Are you a Mexi-CAN?

My teens felt like a transcendental affair, alive but not quite living. I grew up highly contemplative but the kind of contemplative that had me usually outside myself and dealing with most experiences from a theoretical point of view. Never quite living in a moment you know. I remember feeling jealousy for the first time. It was of a girl I went to school with, her laugh, curiosity and the general candor in which she lived and engaged with others looked to me as though she were “here”, fully present in the moment and her life. I immediately recognized something in her that was very absent in me and I felt something that made me stop. For the rest of the day I couldn’t concentrate on much until I found a dictionary and looked up the words jealousy and envy. After reading up on the words I remember feeling a) proud that I was able to correctly identify what I was feeling and b) a tad weirded out because I didn’t think that that’s how other people processed. I was 11 years old then. Thankfully these kinds of traits are classified as quirks and I’m told, can even be deemed as cute and endearing. Learning to be present is something that we all deal with on one level or the other or some time or another.

Ever since I first met Steph whenever a group dinner comes up and we’re trying to figure out where to go, she always throws in Mexican! And since Johannesburg doesn’t really have any one renowned eatery for Mexican food we usually pass over her fervent suggestion and settle on something else. So the fact that she was now hosting a Mexican feast alongside Akio made me chuckle. 

They say life is what happens when you're busy making plans. It is also what happens when you stand idly by waiting for something to happen. It also goes on living while you’re busy in alternate moments of how this very moment could be that much better if x or if y. We all have the ability to create, attract or bring to us what we desire, the ability to work and put to reality many if not all of our wants. A small and simple example was this dinner. Make a plan and make it happen. Write the story of your life with flair and as beautifully as you can imagine. Live and let live.

Feast!