Paciencia

Turning 76, Embracing Gridlock, and Finding Magic in the Mayhem

Last week, I turned 76 — three-quarters of a century plus one. The number feels both weightless and heavy, morning mist that carries the scent of all the years behind it. We usually celebrate my birthday in Mexico City, and once again, we found excellent food, electric energy, and a city whose scale still staggers the mind — but this time, something deeper stirred.

Big cities tend to energize me, especially those rich in culture and humanity. But at this stage of my life, I prefer a short immersion rather than an extended stay in the chaos. Time has taught me the difference between stimulation and overwhelm, between adventure and exhaustion. At 76, I choose my battles more carefully — not from fear, but from wisdom earned through decades of beautiful mistakes.

Guanajuato, where I now live, sits tucked in the mountains of central Mexico, just four hours from the capital — and it feels another world entirely. Greater Mexico City holds around 21 million people. Guanajuato? About 190,000. That difference feels less than a gap and more the space between a whisper and a shout, between solitude and cacophony.

What keeps me grounded here stems not only from the calm, but also from the people. Kindness shows up everywhere, but here it arrives with joy, grit, and a natural warmth — extended to both friends and strangers. At my age, I recognize this kindness as precious as water in the desert. Each gentle gesture reminds me that humanity endures, that connection transcends language, that growing older can mean growing into grace.

Every visit to Mexico City brings a new adventure. Over time, I've learned to welcome the unpredictable rhythm of this vast, pulsing metropolis. Mexico City doesn't invite control — it dares you to surrender. And at 76, surrender feels less than defeat and more coming home to yourself.

Especially true during Mercury in retrograde, which, of course, coincided with our trip. For those unfamiliar, Mercury retrograde refers to an astrological season that skeptics love to mock — until their phones glitch, their hotel "forgets" their reservation, or their plans fall apart as wet tissue. During this period, the universe seems to toss banana peels beneath your feet just to see if you'll laugh or curse. I've learned to laugh. Life's too short, and too long, for anything else.

This marked our fourth return since moving to Mexico, and despite our urban experience, this time we received the full Mercury-in-retrograde experience. A quick ten-minute Uber turned into a one-hour still life. Not a slow crawl — a full stop. The driver sighed, shrugged, and delivered the gospel: in Mexico City, weekday traffic doesn't ebb and flow. It simply remains — constant, omnipresent, a metaphysical black hole that devours time as a hungry god.

But that frozen hour turned out to contain quiet magic. Our driver spoke some English. We spoke some Spanish. Grammar took a backseat to curiosity, laughter, and shared humanity. In those trapped moments, I felt something I'd forgotten in my hurried younger years — the profound intimacy of strangers connecting across the void of difference.

We traded stories about life. He spoke of his family and his daughter's graduation, his voice softening with pride that needs no translation. We spoke of Guanajuato — its mountain air, its calm spirit, the gratitude we feel for living there. I watched his eyes light up when we mentioned the sunset views from our terrace, and I realized that beauty shared multiplies, love divided among children.

Time softened. Outside the car, honking and gridlock continued. Inside, we no longer felt strangers — just people sharing a moment, sincere and surprising. At 76, these moments matter more. They feel gifts from a universe that rarely slows down long enough to unwrap.

Mexico has a way of delivering those moments. Even in gridlock, even when words fumble and directions blur, connection still finds a way in. And when it does, it lingers as perfume on an old sweater, laughter echoing in empty rooms.

Mexico City forces you to slow down. It shows you details you might otherwise miss — a mural on a peeling wall that tells stories of revolution and hope, a grandmother's weathered hands placing a tamal in a child's eager palms, a patch of sky floating between towers as a promise of something larger than concrete and steel. The chaos clears space for clarity, if you pay attention. If you remember that paying attention might be life's most underrated skill.

Then there's the metro. Fast. Affordable. Safe — mostly. We've used it before. It works. But navigating the tangle feels trying to read sheet music in a foreign key, solving a puzzle where the pieces keep shifting shape. Signs appear in Spanish (as they should), and while locals move with fluid grace born of daily practice, visitors hesitate, squint, guess, and eventually follow someone who looks confident. Humbling, yes — and part of the experience that teaches us how little we truly control.

Mexico City demands presence. You don't drift through it. You navigate it actively, with every sense awakened. You look up at architecture that spans centuries. You listen to the symphony of vendors calling, children laughing, life insisting on itself. You adapt to rhythms older than your understanding. You embrace the delays, the detours, the unsanded edges that make a place real rather than perfect. In doing so, you feel the heartbeat of the place — relentless, sprawling, vibrant, magnificently imperfect.

And strangely, that chaos brings you back to yourself. To the person who learned, somewhere along the way, that fighting the current only exhausts you, while floating with it might carry you somewhere beautiful.

The word that captures this lesson: paciencia. Patience. Not passive waiting, but active acceptance of life's refusal to follow our schedules.

Even with GPS, Mexico City unfolds as a dream dreamt by a slightly disoriented but well-meaning god. Streets bend, double, disappear as memories you can't quite grasp. One wrong digit or an autocorrected address, and suddenly you find yourself not at the café in Roma Norte, but outside a tire warehouse in a neighborhood filled with barking dogs and street names missing vowels, as a poem written by someone who forgot the rules of grammar but remembered the music of words.

You probably won't feel unsafe. Just… displaced. Temporarily misplaced in the grand library of human experience. And if you start walking with false confidence — "It's only a few blocks, I'll figure it out"— welcome to your Fellini phase, your personal magical realism. The buildings stretch taller, reaching toward secrets only they understand. Shadows lean longer, whispering stories of all who walked here before. Every turn reveals another oddity: a half-finished mariachi rehearsal that sounds joy learning its name, a man selling one shoe (and somehow this makes perfect sense), a parade no one scheduled but everyone needs. You no longer walk — you drift through a surrealist film laced with exhaust fumes and unexpected poetry.

The city's layout contributes to this dream logic. Its colonias (neighborhoods) each possess a distinct personality — some echo Brooklyn's artistic rebellion, others Blade Runner's neon-lit future, still others the colonial past's elegant ghosts. A few feel untouched since time began, holding secrets in their cobblestones. When lost, they blur into a shuffled tarot deck of urban archetypes, each one asking: Who do you become when you don't know where you're going?

But always, there's help. Mexicans, without exaggeration, rank among the world's friendliest people. So friendly, in fact, they'd rather confidently give you the wrong directions than admit uncertainty. It doesn't stem from deception — but hope, the beautiful human hope that maybe, somehow, they can make your journey easier. "Sí señor, dos cuadras y a la izquierda" ("two blocks and to the left") feels better than "no tengo ni idea." Even if your destination lies five miles in the opposite direction. Even if they're sending you toward adventure instead of your intended lunch.

So you follow their optimism, say thanks with a heart full of gratitude for the attempt, and twenty minutes later you find yourself locking eyes again with the same churro vendor, who now greets you as an old friend returning from a brief but necessary pilgrimage through confusion.

Eventually, you get where you intended. Maybe by fate, maybe by ride-share, maybe by a stranger's kindness that reminds you why faith in humanity persists despite everything. And when you finally sit down with your matcha, your mole, or your mezcal, a strange satisfaction settles in — deeper than relief, richer than accomplishment. You didn't simply arrive — you earned your arrival through surrender, through accepting help, through allowing yourself to become briefly lost in order to be found. And that makes the flavor sweeter, honey earned from your own bees.

Speaking of flavor, the sidewalk might contain Mexico's truest cathedral: street food. Here lies worship without ceremony, communion without ritual — just the sacred act of nourishment shared among strangers who understand hunger as humanity's great equalizer.

This joy doesn't come wrapped in linens or plated on porcelain. It rises from fire, smoke, and instinct passed down through generations of hands that knew how to transform simple ingredients into miracles. It announces itself in the air — charred meat carrying stories of celebration, citrus bright as childhood laughter, chilies that wake sleeping senses, grease that forgives all dietary sins, cilantro fresh as morning hope. It doesn't whisper politely. It sings boldly, demanding attention as love, as life itself.

A proper taco doesn't resemble the ground beef-and-crunchy shell myth of American childhoods. This taco starts with a handmade corn tortilla, warm and soft as a mother's embrace, cupping carnitas that surrendered slowly to fire, or carne asada that knew one perfect moment on the grill, or al pastor sliced from a spinning tower beneath a caramelized pineapple — the whole scene a ballet of flame and knife and timing learned through years of daily practice.

At the salsa bar — the altar where pilgrims compose their prayers — you create your flavor ritual: fiery chile de árbol that burns with passion, soothing avocado green as hope, crunchy radish sharp as truth, lime that brightens everything it touches through forgiveness. Salsa drips. Joy follows. Stains happen. No one minds because beauty often leaves marks.

Elotes come grilled and slathered with mayo, cheese, chili, and lime — each ear a celebration of corn's ancient promise to sustain us. Esquites bring the same corn to a cup, ready to eat with a spoon and a smile while standing among strangers who share your temporary happiness. Tostadas, sopes, huaraches — each a sculpture of indulgence, proof that poverty never stopped creativity, that limitation often births innovation. Tamales steamed in leaves as gifts from the earth itself, quesadillas filled with squash blossoms delicate as sunset or huitlacoche — Mexico's earthy, funky, revered corn fungus that teaches us to find treasure in what others discard.

And the drinks? Horchata with cinnamon that tastes comfort distilled into liquid. Jamaica the color of sunset and twice as beautiful. Tepache, fermented pineapple kissed with funk and mystery, reminding you that time transforms everything, usually for the better.

You eat standing up, elbow to elbow with strangers who stop being strangers somewhere between the first bite and the last drop of lime. You talk in broken languages that somehow communicate perfectly. You laugh at jokes you don't understand but feel in your bones. You stain your shirt with salsa and stories. No one minds because everyone understands that good food, good love, leaves evidence.

In that moment, you exist in communion — not religious, but human. Sacred because shared. At 76, I recognize these moments as life's true currency, worth more than any achievement, any accumulation, any anxious plan for tomorrow.

Maybe turning 76 means more than candles and cake. Maybe it means learning — again and again — to let life unfold as a flower that blooms in its own time. To get lost and keep walking, trusting that all paths lead somewhere worth being. To not understand everything and keep laughing anyway, because laughter might be prayer by another name. To try new things without needing names for them, because wonder doesn't require vocabulary.

To stay curious when the world insists on cynicism. To stay open when experience counsels protection. To stay human when humanity feels hard.

In Mexico City, nothing follows the plan — and somehow, that becomes the best plan of all. Everything happens exactly as it should, in ways you never could have imagined, better than anything you might have controlled. You leave full in ways that have nothing to do with food. Changed in ways that have everything to do with remembering who you've always been beneath the accumulated years. If you're lucky, you leave with salsa on your shirt and a story worth telling — but more than that, you leave with proof that at any age, adventure awaits those brave enough to get beautifully lost.

At 76, I understand that getting lost might be the only way to find what you didn't know you were looking for.

Hasta la próxima, CDMX. Gracias por todo — for the chaos and the calm, for the confusion and the clarity, for reminding an old man that wonder never expires, that every day offers chances to fall in love again with this strange, magnificent, utterly unpredictable gift called life.

+____+