My very chill 26

The first time in my life that there was no craze and no drama around my birthday. In fact i accepted it that this is probably going to be the most unmemorable birthday of my life. And it was. I spent 10 hours of it on a bus, I was alone and didnt even have internet access. But i also learned in the past 6 months that in the end of even the most unmemorable day there is always a surprise waiting for you, as small as it may be, you just have to be ready to be surprised. And there was, of course. I was ready, i was waiting for it. My surprise was Santiago de Chile. I loved it from the first sight. Most travelers say it´s the most westernized city on the continent and that there is absolutely nothing special about it. But for me that´s what was so special – how western it is in the midst of the continental cultural turbulence. An analogy could be Tel-Aviv in the Middle East.
So I landed in Santiago, totally beat by a 10 hour bus ride, a raging bacteria in my stomack and another virus and a fungus making it at home in other parts of my body – my immune system failing to stand up to them from either too much drinking or too much thinking. No guide book, no map, nowhere to go, and very little money left – even though intuitively you’de think 4,000 pesos should do better than a taxi and a dinner... But then the birthday spirit of the day kicked in – the information office in the terminal gave me a map and randomly sent me to the most beautiful hostel; even more randomly i found Emilio on line and he happened to be in town! So he took me out to a salsa club with his mom, her boy friend, her brother, Emilio’s sister and a couple of friends, they poored me gin and tonic and sang me a “happy birthday”, and i even got a free drink from the place owner who was Emilio’s sister’s friend. All of that was pretty random.

So on my 26th – i still get no more than 20, no steady relationship, no mortgage, or a “good” job with a nice pension fund. All my life is packed in a 60 litre backpack, and i can make myself at home anywhere, with anyone, in a multitude of languages. I’m happy, and I think this is life. Life is not a 9 to 5 with a house in a suburb and a silver-emerald-green car in the parking lot, and this here is not a vacation. A 9 to 5 is a transition period, and it doesn’t even have to be a 9 to 5. And what i’m doing here is the real thing, and what I’m learning here is more than i’ve ever learned at any school or university. I’m learning to break walls, to jump beyond my mind, to get out of the system. My guiding phrase has been something Paulina, my austrian friend, told me once – “Cada uno tiene que hacer su vida” – everyone has to make his own life. I told Paulina my story about the dancer boy in Salta – that it made me feel bad that some one has to work so unhumanly hard to make somehting out of his life, where as me being a fortunate young western brat, wondering around, sleeping my 8-9 hours a day, having my good time, living for my own pleasure. Paulina gave me a long lecture on Karma and basically said that you start your life with a measure of good fortune and you work with it, you get the best out of your fortune under your own lifes circumstances. You can’t compare what you’ve got to anything that anyone else have got, and naturally you can’t compare the results either. This insight has been a great aliviation for me, as one of the reasons why i came to this continent was to see what poverty, misery and hapiness
are made of – and I have seen it, and i had to deal with what i’ve seen, and i had to reasses my own misery and hapiness.
On my 26th i’ve crossed a few red lines – i’ve seen my concepts deconceptualize and reconceptualize again into totally new structures, the absolute good and absolute bad have sometimes drifted, sometimes even swapped sides. i’ve done some things that were unconceivable before. What was always wrong became right, for a moment or for ever. What was right appeared to be only superficially right.

But hey, enough of that sentimental stuff. That’s for girls. And if you really wanna hear, i’ll give you a whole lecture when i’m back – with charts of my personal growth as a function of the rainfall rates in the bolivian high planes, in PowerPoint and all. And if you actually think that asking me when the heck am i finally coming back is relevant at this point, you can do that, and i will even give you an answer, but dont get too excited - I’m not coming back until July 7th ... and that’s if i withstand all the marriage proposals i get from all the hot latino men in every village i go... but when i’m back, i promiss the PowerPoint!