While we all were trying to survive this hard-to-believe -50 C experience, my heart was still warmed up by memories from the beginning of 2024.
This new year started in a different and actually new fashion.
My hubby and I, along with our friends, packed up a few necessities and headed to the Pacific Ocean coast of Mexico in the last days of 2023.
It's been five years since I was south. I've never been south for the new year. Besides, I've never really been down south backpacking in my adulthood. When travelling with my parents or friends earlier in life, we mainly rented places and explored the world around us. But with my husband, we only went to Caribbean resorts – the warm little islands where tourists are surrounded by tourists, and everything is meant to make it comfortable for us.
So, this time I decided we try something different.
And it was different on many fronts. We rented a house in Puerto Vallarta and dived into a touristy, but more authentic life – with loud music all day round, people dancing and singing, bargaining and trying to explain ourselves with no Spanish, with food markets and small local stores, unhasting cabs and flying-through traffic buses. Always billowy, fortified with rocks and its high tides, the ocean was also different from the white and soft Caribbean Sea.
But besides the external experience, my inner journey also differed. Ahead of the trip, I promised myself to try living it rather than simply experiencing it, packing up and putting it on the back burner, where I found all my other recent experiences.
Some time ago, most trips and adventures in my life felt like oceans. Be it a little road trip or a big journey, an evening event or a day outing, a good book or a deep talk, I was excited about it in advance, then I lived through it and afterwards, extended it by talking about it, sharing pictures or just recollecting memories. I'd reflect on things more, I wrote diaries, I shared my recaps and thoughts with others. Things stayed with me forever, and experiences led to new ones.
I noticed lately that people quit telling stories about travels and adventures. We post pictures on social media or send some at the moment, and, when asked, just say "Oh, it was good". And that's about it. I do it, too. Maybe it's the Internet that covers it all.
Maybe it's the fact that more and more people travel and have so many mind-blowing experiences, and we feel that we've all been there, done that, and it's not interesting anymore. Maybe it's the speed of life we try to maintain, with not much time for anything extra (we do talk about Netflix and politics a lot though). Maybe it's something else.
But heading into the new year, I noticed that my own experiences, small and big, became very shallow. This observation, shared with friends and family, echoed back. I wasn't the only one who started putting checkmarks instead of living life.
When recollecting last year, I first felt miserable: life seemed so empty like nothing had been happening to me at all. But it's been indeed busy. The year went by fast. And when I scrolled through pictures, calendars and memories, I realized how loaded it actually was. But in that bustling environment, I'd just get in and out. Come, experience, step out and almost forget.
I don't know about you, but I also feel that I've long forgotten how to be bored. With technology, life sped up. We are present in different spaces at the same time and our attention is often split. We are also hooked on being that way – distracted and always entertained. There is no time to notice what's happening, let alone being bored. And boredom is the space for reflection. When given space, things grow bigger, roots develop and crowns evolve, and our reflections bloom with deeper thoughts and fruit with new ideas.
These were my thoughts for mediation at the end of 2023. So, heading into the new year, I promised myself to try creating this space allowing me to take something out of my every experience into my next steps in life, the space for my imagination to start working, the space for me to feel, the space for emotions.
The Mexican trip was indeed interesting, but I did put some effort into re-learning how to be bored and how to live my life at the moment. I wouldn't say it's a total success, but I definitely made some progress.
