Does it feel like a "Hell, YES!"?

the exquisite art of listening and honoring your soul...

Brutto Restaurant, San Salvador

It wasn’t a “Hell, YES!” I wanted it to be.

I had checked my inner compass.

I had held out my hands and felt the choice in front of me. Was it the right one? I got a: “Yes.” I felt my energy pulled towards the so-called opportunity heading my way the next day.

And I use my inner compass. I have made big, life-changing decisions based on the sense I get from it.

And as I said, I was getting a “yes.”

But it just wasn’t the strong feeling I really like when I check my compass. So I kept checking. I kept asking myself different questions. I put the energy of the two choices in each of my hands and I kept feeling a pull towards my new “opportunity”.

The thing was, I had to feel the energy of the “opportunity” differently to get a reading.

I had to feel a bit deeper, into a different frequency band to find the pull towards my hand.

And whether that makes sense to you or not, I am pretty sure this will: I was trying to feel something. It didn’t feel as obvious as it would feel if it fit the bill of “good-decision-even-if-it-scares-me.”

And what choice was represented in that hand you may wonder? What earth shattering opportunity was I trying to feel into?

Well, this was about a car. A used car that an acquaintance was selling.

You see, I have been huddling up here in El Zonte for months now. Huddling is not exactly the right word. A better word is closer to snuggling. I have been snuggling into this little community.

I have avoided driving.

There are potholes out there and random stray dogs that sleep on the edge of the highway. As cars barrel down the road towards them, they leisurely open one eye and like a satiated male after good sex, appear to take time to smoke a cigarette before strolling off the street.

Those things scare me.

At night there are no street lights and there are cars here with headlights that make them look like police cars. But they are not. Cars with flashy light things that cause me to tense up with anxiety and wonder if I am doing something wrong?

My anxiety has nothing to do with this country.

In this country the police, who often come in male and female pairs, smile and wish me a good day. They give people directions when they are lost. They stand guard at the entrance to El Zonte on this vacation week, to make sure the peace is kept and the people here feel free and safe.

I love the police here.

But I lived most of my life in the United States and most of my police interactions had to do with high-testosterone males glaring at me through the open passenger window of my car and threatening me with a ticket. They often hid on the downhill side of a road near my house with the intent to “trap” people when the weight of the car combined with gravity would catapult it quickly over the too-low speed limit. The police were out to get people. And I imagine “the force” needed money.

Sometimes they hacked my phone and called for donations. I never resonated with giving them any money. I did meet a few of them who were helpful at times and mostly, they were just plain threatening.

It’s not like that here. And the police here haven’t asked me for money. But if they did, I would happily hand them a $20. They are healing my past police anxiety every time they smile at me with their sparkling brown eyes and “buenas-dias” me.

But I am a work-in-progress. I haven’t recovered from my US-induced police-anxiety enough to not get anxious when I see flashing lights behind my car. I haven’t learned this is a celebratory, expressive thing for some of the drivers here.

Then there are the traffic and the roundabouts.

When I am not strolling barefoot on the street here, soaking up negative ions and healthy sunshine, or sitting on my computer enjoying the AC, I may have to go into the city.

For this, I hire a taxi. This is usually an all-day event which forces me to practice my Spanish as most drivers are trying to learn English, and have had less time to hunker down with Duolingo than me. My language muscle is aching after a day of city errands and taxi-driver chatting.

But it is way, way better than driving on my own in the city.

The only thing I have seen close to what the roads are like in San Salvador is New York City. I only had to get through downtown New York in a car once, on the way to the airport and I wasn’t even driving.

However, as a passenger desperate to make her flight, I found myself leaning half way out the window and forcefully gesturing at an oncoming car in a desperate attempt to convince him to make room for us to squeeze into the lane in front of his car. There was a lot of yelling.

San Salvador is a little like this.

I haven’t seen people yelling yet, but I heard my friend got into a “fender-bender” with someone as they were having a car-staring standoff in one of the roundabouts. One of them got mad and bashed the other just a bit. You know, a “fender-bender” thing. No big deal. Most cars here are salvaged from the US and people get the dents hammered out for cheap.

Early on, I decided when I am ready to drive here, I will not drive in the city. And at night, only if I am desperate, as the unseen and unseeable potholes are just plain scary.

Now, please don’t get the wrong idea.

Money is pouring into El Salvador and they are putting it into roads. The road from the city to the beach is beautiful, smooth concrete lined with decorative blue and white lights that glow softly at night and are simply stunning.

I find the road work here inspiring and thrilling.

This country is one booming investment opportunity (and this is not advice…just what I see and tell myself frequently).

I feel ready now to embrace the adventure of driving with those two caveats. Not at night if at all possible, and not in the city.

But there are a lot of daylight hours and a delightful country just begging me to explore it. And did I mention those investment opportunities? Oh yeah, I did. Well, a few days ago I met a new friend at the farmer’s market who told me about a tiny tucked-away lake with just a few houses on it. I want to go see! Then there is the property he just bought with three rivers on it where he plans to build some kind of hydroelectric power. He said I could come check it out. Also, there are volcanoes to hike and hot springs.

There are organic farms I want to visit with coffee and cacao.

There is the Ruta de las Flores and cities up in the temperate climate there where I am told there is a nice hippy vibe, an abundance of European ex-pats, and a lot of flowers and greenery.

My goal is to get permanent residency here and that means I will have boots-on-the-ground in El Salvador for 8 months a year, for the next three years.

I need a car.

Which brings me back to where we started with my hands and checking the energy.

Buying a car here seems hard. New ones are much more expensive than in the US. Used ones are often salvaged. My new friend had the breaks stop working on her SUV. She had to pull the emergency brake. So then she got them fixed. Then they quit working again on a steep dirt road in the outback. Once again, the emergency brake saved her.

That would also scare me.

So, I went to the Toyota dealership in the city and checked out the new options. There was nothing that felt just-right and the deluxe options (which here means a diesel truck…don’t laugh…I am serious that that is like purchasing a Mercedes), were a bit large and daunting.

test drove this…no trucks available at the dealership right now, they are that popular

So, I started practicing the egg-thing I wrote about a few weeks ago. I sat on the beach and felt how I wanted to feel in this car I wanted. I felt the feeling in my body of having just the right car.

It wasn’t too hard as I loved my Toyota RAV4 I used to own. I know that I-love-my-car-and-feel-good-driving-it feeling.

So I did that for a few days as part of my meditation practice and wha-la! I got a text from a friend of a friend. She was selling her used, salvaged Jeep. She needed something bigger to fit her teen-aged son and all his friends and surfboards.

It seemed like the perfect car had fallen right into my lap. I was assured it had been checked thoroughly. My two mechanic-taxi driver friends were both familiar with it. It was a 2020. One of them didn’t like Jeeps, but he told me it would be great in his typically cryptic taxi-driver voice text to me: “It’s a 2020.”

Finally, I was going to test drive it. The seller told me lots of people had been contacting her about it and she assured me I would be first on the list to decide. Other friends warned me about how hard it was to find a good used car here. One had recommended I purchase a new Suzuki. I went on the website for the dealership in the city and the little jeep was marked as no longer available.

Desperation was subtly wafting my way (which probably made me a good target for anyone who wanted to sell to me).

When it came to this upcoming opportunity, I wanted to know before I even drove it, if this was going to be the right car for me. I am a bad-ass energy practitioner, I told myself. Why don’t I just feel it? Why don’t I check the energy so I will be ready to seal the deal the next day before the other car-shopping expat piranhas buy it out from under me (sorry and I have been looking at too many properties here I think).

So, I checked the energy and got a “yes” to my query. I felt a positive pull towards the hand I imagined held the energy of “buy the Jeep”. But I still felt nervous. Something didn’t feel a tiny bit right to me. I didn’t even put that into words in my brain but I can now. Now it seems easy to see.

It was not a “Hell, YES!” energy. It was a feeble yes. Which is kind of a maybe. Which is actually, now that I am looking at it all, a definite “NO!!! it is better to wait and see.”

I want to live my life from “Hell, YES!” If something isn’t a “Hell, YES!”, then I am likely not in my full integrity. I might be doing it anyway out of guilt, obligation, or a feeling of needing to help someone. I might be doing it because something in me says I should do it. That “should” energy could simply come from my social programming. And those are not reasons to do things.

Anyway, the car test driving day got off to a poor start. I skipped my early afternoon yoga practice as she said she would arrive to show me the car between 1 and 2 pm. I figured I would wait on yoga until we got back as I didn’t want to rush things. She finally showed up at 3.

This is when she had me get into the passenger seat. She told me she needed to get gas. I am not sure what the reasoning was exactly but she was going to let me drive it, just not right away.

So, I hopped in the passenger seat. She took off and started telling me all the great features of the car. Meanwhile, something was off. My head was jutting forward in the passenger seat and my back couldn’t quite make contact with the seat behind me. She wasn’t really noticing.

I turned and looked at the headrest. The top was angled strangely towards the front window.

I mentioned something to her and tried to fix it to no avail.

She was busy selling me on all the great features.

My body was hurting and I couldn’t get my mind off my head-jutting.

She mentioned getting gas again and told me that after we had enough, she would give the wheel to me.

Then she decided we had passed the gas station and needed to turn around.

I had seen nothing that looked like civilization, much less a gas station, but I waited to see where the hidden gem near El Zonte was located.

Soon, she sidled up next to a tienda, which is a small shack that sells things like soda, chips, and bananas if you are lucky. She informed me this is where we would get gas. I asked her how I could recognize it in the future. (My anxiety was increasing along with the tension in my neck). If I needed gas in El Salvador, and had to find it in places like this, driving might not be so easy.

She pointed at some words painted on a tire hanging outside, which said something in Spanish I took to mean tire repair shop (this tienda offered more than the regular drink-shopping, chip routine). The tire swung on a chain in front of me as a man walked out of the tienda carrying two plastic 1-gallon containers with pink liquid sloshing inside.

He stuck a funnel in her gas tank, which had no cover (she told me this was normal for a Jeep). Then he put a piece of cloth over the funnel and proceeded to pour the pink liquid into the car.

I don’t think I don’t need to go on much more.

There was a warning light that the airbags weren’t working in the back. She told me how they weren’t worth replacing in these salvaged cars.

We figured out how to fix the headrest on the passenger seat and it was more comfortable, but not amazing.

She pulled over near a small remote town, somewhere off the main highway, and I plopped myself in the driver’s seat. She warned me when giant, camouflaged speed bumps were coming up, as they weren’t painted well at all and were very hard to see.

I made a mental note about the speed bumps.

I managed not to get us airborne over one, although I would have if she hadn’t said anything. I remembered, with a sigh, that this Jeep had metal underneath to protect the undercarriage. I could see how that would definitely come in useful here.

The driver’s seat was uncomfortable.

I told myself it might be ok if I just adjusted it a little bit.

In the past, I have owned a car that affected my hamstring. I actually had to stop driving it. After that, I have become very selective when it comes to driver’s seats. It is no big deal when I am renting something and I actually hadn’t thought of the old issue in years.

But I was feeling a nudge again in my leg and my butt; they were both starting to feel unhappy.

I wondered if I got a sheepskin seat cover, maybe things would be OK?

That is what I do when my mind tries to make something ok that just isn’t.

The seller kept selling me on all the features and told me about how many people were waiting to see it. A few days before it had been three, but today it was two nearby and three more in the city.

We arrived back in El Zonte and she said I could let her know in the morning. She assured me I was first on the list.

I think it was clear to her that my “Hell, YES!” was not happening despite how much we both wanted it to be.

That is when I got back to my room and thought, “Terra, what would feel good to you? What would be easy? What do you really want?”

And I thought, I would really like a car with airbags that work, that isn’t salvaged, that is reliable, with really, really comfortable seats. And I want it to have some clearance and be big enough to take my friends on adventures with me.

I went back to browse the internet for new cars. A local mechanic I chatted with on my failed quest to find a 5pm exercise class told me Toyota and Nissan are the brands to get here. You can get parts for them.

So I and looked at Nissan’s website in the city and I saw a little crossover SUV. I was reading the specs when I saw something that stunned me. It mentioned that the seats had three massage settings.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” “Hell, YES!” Massage seats would be just right for me.

I imagined myself driving while getting a pedicure. Maybe this car can do it all? I don’t know.

I just know that I am going to the dealership and I am going to do some more test driving.

I can get a new car here. It might feel outrageous when I don’t own a house or have a garage, but that doesn’t have to stop me.

Massage seats were not even part of the reality I thought was possible.

But that is likely true for many things.

I can settle for “it feels pretty good and will work even though a part of me is a tiny bit unhappy but I don’t really feel that part and ‘yes’ is a way to just get this over with and I don’t want to have to work so hard and why should I try so hard when this is good enough? and what is wrong with me for feeling uncomfortable as I am lucky to have this opportunity? so I will override myself and push through and we got this baby and look at me go and I will just jam my ass into this uncomfortable seat and go on achey adventures and tell myself it is all fine and temporary and fun…..”

Or, I can say “NO!” to that old pattern and wonder…

What is a “Hell, YES!” for me?

I will go try out the massage seats and find out.

And I want drink holders too.

Easily accessible, well sized drink holders.

It will be fun.

I really am in no hurry.

Hurry is a good sign something is out of integrity.

Signing off from El Zonte….

I hope you find your grey areas and say “NO WAY” to them.

And then maybe you too want to know, “What is a ‘Hell YES!’ for me?”