Day 31: In Lak’ech, Ala K’in
Cancun Airport is relatively empty around 4 am, on a Tuesday. Not too many people choose an early flight out, considering that buses, taxis and other forms of transportation are rare around that time. Most people want to leave a place like Mexico after a good nights rest. I personally picked a 6 am flight so I could arrive in Toronto very early. I had to grab the keys for my new place. I am leasing a condo right in the heart of downtown Toronto for 1 year. It’s close enough to Lake Ontario so I can still have a great balance of nature and city. When it comes to lifestyle, I thrive in a fast paced city. I can run full speed and always feel alive. I feel like I was born to live this way. At least for this stage in my life that is.
I don’t meet too many people who resonate with me on this. Large cities are usually a high source of stress and high blood pressure for most people. A lot of my friends have a hard time understanding this about me. They consider me to be a workaholic. I personally just feel like I’m doing what I want all the time and don’t actually feel like I’m working.
When I came to Playa Del Carmen, I wanted to enjoy a balance. I wanted to custom tailor and design my lifestyle as if it was limitless. The concept is known as lifestyle design. In lifestyle design, instead of living a life where we are constantly reacting to our environment, we figure out how we can control it by becoming the cause. As a result, we live each day doing all the things we want without any doubts or regrets.
I was inspired to embark on this lifestyle design journey by two books. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and The 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris. The Alchemist taught me to always chase my dreams and that if I were to followed them, the universe will conspire to make my journey fulfilling from every angle.
The second book, The 4 Hour Work Week, opened up my mind to the possibility of lifestyle design by leveraging technology and sharp wits or “life hacking” as the author would say. The combination of books that inspired my journey, brought me to meet other lifestyle designers while in Playa Del Carmen, like Peter Terrin, the artist and triathlete who lives in the Yucatan Jungle. I talked about his amazing dream lifestyle on my “Day 5: The Art Of Peter Terrin Plus The Night At Coco Bongo” Or how about Jimmy from Casa De Las Olas who lives next door to the Sian Ka’an biosphere. He lives modestly but yet he runs the most beautiful and sustainable beach villas in Tulum.
There were many others that I met who were doing the same, and for first time in my life, I was one of them. This trip, my month in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, was my lifestyle design experiment.
When the plane was air-bound and officially left Mexican soil, I thought about everything. I remembered the entire journey, I relived each day in my head until I fell asleep slightly exhausted, but feeling more relaxed. I landed in Houston Airport and immediately connected to the flight that was headed to Toronto.
Upon arrival, I was on a mission. A mission to resume life as I once knew it but with a higher level perspective. Today, as I sit and type this last post, while gazing on this view and realizing this truth, I remember the day before when I was in a land that was much more simpler. Life was a lot slower, but from it’s own perspective, just as beautiful as the city that I love, which is Toronto, Ontario in Canada.
Everything that I wrote here on this blog, actually happened the way I explained it. The stories, the people, the journey was real. There was a lot more that happened, but I wanted to actually live it more than I wanted to write about it. Thank you very much for following my journey. In Lak’ech, Ala K’in like the locals say, which means, I am you, and you are me.
