Lessons From the Playa (Burning Man)

We got back home at 6am Tuesday morning. It’s not what I would have chosen if I could have picked a time to arrive home, and yet it turned out to be the perfect time.

Had we left at 7p on Sunday night (before the Temple burn), we would have sat in traffic for at least 3 hours and possibly longer because lots of other people had that same idea. Then, we could have gotten stuck in the traffic caused by fires in Sacramento and possibly arrived home about 18 hours later at around 1p on Monday. That would have been right in the middle of the Hermosa Beach Labor Day beach festival and finding parking would have been a massive, stressful challenge.

While I thought I wanted to leave at 7p, the Universe knew what I really needed and put up one barrier after another that kept us from leaving until 9:30a on Monday morning and not arriving back to Los Angeles until 6a on Tuesday morning. We had started packing to leave on Sunday around 10a, so it felt like 3 days of traveling. But, it turned out perfect.

There was no traffic at all for the 2nd half of the trip. I got home and my assistant Corey came over a few hours later and began unloading so that by the time I woke up at 10am from my nap, he already had half the RV cleaned out. That couldn’t have happened on Monday because it was Labor Day and he was off. Plus, the RV owner is so cool, I’m not even getting charged for the extra day.

That’s how the Playa is. It’s how life is.

There were many things that occurred throughout the trip, which I wouldn’t have chosen, if given the choice and yet each of them preceded the most amazing experiences that followed, which led me to this perfect moment wiser and less in fear than before.

The more I can surrender into the unexpected, the more easily I can get to where I’m going, which always turns out to be where I wanted to go.

That’s not to stay to not plan and just go with the flow by any means. Knowing what you want and writing that down (otherwise known as planning) is one of the best ways I know of to enjoy the journey with the least amount of drama and pain possible. Plus, once you’ve gotten that clarity of desire in your mind, you’ve got to be willing to try every path to get there and let go of your insistence on how it happen. Just trust in God and know that it will.

You can go with the flow with singled minded focus on the end and surrender to what happens between where you are and where you want to go.

At the end of the day, I’m sitting here and in this moment everyone is perfect. The RV has been cleaned and picked up. I’ve gotten through about half my emails. I’m chilling on the couch with my honey. And I’m going to take advantage of the TV being out to go to bed with him now.