Traveling with Hernan

Traveling with Hernan had its ups and downs. During the trip I was reading Eat, Pray, Love again, but this time in Spanish - Comer, Rezar, Amar. It was a nice thing to read on this trip, and aside from being a great book, is a great travel book, but more importantly a wonderful inspiration to self-reflect.

There were some good things about traveling with Hernan. He did all of the calling and questioning to make the arrangements for the trip. I joked that he likes to ask questions, and he admitted it was true. From that point on, it became a joke any time we wondered about anything. He would just ask. I'm a little more timid about asking, either because I don't know how, I feel like it makes me look foolish, or it is not that important for me to bother. But with Hernan, all questions were answered.

He had good suggestions about things to eat and got me up and doing things (I would have just gone to the same beach every day, but he wanted to explore). He'd walk into a restaurant and see what people were eating that looked good and ask for that. It turned out to be better than my strategy of reading the menu.

And then there were the irritations. He'd leave the bathroom light on, or the water running. He refused to throw the toilet paper in the little basket next to the toilet, and would spend hours trying to flush toilet paper down the toilet, which obviously couldn't handle it (ok, maybe not hours).

He slept way too much. He'd take a three hour siesta in the afternoon and was impossible to get out of bed in the morning.

He was messy. He had a pile of clothes in the closet that were just that - a pile. He'd track sand into the room and leave socks, shoes and other items of clothing strewn around the room. He'd open a little bag of cookies by making a little hole that was barely big enough to get a cookie through, and then the cookies would break up and as he pulled one out, leave crumbs all over the place.

There were several times when I lost my temper with him, and several times when he said things that insulted me. I got mad at him a few times and stopped talking, but he didn't know I was mad.

But, in the end, it was fun having him along, and thanks to Eat, Pray, Love, I can put the whole trip into a different perspective.

I remember Oprah once saying that relationships provide mirrors into ourselves, allowing us to see things we still need to work on. In Eat, Pray, Love, Richard the Texan (I don't remember what he was called in the English version) tells Liz that a soulmate is a mirror, allowing us to see all of our insecurities.

I don't think of Hernan as a soulmate, but he certainly became a mirror for me. I saw how easily I was thrown off balance by little things like sand on the floor or cookie crumbs on the desk top. I was taken out of the present so many times and catipulted into a state of anger, resentment and/or insecurity. I was so out of touch with my core essence and sometimes found myself difficult to be with.

There is a wonderful story in Eat, Pray, Love, from India, when Liz decides to sit up in the garden and meditate at dusk. She is immediately devoured by mosquitoes. Rather than shoo them away, she continues to sit and instead reflects on the sensations of being bitten, continuing to breathe and maintain presence and centeredness. To me it is a wonderful parable for life. We (I) get thrown out of balance so easily and by trying to swat things away, become more irritated. Allowing the present to just be, and observing our reaction to irritations seems more peaceful and healthy than my own reaction of seething inside without ever trying to change what is happening, but just resenting it. I think I don't try to change things because I know I can't, so at least I am halfway there, but my resentment comes from wanting things to be different. If I can only get to the point of being able to accept things as they are, I think it will be better for everyone, most of all myself.