The bottom line
By Joe Dispenza

Ah, Mexico! So far from heaven…so close to Texas.
—Adapted from an old saying

Inspired by Jim Karger’s excellent series of articles in these pages, comparing prices for goods and services in San Miguel with prices in selected cities in the US, I did some informal research on my own. For this survey, I was interested to learn about somewhat less tangible points of contrast.

Politeness/Attitude

A marked difference between here and there appeared in this category. Simple “pleases” and “thank-yous” would seem to be universal, but not so. In Houston, ordinary politeness took a backseat to a perfunctory personal acknowledgement (or none at all) in 95 percent of the cases I studied. On a scale from 1 to 100, the thrice-daily greetings of San Miguel (Buenos días, Buenas tardes, and Buenas noches) scored 98 against Houston’s non-verbal nod, which came in at only 5. In midtown Manhattan, no one I encountered would actually give me the time of day.

In San Miguel, a slender and shy young lady at the Plaza Cívica who handed me a bag of tamales to take home smiled and said, in Spanish, “At your service.” A geeky young man at a drive-up fast-food restaurant in Dallas asked me if I wanted fries with my meal-in-a-bag and when I said no, shrugged and slid his little window shut with a grunt.

In San Miguel, I received a heartfelt abrazo from a restaurant owner before I sat down to eat. In Phoenix, a teenage girl who looked as if she had eaten too many happy-meals, handed me a slice of pizza with a disgusted look on her face. When I smiled at her to try to get her to smile back at me, she threatened to call the manager.

Bottom line: In terms of plain politeness and lack of attitude, San Miguel came in with higher marks against most places in the US.

Stress Levels

Waiting to buy a ticket for a popular first-run movie in Westwood will take about an hour; waiting with a ticket for the doors to open at Teatro Ángela Peralta will take about as long.

I did a comparison of time spent in traffic between Santa Monica and Los Angeles International Airport, and a stretch of Ancha de San Antonio at midday in San Miguel. Of course, my stats are only relative because an auto trip from Santa Monica to LAX is now calculated not by the clock, but by the calendar—and a similar jaunt down the Ancha (a cruelly ironic name) from the Jardín to Mega, say, cannot be reckoned in actual time spent, only the rising impatience the driver feels while mouthing a Spanish slang word that means goat and rhymes with patrón.

The mitigating factor on the stress level index, however, is that in the United States, I actually had to go somewhere. In San Miguel, I did not.

Bottom line: When driving to the airport in the US, it is a good idea to listen to a stress-reduction tape; in San Miguel, it is best to park the car and get out and walk.

Values

Here there was something really meaty to compare. I graphed out a “living simply” scale and found that in San Miguel people are rooted in familiar traditions and the pleasures of extended-family life. The yearly round of religious feasts gives a depth and sense of wonder to the human experience. Here, happiness comes from being with others. Eating (blissfully) alone in a restaurant here recently, the waiter came up to me, patted my hand sympathetically, and asked if everything was okay.

People in Albuquerque, I found, were less interested in traditions, unless they were attached to the Super Bowl or the Pepsi Taste Test. In Amarillo, Texas, people were 95 percent more interested in juicy celebrity gossip, as opposed to the same percentage in San Miguel, who were interested in juicy family gossip.

For Christmas, children in San Miguel expect a few plastic toys. A child in Atlanta expects a US$2000 plasma flat-screen TV for her room and a US$450 cell phone that takes photos and holds the greatest pop hits from the last 50 years. My nephew in Ohio has asked Santa for a surveillance system.

Bottom line: Harmony, belonging, loyalty, beauty, balance, optimism—these appear to be highly valued in San Miguel. In Portland, San Francisco and St. Louis, shopping scored high.

Conclusion

My informal study ended with the determination that life in both the US and Mexico has its charms and its disenchantments. Some people here want to go there to live and earn money; likewise, some people there want to come here to live and, hopefully, save money. Most people there are pleased with where they are; most people here are quite content with where they are.

Bottom line: After all the charts, graphs and tables I compiled, it seemed best for me just to relax and try to be happy wherever I am.

Joseph Dispenza is the award-winning author of God On Your Own: Finding a Spiritual Path Outside Religion and a dozen other books. He is a co-founder of LifePath in San Miguel.