As a travel journalist, I have spent significant chunks of my life over the past two decades in Mexico. I have lived for several weeks or months in different places — inside and around Merida, Oaxaca, Pueblo, Laguna Bacalar, Campeche, Tepotzlan, Chiapas, Juventino Rosas, San Miguel de Allende, Chihuahua, and more. I found each area of the country to be culturally deep, historically rich, culinarily happy-making, architecturally pleasing, and filled with people I genuinely liked and connected to. But somehow, the month I just spent in Mexico City was different.
It was also healing.
For me, current events in the United States and the Middle East were the source of worry, anxiety, anger, feelings of alienation and powerlessness, sadness, and incredulity. I went from reading media articles in depth to barely being able to tolerate headlines.
It was time for a change. Time to restore my sanity.
I booked a month in Mexico City for my husband and me and, as usual, I did no research in advance. My journalism students and colleagues are always shocked by this, but I want to be Marco Polo or Ibn Batuta; these early intrepid travelers had no social media, top 10 lists, step-by-step guides, or internet. They went, they saw, and they formed their own opinions. I wanted everything I encountered to be new and fresh, as it was for them.
When a trip is unplanned, you have to listen carefully to locals, interact with them, look for signs, check out local media, and trust your own instincts. You’ll likely see all the top tourist sites, but you will do it in your own way. And you will encounter sites, sounds, aromas, facts, people that you never expected, and on your own, personal path to joy. You’ll be immersed in the present, in the now, where healing can take place. In my case, within a day, I had stopped constantly focusing on the suffering of others because there was precious little that I could do to stop it from happening. I restricted myself to five to 10 minutes of checking the news once or twice a day. And I became completely immersed in the place I was in.
Every night, I wrote a group email about what I was experiencing in Mexico City to friends who had asked me to keep them in the loop. And they reported back that it was helping them too by transporting them to another place, another culture, another mentality and reality.
So, what’s so special about Mexico City? First, it is a city of about 25,000,000 people, including those who live in surrounding areas and commute to work in the city. And yet, people never seemed rushed, and it’s always possible to find green spaces and streets and areas where there are no crowds. The park closest to where we were staying had a meditation garden near the entry. Hanging wicker basket seats cradled the sitters, and benches and chairs were nestled among the greenery. It was like the outside city didn’t exist.
Everywhere we walked — I am a big walker — we discovered different neighborhoods with their own trendy or arty or stately or fun and funky or historic character and architectural gems from before and fantastic structures from after the catastrophic earthquake of 1985.
In each, we met people on the street, in restaurants, shops, museums, and events around Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, which, contrary to its name, lasts for several weeks.
If we were going a significant distance or had armloads of groceries after shopping in well-stocked stores, we ordered inexpensive Ubers, and we had a lot of time to engage with the drivers. We shared opinions, talked life, culture, the arts, ideas about what to see and where to go. When the talk turned to politics, it was about Mexican politics, only briefly touching on events in the USA. They weren’t concerned about Washington, D.C., but were engaged in what was happening in their own country. It was a great relief to listen to other people’s concerns, pleasures, interests, successes, and struggles. The talks were rich, and they didn’t care about my countless errors in the Spanish I’d learned in the streets.
I dove into the complex history of Mexico, and visited museums and towns and archeological sites of brilliant cultures such as the Olmec, Maya, Mexica and Zapotec.
I talked with archeologists, indigenous people, anthropologists, linguists, guides, religious leaders, shopkeepers, artists, teachers, and specialists in immigration and law.
Instead of withdrawing inside or myself from the shock and horror of what was going on around me, every minute I was engaged and expanding what I knew about life.
We ate in restaurants, little eateries, bakeries and fusion restaurants like Chinese-Mexican, Japanese-Mexican, Korean-Mexican, and Jewish-Mexican. We were wildly excited about the creativity and variety we experienced. I was lifted out of my limited way of looking at the world, and widened my range of thinking, seeing, and eating.
And when I am outside of myself, and not locked inside, this is where healing and wholeness take place.
But most of all, it was about the people. They were helpful, forthcoming, kind, gentle, interesting and interested.
When they asked us how we felt about Mexico City, I laughed and said I loved everything about it except for the traffic and pollution. They sighed, agreed, and concluded, “We hope you come back soon, and we are so glad you appreciate our city and our culture and our country.”
Mexico City made me happy and excited about life. I had left home feeling discouraged and alienated. I returned home feeling connected, hopeful and at peace. And I was not alone in my reaction. Other foreign visitors I spoke to in Mexico City concurred that being there was good for their mental health. “I have only been here for four days but I feel I can go back to Chicago with my head in a much better space,” said one traveler, as she savored a dish of plump, blue corn teriyaki salmon tacos.
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