“I want to know what love is. I want you to show me.” The soft strains of the 1984 Foreigner ballad wafted from the pool cabana several stories below my room. The sun swan dived into the ocean, laying a golden carpet across the glittering bay, beside the purple silhouettes of mountains blanketed by clouds. Bougainvillea petals blushed and trembled in the warm breeze. The seduction had begun.

I had arrived here this morning, having arisen at 4am to board a small commuter plane to Dallas and then a two-hour flight to Puerto Vallarta in the Mexican state of Jalisco. The flight had gone smoothly, notwithstanding the nervous wife who clutched her husband’s hand across the aisle and bowed her head in prayer during takeoff, landing and any turbulence during the flight.

The purpose of my trip, 5 days and 4 nights in the Pacific resort town, had a special significance. I was here to relax and unwind after leaving my job of ten years and working continuously for the last fifteen years, rarely taking a break of more than a few days. This trip was unlike any other I had taken in that there was no pretense of cultural enrichment or cosmopolitan exploration. The purpose of this trip was pure sensuality — warm sun, blue water, pink flowers, fresh seafood, deep message.

I’ve never been a beach or a resort person. Really, I’m a bit of an ascetic at heart. I’ve always preferred the cultural and intellectual stimulation of big cities, especially the rainy and cold ones, to the lizard-like pursuits of resort life. I get bored spending hours and hours by a pool. I’d rather be reading classics than trashy beach novels. I’m largely immune to tanning. This monkish attitude has served me well, but this was a trip about reinvention.

It’s not that I expect five days of boogie-boarding and margarita-sipping to have a deep spiritual impact. In an ideal world, I would emerge like Don Draper from his meditation retreat or Tom Hanks from his castaway seclusion, a reborn man purged of demons and overflowing with inner peace and self-sufficiency. My actual goal is just to clear my mind. Not to think. Just to be. Low cognition. Pure sensation.

It’s not so easy to turn off one’s brain. Here I am at my keyboard, looking at the screen instead of the sunset behind it. Old habits die hard. But I have a week to get into the meandering rhythms of Pacific beach life. And so I spread my arms to embrace the sun that is now reddening and dipping into the sea and the glinting, bejeweled panorama that surrounds it. I want to know what love is. I want you to show me.