Live! Well, What the Heck Does That Mean?

What am I doing in South America? The answer: Living! Traveling , dancing tango, writing, making friends, learning Spanish, and embracing the mysteries of love.

Someone once asked me how I get to live this amazing life. “No se.” I don´t know.

During my first ten day visit to Buenos Aires to dance tango, a stranger looked me in the eye and said you don´t know how to live. Then she said, “Viva!” Live! I felt stunned, like she had spilled cold water on me. Live! What did she mean? Work, I knew. Helping others, check. Paying bills,  don´t like it, but okay. Make “to do” lists; doesn´t everyone? But live, what was that?

The gauntlet was thrown. Since 2008 and that trip, the purpose of my life has changed. I declared I would learn what it meant to live but I was a workaholic and needed detox. Daily, I challenge myself to do what I want.

On my quest, I milled among the hedonists in Buenos Aires, those  life-loving, stay up until 4AM Portenos were my guides. Coffee breaks, would be a way of life. Like them I took one at 10AM,  another  at 4 or 5PM. Chatting for 3 hours over lunch. Hey, I like this. No appointment book and of course, showing up late for parties. Why not? They do it.

So far, in the last couple of years, I lived in Buenos Aires 5 times, worked in Brazil and spent time with John of God, a spiritual healer, traveled to the amazing waters of Iguazu Falls, went on a car trip through the Grand Canyon like vistas of Northern Argentina, danced in tango halls in Buenos Aires, gave up work of any kind for 6 whole months. What did I experience on the inner plain? Well, the truth is I was struck dumb by my lack of inner space for being a non-achieving individual. One day at a time I live a day without efforting to prove my worth.

Next? I  have an apartment in Cuenca, Ecuador where I spent 3 months making friends, started a writers group, met shaman, hiked in the Andes at 13000 feet, stared at brown faces of indigeneous 90 years olds. Incredible? Maybe, but this is my extraordinary life is becoming norma..

Step one pack, step two leave, step three live, damn it!

Karla Steps Off

Karla Steps Off
In 2006, I wrote a book called Creating Magic in Midlife about reinventing yourself. And then I had to do it. I wanted to reinvent myself as a tango dancer in Buenos Aires. I wanted my year abroad. Easy breezy. Just do it! When I taught classes on reinventing yourself so many didn’t know what they wanted to do. I knew what I wanted to do and where I wanted to do it. When I thought about what it would take to make my dream come true, there were only two things I needed to do to make it happen.
Step one, pack.
Step two leave.
But it was 3 years after I wrote the book that I was on my way my first of two 6 month sabbaticals in Buenos Aires to learn tango. Before the first 6 month trip, I stewed and fretted in Santa Barbara, tried to make my life happy, and then I tried some more.
Then finally it hit me. The truth was I had to let go, to step off my ordinary life. When I faced myself, I saw I was dying a slow death without joy and meaning. I knew I really wasn’t living and actually I didn’t know how to live without work as my main activity. I needed to learn to live, not just be a worker bee. So I packed. Step one pack, step two. Leave. I had a fabulous, scary, exciting, dancing life for six action packed months.
Then I came “home” to Santa Barbara. I was miserable. Less and less could I live the worker bee life? I felt worse and worse. That life that didn’t work for me anymore was even more empty and desolate.
So, I left for a second 6 months In Buenos Aires
Then finally after returning to the States for one more try, I packed up and left. It is now 2010. And I can say, I found step three. Live!

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