Mare Pacifico

Usually I have problems getting the number of hours of sleep that most people seem to get. But as soon as I do sleep well enough to consider myself a normal person, and I don’t feel the immediate need to work on myself to even feel remotely okay, the urge comes up to be productive at all cost.

To that purpose, I had brought my book that first day of beach and sun during my Christmas Holidays in Mazatlan, a book about the Principles of Success in Business.  I mentioned being productive at all cost. At the cost of what?  Instead of going with the flow of the rhythm in which life unfolds so close to the Pacific, this gigantic ocean where even Ferdinand Magellan had found the winds to be favorable enough to drop interfering with the advancement of his journey’s, and that therefore was called Mare Pacifico (Peaceful ocean), I must read this book now!

While the sun is calling out to me to relax my body and mind on the crisp blue white striped matrass of the beach chair and the morning breeze tries to undo my neatly pinned-up hairdo,  the urge to be productive and at least read this book fights with my inclination to give into the moment. To just sit there and enjoy this rich Mexican moment of vendors passing by with colorful clothing and amiable English chatter, with which they persistently try to lure the lazy tourist into approaching the invisible fence for vendors that they obeingly respect under the watchful eye of the security guard. What if I would tune out all the justifying voices that have convinced me already how useful it is to read that book now and how time passes by even if I don’t  get anything done and call my obnoxious drive to be productive an addiction and decide to overcome it?

Isn’t there always work? Doesn’t it fill time like dust gathers in the corner of an empty space or like a sponge sucks up water?  How often does it happen to you that you feel you have some time left?  Right?  The agony to actually get to relax and then do what the word suggests, relax, become loose again!  Does the word maybe suggest that being ‘lax’ (=loose) is our natural state and all we have to do to be happy is regain that status?  I give it a shot and cancel my work appointments, Skype calls, and email obligations so I am free at least the remainder of this vacation.

Hey! That means that at least I will have room in my mind to be present to the moment and to the presence of my daughters and my husband.  It is so rare that all four of us are living under one roof.  Isn’t it a priority then?  I’m free at last, I think, and I call the waiter to order a Pacifico. Happy Holidays!

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