Doing is King

Post Title: Psychological Landscapes

Post Date: August 18, 2012

I arrived to San Diego at sunset. It was an excellent first impression…. The hills and dips in the streets reminded me of San Francisco, but without the decadence. The only bad thing I noticed immediately was the established population of homeless people. The funny thing is that this city has the races inverted: the Mexicans are driving cars and the junkies are white. How has that happened?

Post Title: I am a fan of little moments.

Post Date: August 22, 2012

Yesterday I discovered the Little Italy of San Diego. It’s not spectacular, it’s just authentic…. I stopped in a corner made of glass and aluminum just before sunset, a small bar called “Underbelly.” The design was so open, clear, and nice that I sat down and ordered something just to be there. They brought me three little pieces of ice cream into a fried container and covered with a light guava jelly. No fork; this was for the chopsticks. When I put the first one in my mouth, I knew I was at the top of the happiness curve of my life. Nothing can surpass a little unexpected pleasure.

Timing is so important in happiness that the same experience in a different context is just unworthy. That’s why we try to time those moments, but by doing so we kill the second element, which is even more important: spontaneity. You can go to the same corner at the same hour and not [be] able to reproduce the experience. With years of knowing yourself, the best you can do is to expose yourself to situations where you have a high probability of experiencing happiness, and forget about the actual outcome.

I’m not looking for happiness. I already found it. I’m just playing cat and mouse, letting it go and catching it over and over again.

Post Title: Quiet Evening – Wild Night

Post Date: August 25, 2012

The main reason you may decide to love San Diego is Balboa Park. This is not even a real historical landmark, since everything has been reconstructed to the point of looking brand new.  But the result is this peaceful and welcoming walk surrounded by Spanish facades…. The convenience and the peace are there, without the distractions of a major tourist landmark. Maybe this is the core value of San Diego: perfect weather in a clean, ordered city where nothing really has ever happened.

The atmosphere downtown is very young…. The weather allows the party to hit the streets with a natural flow that I have not seen surpassed in any city, with the exceptions of Paris and La Habana. You also have those long lines of beautiful people waiting to have a drink in [a]certain place, as if alcohol was banned in the rest of the city.

I’m in no hurry. The city is inexhaustible.

Post Title: Coronado Island

Post Date: August 29, 2012

Today I visited Coronado Island, hoping only to find a coffee shop and catch up on some of my writing. I ended up taking long walks over beautiful avenues; the mansions you see along the coast make you feel as if you are trespassing just by looking at the windows, which are always open and showing off the interiors. It is a celebration of well-spent wealth, and now you have the chance to see the elderly people who accumulated all this buying power, trying to make the most of it in their walkers and convertible Volvos. The youngest dine out with their teen children, trying to lecture them about life while the kids keep their noses buried in a texting device, pausing only to roll their eyes now and then.

It’s a fact of life that the adventure of creating wealth and actually enjoying it is always broken by at least one generation. It’s hard to communicate the richness of experience that you got from having a humble origin, given that you didn’t take that origin as your destiny. We really need very little to survive, so it must be very tempting for the new generations just to lay back, try a couple of projects (just to say you are doing something) and forget ambition altogether.