Today’s tip: BREAK YOUR ROUTINES!
It was a sunny afternoon, the table in the shared garden of my compound was ready and filled with pots and dishes. My colleague -and neighbor- was busy blowing air, ensuring the charcoal burned red in the BBQ, and I was happy to join my first Eid celebration. As I would do for most weekends, I came donning short pants, a fresh shirt, and my Panama hat. My contribution came in the shape of a speaker and previously chosen Bangladeshi music, which my hosts appreciated enormously. My inner peace started to crack as the other guests arrived. One after the other came dressed as I would for a Christmas dinner! The Indian colleague -and neighbor- appeared with a sari I could swear she got from a Bollywood movie set. Later on, my next-door Bangladeshi neighbors -also colleagues- made their triumphant entrance displaying a silk kamise and another ‘movie like’ sari! I was about to go home and put at least some trousers on when a couple of Peruvian neighbors joined -not in shorts- but dressed informally enough for me to stay put!
The afternoon, turned evening, was beautiful, and the Eid celebration a complete success. We ate and laughed, shared ‘lockdown’ stories and leave plans or hopes, and I forgot about my shorts. I learned about their traditions and, as if the food was not spicy enough, we spiced the gathering up with Despacito and other Latin Music before calling it a night and -at least in my case- go straight to bed for a well-deserved siesta. My first Eid was terrific, my decade long routine of escaping somewhere for the usual long weekends I associated with the holiday was shattered, and my embarrassment for being underdressed became a thing of the past. However, the event got me thinking about how many other of my routines have been preventing me from discovering other terrific things such as the magic of Eid.
I usually am ‘all game’ for change and for trying new things, but this Eid afternoon opened my eyes to the fact that I still have plenty of opportunities to do better, to open myself up even further, to experiment new things, to break my routines; to establish new ones to be broken in the future.
Just like Daniele Quercia encourages us in his TED talk below, perhaps this can be a good time for you to challenge your established routines and existing travel routes. Maybe you should explore new roads, less traveled but more exciting and beautiful. Perhaps this week, you want to follow Frost’s advice and look out for “the road not taken,” the one that will take you to unknown but eventually fantastic places, sometimes within yourselves.
Should you decide to break your routines, however small they may seem, I hope you will have a momentous journey discovering the beauties and challenges of the new routes you are now transiting.
I wish you all the best for this week!
Happy Maps:
The road not taken:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken
The road less traveled:
Take care, and stay safe.