Dateline: Mexico City Hilton Branch World Headquarters

How would you recognize me here?  I’d be the only English speaker around. The rest of the U.S. reads the news before picking a destination. 

But then, it depends on which news you read.

#1 LA Times:   Mexican police say they have found 12 mutilated corpses in hidden graves on the outskirts of Cancun, the latest sign drug-related violence is spreading to the popular tourist destination. The grim find is at least the second such discovery this month…. Mexico City newspaper: A shootout between Mexican soldiers and gunmen Tuesday left at least 14 people dead in the nearby scenic mining town of Taxco, known to tourists for its silver jewelry. Fifty bodies were recently discovered in an abandoned silver mine shaft.

#2 Mexico City Travel Welcome:  2010 promises to be a banner year for tourism in Mexico as tourism promotion programs recently set into motion begin to bear fruit for the benefit of you, our welcome guests…

“Which is more important?  The world as it exists or the world you are responding to?  The one your making up as you go along?”

How can you tell if your fears are keeping you from an experience?  Or, if facttually, to attempt the experience would be be walk into real danger?  The fears that keep us chronically anxious and stressed are, almost always, imaginary fears. What if fears.  What if I embarrass myself?  What if others think I’m too fat? WHAT IF I WASTE MY WHOLE LIFE AFRAID of being a size larger than….Well, than I am?  What if I never get married?  What if I’m late? 

My goal with this post is to ask you to examine your fears and come a little closer, perhaps, to being able to recognize facts over fears.  Now, I’m talking about searching out facts, not about blindly following your dream like the star of the self-made movie,Grizzly.  Yes, in spite of every fact from experts who actually were in place to know….this man took his camera to Alaska to make his movie. Which he did. Well, someone else had to do the final editing since he was eaten by his movie stars. Yes, our man looked into his own camera and laughs saying, “Sure, I might die doing this, but just remember I’ll have died doing what I love.”

I don’t think what he loved was screaming bloody hell while a grizzly chewed on his head.  I don’t think any he experienced any profound joy watching the girlfriend he talked into coming shared by two grisslies.

Grizzley man ignored facts from those who knew first hand and then played victim, in his case, literally.  What I’m suggesting is that most of err in the opposite direction, helped along by media hype.  I’m not blaming the media….the job of every form of print, video, and, yes, internet page…is to get you to put your eyes to the screen or page…so that you will see the ads.  Therefore, without sensationalism, the system doesn’t work. How long would Nancy Grace last opening her program with, “No bombshells tonight…”

The quest for those of us (however shakily embarking on the journey toward a more self-designed life)…is to separate facts from emotionally driven claims.  And, none of us have time to follow-up more than the areas directly affecting our choices. 

My point here is that the death roles of the drug cartel wars here in Mexico do not include psychologists on ripped from their computers.  Get the facts.  Two of the excuses I hear most often when someone laments not following a dream are:  It’s too dangerous, or I can’t afford it.  People do what they choose to do (maybe just a lifetime of choosing to calm anxiety), and people have enought money to do what they choose.

I’d planned on finishing this up later, but I turned out to have a bit more time in the restaurant.  As I attempted to exit the hotel for the Zocalo, the valet pointed to the truckloads of armed federales headed the same way.  He strongly suggested I wait a few minutes.  I suspect he was a better source of facts than I was., so I had another Cafe Americana.  I’ll go later. 

Now to finish. Six hours later. After my walk, a good deal of which I spent lost.   I got to thinking as I casually looked around for tall buildings to guide me, I thought:  Wouldn’t it be just hysterical if I was actually hit by a stray bullet while traipsing around the Zocalo and wherever the hell else I was…Then people would dig out my laptop for clues as to why I was killed in that alley.  And the post would have the story of Grissly Man….and I’d have done the same thing, told the world I was happy doing what I was doing and then….It would be like one of those set ups where you look into a mirror and see another mirror…..