I’ve traveled southern Baja for over three weeks now and what have I learned?

For one thing people of all nationalities or politics can be kind and helpful to others in need.

I sort of knew this but forgot it. Because I’m kind and helpful and everyone is me.

And in matters of diet and movement I must continue to find my way and stick to it despite hunger and fatigue and despair.

I need to make good choices or I’ll become ill. So simple. But like the paleo diet, simple but not easy.

I need more trust. Trust in myself; trust in others; trust that the loving automatic earth will continue to hold us and love us. And we will not destroy ourselves through division.

I need to lose my reactive armor to be more open to people and ideas and love.

I must continue the therapies I need and love and find other useful ones.

Like talking to others to tell my story. And then carefully listening to their story without judging or instantly rejecting their point of view as I have sometimes tended to do.

Now, I’m not a Christian any more since a young age, if I ever was one. But the bible says ‘judge not, lest you be judged’.

In a strict sense this is impossible. Instant judgement was hardwired into human and pre-human minds from millions of years ago.

Because if you lack the ability to judge when that old smiledon is within pouncing distance you won’t survive to pass on your genes. You will be cat food.

I must remember that even when I reject, after slow and careful thought, another’s idea of right and wrong behavior; of how best to spend our precious years, days and seconds, that I’m rejecting their ideas and behavior and not their humanity.

Because anyone can fall into error, mistakes, delusion and wishful thinking.

We do it every day. After all, without some delusion human beings could not function.

And even moral and kind people can hold, unknowingly, wrong, misguided or even evil ideas.

If nothing else my considered rejection should serve as a negative lesson: don’t act like that, don’t think like that, don’t treat others or the earth like that.

Finally, I need to learn from my mistakes and remember them. Not in a critical way ‘what a fool I was to do or say that’.

But in a loving and even humorous way since there is no comedy without stupidity.

And nothing makes me laugh more than my own daily stupidities. Following, often, a foul epithet (ex-soldier long ago).

I need to remember my errors but also remember that I am no longer the person who made that blunder, even if I made it only yesterday.

And to forgive myself as quickly as I try to forgive others. Because they are not the same person either.

And to remember that every day is a new day and that I am free and loved.

Unless noted, all text and images by todgermanica.com.