Day 266 – Allow yourself…

I'm stunned. As soon as I allowed myself to not like Malaysia and not feel bad about not liking it, the country opened up and finally invited me to come in and feel comfortable. Today I felt all the emotions that I really wanted to feel towards this beauty from the very beginning: admiration, excitement, awe, peace of mind.

The day started with another yoga session at a white sand beach overlooking slightly nervous turquoise sea. I cannot imagine doing yoga in a room anymore. It is so much more expansive en plein air. Even if all you are trying to get from yoga is a little bit of muscles, you cannot help but feel that you are part of some mystic presence when you are stretching toward the sea. It's an unparalleled sensation, really. The question is, what will I do back in NYC without the sea? I have to figure out how to move this mystic presence with me, I guess…

After a leisurely lunch we set out on a Proboscis Monkey "hunt". Those long-nosed monkeys are supposed to be unbelievably cute and we were all super excited to look for them from our little boat along the river banks. We saw many, but unfortunately none of them showed off their main feature – the long nose! It was so funny: we saw them jumping, quietly sitting, eating, sleeping, but in all the poses they managed to masterfully cover their nose. Kudos to those enthusiast photographers who sit day and night on a mangrove tree patiently waiting for their majesty the nose to appear. Thanks to them at least we know how those funny creatures really look like.

Some of us were almost ready to get frustrated by our half-failed mission, but all of a sudden the sun started setting and the magnificence of this scene immediately made us forget that there can be any issues in this beautiful beautiful world…

And for the grand finale of my "finally loving Malaysia day" we went back to the river after dinner for another fireflies show. I don't know how it can get better than that, but I'm sure life will prove me wrong and present yet another awesome surprise to me very-very soon.

So the moral of the story for me is (however confusing): allow yourself to feel whatever you feel without feeling guilty that you are not feeling what you are supposed to feel, and all of a sudden you will feel free and able to really appreciate everything around you.