“The world is a looking glass. It gives back to every man a true reflection of his own thoughts. Rule your mind or it will rule you.” – Siddhartha Gautama
I’m doing one of my favorite activities, right now:
Sitting down at a random coffee shop on my first day in a new country, and writing an email.
It brings me back to my roots.
The daily emails I wrote for EGT were sent from 40-something countries:
Some, from hidden gems I still hope to find my way back to — others from sketchy holes-in-walls where gringos go to disappear.
I once wrote an entire email from the backseat of a Rickshaw in Bali, balancing my laptop on my knees while trying not to fall off the side into the mud.
Anyway, this morning I woke up in Mexico City and rolled out the door with a vague idea of where I wanted to go, but no solid plan.
I took a quick left at the end of my street, then another left.
Then the Tao winked at me.
Minutes from my AirBnb, a specialty coffee shop materialized on a quiet, tree-lined street, across from a beautiful park, with plenty of comfortable seating, fast WiFi, friendly people, and amazing coffee.
I’m also getting the impression it’s a regular morning stop for the female yoga class down the street.
So that’s cool.
But my favorite part of the “freedom business” thing has less to do with traveling, and more to do with what traveling does to you.
Every time I land in a new country, it feels like the snow globe of my mind gets tipped upside down, and all the neurotic crap that had been stuck in dark corners and crevices comes swirling into my awareness.
There’s an ambient paranoia that comes with being a polite little white boy in a foreign place:
Bumbling around town speaking broken Spanglish with my laptop and credit cards and cash in clear view of the locals who can’t help staring at the lost gringo zooming in and out on Google maps, trying to figure out where the fxck he is.
Even after a decade of traveling, I still feel the target on my back, and hear the voice in my head asking me what I’m even doing here.
But the voice is a lot quieter now, and it fades a lot faster.
And, rather than listening to it, I find myself watching in amusement as it fades into the background and then disappears.
And that’s the whole point.
When I started traveling intensively in my early 20s, it wasn’t to check items off a bucket list.
It was to train myself to feel at home anywhere in the world.
My goal was to settle so fully into myself that no situation, no unfamiliar surrounding could throw me off.
To me, that’s the deeper benefit of traveling.
But you don’t need to travel to receive it.
You just need to throw yourself into uncomfortable situations:
The first date, the party at a stranger’s house, the high-pressure networking event, the mushroom trip on the beach in Rio de Janiero during Carnival in 2014 where you get so sunburnt you can’t even take a shower that night.
Normalize being uncomfortable until you feel comfortable everywhere you go.
Lots of love from Mexico City,
- T
P.S. Today’s writing track.
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