Exiling the Voice by Exiling Yourself Part II
Take the plot twists. Find your inner loving voice
This is Part II of my three week series about how to become aware of the negative self-talk we all have on some level, and how to replace it with a kind, loving inner voice, all inspired by the plot twists of travel. To read Part I, in which I describe this voice, and give you concrete writing exercises to finally shed its destructive nature…go here. To read it all now, please consider a paid subscription.
I’d never really had the urge to go to Mexico City. If I’m going to Mexico, I’m going to the playa, and I’ve been to many playas all around the country. But there I was in non-playa CDMX with an unprecedented and wide-open schedule. I could have taken the next plane back to the US, but Montana was experiencing forty-five below temps without a break in sight, so I asked myself if I might be able to turn this massive city into my re-spelling ground.
The voice came in loud and clear and mean. It recognized this big decision-making time, and oozed in: You should stop this nonsense, go home, and get back to work! But I told it No. If I wasn’t going to have the opportunity to share molecules with flora and fauna found nowhere else in the world…then maybe one of the largest, highly-populated, museum-full, culinary meccas in the world would deliver the same personal un-spelling and re-spelling, the unscrewing of my tumultuous, terrorized head, and create an urban place where the voice couldn’t find me.
What was it going to say to me?
You need to go to another museum! At least three a day!
You need to eat another taco al pastor and at an even more local taco stand! Who do you think you are? Anthony Bourdain?
Do you realize that some of the top restaurants in the world are in CDMX? You haven’t done enough tasting menus!
By the way, your Spanish is embarrassing! What were you doing in Spanish class all those years!?
Don’t you know how reckless you’re being??? Don’t you know that this city is dangerous???
Was it? More than other cities? I was more worried about my urban un-spelling. Even though I’ve lived in rural Montana for three decades, I hail from Chicago. Cities are within my comfort zone. I know how to “do” cities, even really big ones. The point of my pilgrimages, however, is not to “do” anything. But rather, to “be.” I’d pictured sitting with hundred-year-old tortoises and going just as slowly. I’d pictured floating belly-down while sea lions braided around me. I’d pictured white sand beaches with only a smattering of humans, and me and my binoculars watching Darwin finches. Would I be able to “be” in a city? Would I be able to be bowled over by wonder, which had been my plan? Or would the voice follow me and ask me to try try try and do do do? I was worried about that danger more than any other.
But what I knew for sure: no matter where I was going on my annual pilgrimage, the answer would rest in my ability to stop. To stop and allow curiosity and awe to wash over me. That would be my ultimate goal. Only now, it would be as urban as it gets. Maybe that would help the un-spelling to happen at an even faster rate, especially given the surprise plot twist.
In the taxi to my hotel, I looked out the window and decided to stop for the little in-between moments of humanity that happen precisely because of so much human energy in one place, all at once. Street musicians. A young girl in a school uniform picking out ice cream from a cart vendor with her mother, both of them taking a long time to choose between green and red. Women selling beautiful, embroidered blankets, pillows, purses, scarves on the street. Proudly.
As we made our way through the throng of humanity, I wondered if I would be able to stay open. Keep my guard up, urban-smart, but keep my heart open, human-ready. Would I be able to stop to smile at strangers along the sidewalk in a huge city like that? It's one thing in a small town in Montana. But in Mexico City? I mean, did a smile imply some level of daftness? Or scream mug me! I didn’t want to have to be so guarded that I didn’t experience true wonder. That’s the whole point to my pilgrimages in the end. To awaken to my childlike curiosity and awe. That’s what spells me differently. I have to be open to newness in order to feel new. Big, throbbing cities don’t ask for a lot of stopping and I knew I needed to stop. Would I be able to sit on museum benches and look at one Aztec artifact for a long time? Not take out my phone and let its lens see it and move to the next insta-grammable photo opp? Would I really be able to stop in a city like that? From my taxi window, I doubted it. And so did the voice. It was going to do its best to have me fail. Take my ball. And go home.
So I started at a place where I was certain I’d find wonder and where the voice would leave me alone: The Frida Kahlo museum. The Casa Azul, her childhood, and later adult home and studio with (and without) Diego Rivera. As I wandered through the rooms, looked at her artwork, her letters and photos, her clothes, her wheelchair and easel, her paints and books…I could feel her there. In the mirror in her studio that she looked into as she created her self-portraits. In the mirror in the roof of her canopy bed where she watched herself heal from her near-fatal childhood accident, and painted her way to living life again. In the plaster body casts she painted after her operations. In the courtyard, full of her famous parties. Folly. And her certain tears. I spent hours looking into all of it as other tourists passed by me, with likely two other museums to fit into their day of “doing Mexico City,” and wondered if Frida had her own mean, scared voice. There was so much brokenness and pain in her paintings, and in her life. I wondered if the voice ever tried to kill her wonder. Or if it ever succeeded. I suspected that it tried to. I hoped that it didn’t ultimately win. She seemed to have such a sad ending.
This I know well: Wonder is the antidote to the voice. As babies, we begin in wonder. And then very soon, the voice tries to kill it. I sat in the courtyard, and wept about that most of all. How is it possible that we allow our wonder to ever be killed? Our civilization needs it to thrive and if the artists are susceptible, then who isn’t? I felt a deep sorrow. But I also felt that her wonder must have been alive in a magical courtyard like this one, with her pet monkeys and her studio wrapping itself around her. And her famous quote after the amputation of her feet: “Feet, what do I need them for if I have wings to fly.”
That night, I dreamed that Frida Kahlo, in shadows but in her full Mexican regalia, emerged from behind a blue wall and said, “You must take your love seriously.” I decided to stay in Mexico City for as long as I’d planned to be in Ecuador. That city had something to teach me. Something big. Viva la vida Frida painted on a canvas of bright, sliced watermelons, and hung on her studio wall.
I decided to make my city pilgrimage about that dreamed command— to be serious about love. Which to me, didn’t mean just stopping. It meant sitting amongst the throng of humanity. But what I didn’t expect was the weeping. With every museum I visited, and as slowly as I could, I ended up sitting on a bench, every time weeping. Every piece of food I was served brought a tear to my eye, and I ate slowly. When I was walking, I was tearless. But when I stopped, and sat, I wept. It felt uncontrollable and it felt foreign. These weren’t my normal sorts of tears. And it occurred to me: were these the tears that the voice had been afraid to shed? If the voice was made out of fear, then was it also made of sorrow? I stopped and sat and wept even more to find out. It felt important to find out.
And that led to smiling. One day, I started smiling at people from my perches. People smiled back. Every one of them. More weeping. More smiling. I think of myself as no stranger to smiling. But the Mexicans really love to smile. To catch an eye and honor it with a loving smile of recognition. As if to say, We’re all humans. We’re all in this together. In some way. Had those smiles been there for me all the time and I’d just forgotten how to stop to see and receive and give them? No wonder I had been weeping. What was Mexico City doing to me? This had never happened in any other city I’d visited or lived.
That’s when the hugging started. I felt this overwhelming gushing of love for humanity. Myself included. Every new person I met became an immediate friend and our interaction ended in a very mutual hug. The historian/anthropologist tour guide who took me to the Aztec pyramids of Teotihuacan and helped me feel the radical empathy of the ages and to see how much we really haven’t changed. The hotel manager who brought me chicken and rice soup when I was ill with extra broth in a little white pitcher. The artist who sold me ex votos, words on art, something I love and collect whenever I’m in Mexico. Ex votos are all about stopping to honor blessings, and in their case, to thank saints. She invited me to her studio for coffee. The man playing a classical guitar version of I Did it My Way on the terrace down the street, singing it directly into my eyes as if he knew it had been my theme song for years. My way. That’s how I’ve done it. The voice hasn’t liked that. But the voice…wasn’t there.
Instead, I felt this sort of prophetic urge, growing and growing inside me. I couldn’t stop. It was magnetic. Like I could feel Frida in her home, it got so that I could feel the smiles and hugs of strangers coming on, never mind the tears. And it felt like those people wanted smiles and hugs and maybe tears, too. Maybe they needed to spell themselves differently, too. Maybe they had big, mean, scared voices in their heads all the time, too, and maybe when they saw someone stopping and smiling, and even weeping, it gave them some sort of permission to not let it lord over them.
But one day, I had to do some unexpected work from my hotel room. And the voice saw an opening: What is your problem? Why are you crying? Why do you need to hug everybody? Do you know how stupid you look sitting there, smiling at strangers? You should have cut your losses and gone home. Back to work. You don’t need all this time in a big, polluted, dangerous city. You’re spending too much money. And on food? And museums? How wasteful. Go home. You’re acting like a delirious, spoiled brat, not a responsible adult. Plus, do you seriously believe that you are special enough that Frida freaking Kahlo came to you in a dream? Get over it. She didn’t.
But just as I was about to agree with the voice, something miraculous happened…and without me even trying! Because suddenly there was another voice there in that hotel room. Soft but stern. Loving and kind. Not unlike Frida’s voice in my dream. It said, Sweetheart, don’t listen to that mean, scared voice. Listen to this one. You are brave, finding your way around this huge city. You are brave to stop. To smile, and weep, and hug, publicly. You are doing exactly what you need to do. And that’s because you aren’t letting fear be your lord. What museum are you going to go to next? Or are you going to put your feet up and read a book? Or find a fountain and listen to its trickle? Or stop for a taco? Or not? Pop into that shop? Or not? Just one loving word of advice though: keeping staying away from your computer and your phone while you’re here. Keep stopping. Keep going slowly. And weeping. And smiling. And hugging. You are almost spelled differently. And when you go home, I will be your lord. I am you. The other voice…it’s time to let it go. It’s not you. Not anymore. Fear was never your friend. Love is the only lord.
Maybe I was closer than I thought to quieting that mean, scared voice once and for all.
SO. For you. My method to the madness: Go someplace very different from where you live. Follow the plot twists if they come. Take some time there. Stop and sit. Exile the mean, scared voice. Allow in the loving one. Smile and weep if you need to. Hug if you are moved to. Be part of the throng, wherever you are. Take your love seriously. It will spell you differently.
And then when you return:
For one day, every time you hear that mean, scared voice, (because back home…you most likely will)…replace its words with a loving response to its fear. Like a mother getting in the way of a bully, not by sending it to the principal, but by bringing it into her lovingly, and claiming the mic. But still acknowledging the voice’s fear. She’s speaking to both of you:
Sweetheart, I know you’re worried that you are going to be late. But right now, you’re on time. And if you end up being a few minutes late, that’s okay. The sky won’t fall.
Darling, comparing yourself to other people never works. Look at your individualism! Can you see it as the miracle that is? I can. I’ll see it for you until you can, too.
Look at what you’ve created and take a bow!
Enjoy the infatuation of your ideas. Don’t worry about the result. Bask in the process of co-creating with them!
You’re doing your best and it’s a beautiful thing. I am so proud of you.
It takes practice to cultivate this kind voice— this voice which is purely committed to self-preservation. This voice that takes her love seriously. And for me, the practice is almost constant. But I’m getting better and better at it. And not because it wields its fear-propelled bullying: You need to be better at being good to yourself!!! No. The new voice speaks in invitations and possibility. Could you lovingly move through your To Do list today? What would it take for you to feel good right now, even in this career challenge? I’m not going to pretend that I’ve loved the mean, scared voice into submission. Believe me: I haven’t. If I pretended, that wouldn’t serve you nor me. Would I have had this experience of inward and outward resplendent love toward humanity in the Galapagos? Likely for flora and fauna. But what I didn’t know that I needed was to fall madly in love with the human being. Myself included.
I do promise you this: while this new voice may be exceedingly kind…it’s no sucker and it’s no fool and it’s not going to punish you for being bad. This voice simply sees the true goodness of who you are and takes it seriously. Isn’t it time that you do the same?
If you want to find your heart language, consider investing in one of my 2024 Haven Writing Retreats in Montana. You do not have to be a writer to come. Just a seeker. And a human who longs to wander in your words. Learn your craft. Find your voice. Haven truly meets you where you need to be met. I’ve seen it change lives over and over again. Email: info@lauramunson.com to set up an intro call.
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