How to go from happy to stupid in 5 seconds

Oh boy! What a great day I had. And do I feel completely stupid.

Let me explain.

Last night I arrived in Tel Aviv. After a night in crappy hotel (which is kind of a tough adjustment after the heartwarming couchsurfing experience I had in Athens) I had coffee in Tel Aviv and took a taxi to the aikido dojo of Miles Kessler in the afternoon.

After a chat I helped prepare the dojo because there was a shaman visiting. He told wonderful stories about his spiritual path and his connection to Mother Earth. Fascinating to hear about the potential of human consciousness. I mean, we can all realize our shamanistic capacities and have dreams and visions like him.

A well-known Kabbalah teacher introduced the shaman. I took my chances and asked if it was ok if I interviewed both of them for my book. There was also a female tantra teacher and I asked her too. Everybody agreed. So I was feeling very happy and successful. Wow.. I met four amazing people on one day, the first real day of my quest in Israel.

Then everything shifted.

I told Ohad, the Kaballah teacher about my plans to go to Lebanon after Israel. My idea was to go by bus. Miles had told me that I could go easily through Jordan to Beirut when I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago. “Oh really, is that possible?” said Ohad. “There is no border between Jordan and Lebanon, you have to go through Syria”. The ground sunk from under my feet. I NEVER looked at a map myself. I just assumed that what Miles said was correct. Every sane person in the world looks at the map before he goes on a journey around the world, especially when you go to countries like Lebanon and Israel. I feel so, so stupid.

Anyway, we will have to figure this out the coming days. It is not entirely unthinkable that there are no commercial buses going through a country that is caught in a civil war. I can’t go directly from Israel to Lebanon. I don’t know the solution yet. And what I need to look at is what causes this massively ignorant behavior. What on earth makes me so stupid? It is not the first time, mind you. I have flown to Curacao with the idea that we could easily take a fishing boat to Venezuela. The fishermen looked at us as if we had fallen out of a tree.

I feel embarrassment and self-hatred but it is also so immensely ignorant that I cannot not laugh about myself. This is so ridiculous, it must turn into a good story. And it certainly created new tags for my tag cloud.

To be continued.

UPDATE: Where would I be without friends? Seems that it is possible to fly from Jordan to Libanon. Cool, I will get to see Jordan too.