It's evening time here in the valley. The collective buses are filling up with families - kids, parents, grandparents - heading into town. Not because they need anything. Not because there's an event or obligation. They're going to the plaza, to the streets, to meander through life together.
I call it purposeful meandering. The purpose is simply to be with life.
I didn't know what I was missing until I gave up my conveniences for this simplicity. You know that saying - you don't know what you have until it's gone? For me, it's been the reverse: you don't know what you really are until you've given up what you thought was you.
Here, there's a lightness in my body. I don't take everything so personally. I'm more gracious with myself, with others. It's like The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz - except in flesh, not just words on a page.
And this evening, I think of my father.
Back in Bangladesh, my dad's life was simpler. He worked a really good job, sure, but it was less about the work. When you don't have to clock 50-60 hours just to pay rent, life opens up differently. You have time to be with family, with friends. Time to enjoy life instead of just survive it.
I track this in my memory like a hunter following prints in the dirt.
My younger sister and I would go on journeys with him through the city on rickshaws. Stopping wherever he wanted, wherever we wanted. Purposeful meandering. More disposable time. More energy. More play in his body. More joy in his eyes. More creativity in his interactions.
Then we moved to America. The land of dreams. Of freedom. Of expression.
His life got reduced to working odd hours, followed by vegging out on the couch. Less than a flicker of desire to explore life beyond what's minimally necessary to get by. Here, in the States, it became about counting the days. Heart attacks. High blood pressure. Diabetes. Stress. Depression.
Being undocumented and living in constant fear probably has something to do with it.
But there's more to it than that.
I've visited Peru multiple times now - once a year for the past few years - specifically to validate what I felt the first time. To see if the feeling would fade.
It hasn't. It's only confirmed what I suspected.
In the Sacred Valley, in the jungle, where modernity hasn't fully infected the land yet, people still live connected to something we've lost. In Lima, Arequipa, Cusco - the big cities - the West has already taken hold. But out here? There's still a pulse.
Walk through the streets here and you'll see them everywhere: the snake, the puma, the condor. Carved into sculptures on street corners. Woven into people's clothes. Painted in murals on buildings. These aren't decorations. They're the Andean cosmology made visible - the snake representing the lower world, the puma the middle physical realm, the condor the spirit world.
These symbols aren't something people here have to think about or learn in a workshop. They're embedded. Passed down through generations. Present in daily life, in art, in the way people move through their world. There's a thread connecting them to their ancestors, to their land, to their cosmology.
In the West? We're trying to recreate something. Searching for symbols, for meaning, for connection to our lineage. We go to retreats. Read books. Take ayahuasca ceremonies hoping to find what's been severed.
Here, it's already here. It hasn't left.
An universal desire exists in all of us - to find a way of living where we feel connected to spirit, to nature, to each other. The way most of us live in the West has been hijacked from that system.
I don't think it's out of bad will. I choose to see it as a lack of wisdom combined with a desire for convenience. But the result is the same: our generation in the West is lost. A society that's made "meaning-making" into an entire industry is struggling to fit into this man-made way of living.
We're all wanting peace and belonging and connection. Yet by design, we're fragmented, living in a system that preys on this yearning. There are made-up solutions for our made-up problems. But it's a cycle when we don't deal with the root.
So how do we return to more natural ways of living?
It starts with realizing that each of us is a thread in the fabric. There's no individual healing without generational, societal healing. We can't decolonize our minds or reverse the curse - the genie's out of the bottle. All we can do is transform it, starting with ourselves.
I think of authors like Mary Oliver, Mohsin Hamid, Khaled Hosseini, Jhumpa Lahiri, Michel Houellebecq - writers who've captured this displacement, this longing, this search for home in bodies that no longer know where home is.
The question isn't whether we can feel the way I feel in Peru on a constant basis. The question is: are we willing to try?
Can you bring devotion to the land where you live? Reverence to the people you pass by daily, even those you have no actual connection to? Can you find or create the symbols that connect you to your own lineage, even when they've been buried or forgotten?
This is the mild shock I keep experiencing - that a land can cause this much pleasure, this much aliveness. That it's possible to live this way.
I see the same paralysis in the people I work with. Stuck in fear. Unable to leave comfort and convenience for the unknown, even when they know - they know - that the unknown will be better than whatever shitshow they're currently in.
If I could tell my younger self anything, it would be this: Take a chance, child. You're going to die. Live before you die.
There's talk of reconciliation, of decolonizing the mind, of healing generational trauma. But there's no reversing what's been done. We can only transform it. And transformation starts with a choice.
Life is a gift, despite the horrors we're constantly bombarded with. Being bombarded with bad news isn't helpful if it doesn't make you want to get out and transform all this trauma into a better world.
So I'll ask you what I ask myself:
What do you feel about this life? Where is your fear? What work have you done to transform your fear so you CAN feel that vibrating pulse of life?
This life is beautiful, if we choose to live it that way. We're all going to die anyway. Isn't it worth giving this life a fair shot before we do?
Live a life in honor of your connection to your ancestors. Honor them by living a full life - not by counting days on a couch, but by purposeful meandering through the streets of your one precious existence.
Ish
P.S. If you're ready to stop counting days and start living them - to transform your fear into the courage it takes to actually feel alive - I work with a small number of men and couples who are done performing and ready to do the real work.
This isn't therapy. This isn't another course. This is initiation into your own aliveness through nature, grief, love, and purpose.
If that's calling to you, reach out. Let's talk.
P.P.S. I am also running my Men's Rites retreat in Peru next year. It's a chance for you to get up close and experience some of the magic of these lands. The page is up and accepting applications. Special deal for my existing 1:1 clients.
