The Sweet Spot
General Luna, Philippines
The heat clings like a low-grade fever. Early mornings and evenings are the most welcoming, blue and golden, when the ocean beckons devoted wave riders to rejoice in her highs and lows.
People smile at you, not because they know your name, but because they know your face, and that is enough.
Legends of Cloud 9, the surfing glory of Siargao, and all derivatives of local gossip, are ripe for consumption, much like the abundance of coconuts that sate dehydrated sunworshippers.
And when the intense midday glare acquiesces to a gentler dusk, nature’s sigh of contentment is carried by the breeze, a soothing bedtime panacea for the spirit.
What is remarkable in General Luna is the unremarkable. Sandy streets. Local shops. Bare feet. Motorbikes with surfboard rack appendages. The intersection and integration of locals and expats. Community.
Whenever I land in a new place, I connect with the energy: first through observation, then through participation. What language does it speak? What does it say?
And if there is an invitation, I lean in.
This is how you come to know a place. You lean in. Sometimes this is quiet, sometimes this is loud.
General Luna is the kind of place that asks you to stay, without saying a word. There is no overthinking; like the ocean, there is a natural affinity toward fluidity that embraces simplicity, teaches presence and honors the elements.
What I found, with sand between my bed sheets and a wax-encrusted longboard, is not perfection - problems live here too; unemployment, lack of educational opportunities, recreational drugs - but a sense of community. And not just a community created and experienced as an expat bubble, but one by the locals for the locals, with an invitation to foreigners to lean in.
What we are all seeking is community. A place that calls to us, that invites us to stay for a while, to feel at home; that is warm and accepting. A place where love lives.
This sense of community was particularly apparent during a Sunday church service, which the owner of my guesthouse, who also happens to minister to his community, invited several of us to experience.
The unbridled joy, singing, dancing and prayers left me brushing unexpected tears from my cheeks. Not because of the words spoken, but because of the expansion in my heart.
What I have learned over the years and in many different ways, is that something does not have to be your brand of something to know that love lives there.
Love is alive wherever it is alive, within structured walls or endless oceans; wherever laughter, hope, Spirit and God, whoever he or she is, reside.
In surf, the sweet spot is the place on the board where there is balance, an equal amount of weight and volume on all sides.
In life, the sweet spot is finding that equanimity within yourself and community. That place where love lives.
