I do not want Shilo's life. That's not what I am saying. I do not want anyone else's life.

I just really want the courage to live my own.