After Tahoe

In my first post about Tahoe, I asked: “how you leave a place like this?” Now I know: you leave crying. 

The purpose of a trip is not taking pictures but stimulating your senses in such a way that makes you change. Tahoe did that for me. I can tell with certainty that the man that came out of the lake is different than the person that got in.

I’m not telling you that a beautiful landscape will shock you to the next step of personal development. You can try the same trip and find nothing while having a profound spiritual experience with the fortune cookie of your local Chinese restaurant. What I’m telling here is that, in my particular case, a missed piece was found. I was able to envision love and affection in a way completely unknown for me until now. Now I understand that certain feelings can be irrational and constructive at the same time.

I was raised Catholic, and we are trained to cross ourselves when passing in front of a church. I erased that reflect long ago, but now in front of the lake, I feel the same urge. It was interesting to learn that natives actually consider this lake sacred.

The sensation is that you can give everything without measure. Eventually, that value comes around, but the real peace resides in not been waiting for that reward. That doesn’t make sense for the individual mind, but it does for the aggregate. Life can be and is unfair, but you keep loving her. (I know that I should use “it” in the last sentence, but in Spanish, life is a feminine noun, and it’s so appropriate that I won’t change it).  

You love life, and you give everything, on the understanding that you are more likely to lose. But the alternative of been cautious converts you in such a square and boring person that you may as well save the world all the water you are polluting.

This trip is working.