365 Reasons I Love Costa Rica
Forever Young
Bob Dylan on growing young……
May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.
May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.
May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young.
Letting Go – Round 2
Posted this back in July 2011, but then it was all bluster and bluff (or, better yet, bullshit), this time all business….
I have the hardest time doing that…..uh, letting go. I would rather ride my problems into submission like a bronco-buster on the back of a wild mustang. Sometimes that approach can leave you with a few broken bones, or in my case, an extremely broken ego. Hanging on for dear life is the surest way to assure that the suffering will last just a little longer than it really needs to. So why not just let go? The future might just be a brighter place if you do. Oh sure, there will be more but different problems to come. That’s just the ebb and flow of life….one day you’re up the next day you’re down….sounds a bit manic, but it is what it is.
Of course letting go can be a scary thing. What will happen to me if I do? Where will the shifting winds of life blow me? Will I like it there? Well, do you like it here? Then why not give it a try? I guess life becomes a cyclical series of attempts to hang on to the good and let go of the bad. Problem comes when we can’t seem to distinguish one from the other (good from bad, that is). That’s been my case lately. I believe I have been trying to convince myself that what was bad and unhealthy, was good and worth hanging onto. Yesterday I made a decision. And that decision was to let go…for good (or bad). Para bien o para mal, se terminó, as Arjona sings. Letting go allows the cycle of life to continue its proper course. When we try to upset that course by hanging on too long, guess what happens….suffering. Extend that a bit longer……depression. A bit longer…..insane asylum. I really don’t want to go to any of those places, so para bien o para mal, se terminó. There will still be that lingering doubt that keeps nagging. Are you sure? Or, that sentimental hogwash that keeps reminding us of all the “good” times. Well those times are history and living in the past does not generally make for a compelling future. Letting go can be refreshing if we just adopt a bit of an adventurous spirit. What lies around the corner might just be pretty nice. It might be better than what you let go of. Imagine that! Could the universe be preparing something really good for you and was just waiting for you to take the bold step forward into the dark void of the unknown? Here’s my advice: Go ahead, take it and don’t look back.
The Most Beautiful Place on Earth?
My nephew-in-law, Sebas, visited me during Semana Santa and we had a week filled with surfing, horse-back riding and adventure. One afternoon, after hiking around in Chirripo National Park that morning, we set out in La Poderosa to discover the best way to see the Diamante waterfall, supposedly the highest in Costa Rica at 600 feet. Yuri and I had gotten close once before by walking across the rocks of the river Diamante, but we didn’t quite make it all the way. I had heard there was a better way to get there, so Sebas and I were determined to find it. We ended up on a very ugly dirt road that led to nowhere. It was passable since we were still in the dry season, but I can imagine how bad it could get during the rains. We doubled back and tried another route that also led to a somewhat dead end where private property began that was guarded by an “aguja”, or metallic barrier. We were pretty much in the middle of the jungle with no one around so we decided to park the car and investigate. We passed under the aguja and walked into the jungle across a fairly well maintained road. About a half kilometer in we stumbled across a cleared plot of land that set up high and offered the absolute perfect view of the Diamante fall that we had been looking for. And it was every bit as amazing as I had envisioned. This is the end of the dry season so the rivers are low, but I can imagine how powerful a view this could be after it has been raining a month. The sun was getting low and on the other side of the property was a stunning view of the sunset over the Pacific ocean. You could even see the point of the Manuel Antonio National Park in the distance. It was the most picture perfect place that I believe I have seen in all of Costa Rica. And there was absolutely no one for miles around, other than a few grazing cows that stared at us blankly as if were strange invaders into their own little private paradise. I don’t know who owns this property, but they really have something special. It may not be the most beautiful place on earth, but it is as beautiful as anything my eyes have had the privilege to see. There is a special brand of calm and peacefulness that you feel in your soul when you confront such a spectacular display of raw nature.
Live Like You Were Dying
Why does it take near death experiences, or stuff that really shakes things up, to get us humans to live? I don’t mean live in the sense of maintaining some semblance of a sentient state, preferably above ground, but live in the sense of not doing it according to the demands and expectations of any one or thing else. Of course, I guess the opposite can happen as well. We can just shut down altogether…a less than sentient state called depression. But at least even then we are not succumbing to a robotic existence. The bible tells us to “go to the ant, you sluggard, consider its ways and be wise.” But I don’t want to live like an ant. Ants are industrious little creatures, but you never see one veering off the path….at least not outside of a Disney movie. They all march in lockstep according to the expectations of their being, well, ants. And what is the expectation of our being, well, humans? To get up, be industrious in order to maintain our stuff, then go to bed, only to repeat the cycle over and over until it becomes the life of an honest, decent, hardworking guy or girl. A person who did their duty. Is that really living? Doing your duty? And who gets to define my duty? The U.S. government? My employer? My family? The pastor of my church? Some book that was written 2,000 years ago by dubious sources? Or, Me? Getting back to the title of this post…again, it seems we need to come to grips with the finite sense of our being before we can reach for the infinite possibilities of it.
A Relaxed Un-Consciousness
Mine has been anything but lately. If you believe in the concept of luck, it has been noticeably absent from my life in the last few months. Ah, woe is me. Here I am living in sheer paradise and lamenting about how bad things are. Don’t you feel sorry for me? I think it all comes down to maintaining the title of this post…a relaxed un-consciousness. That still small voice in my head has been blabbering on incessantly due to recent unfortuitous (by my conscious and worldly interpretation) events in my life. So how do you relax the sucker? Better question, how do you get it to shut the f*ck up? Alcohol doesn’t seem to do the trick. My therapist suggested other forms of medication, but popping pills has never been very appealing to me. Learning to control the unconscious mind may be the one true path to happiness. Because no matter who you are, bad shit will happen. At least bad in the sense of being temporally painful. And when it does, the unconscious blabber-box tends to kick in full force. Our unconscious mind is like one of those “Paso Finos” of Colombia….it is a beautiful and powerful animal, but sometimes can be difficult to rein in. The problem is that what goes on in the unconscious has a direct linear effect on the conscious (and, not so paradoxically, vice versa). The side of the bed I get up on in the morning is directly related to those messages (call them dreams) that my unconscious was feeding me all night. But shutting up the unconscious mind is really no option at all and neither should it be. It is the most powerful force that links us to the universal intelligence, that reservoir of knowledge and wisdom that has been available to us since the beginning. So, why would you want to shut it up? I believe the better way is to learn how to harness its power for our good and for the “good” of why we’re here in the first place. If we can do that, we will certainly feel a lot better.
Organized Religion
Organized religion to me seems much like team sports. We have our favorite teams that we root for. We wear their colors and paste their bumper stickers on our cars. We go to rallies and root for our team’s success and for the demise of those “other guys.” We only really like to associate with other team members or fans. The difference between religion and sports is in the extent to which team members will go to further the aims of the team…which in the case of organized religion, are generally world dominance. Because team members believe that they alone stand for what is good, right and truthful and that other teams are evil and false, they are more than happy to either convert them or kill them. Because, after all, God is on our team. But is he really? Why would God choose teams and even if he would, why would HE choose yours?? Since God is above the fray (after all He created it for His bemusement) wouldn’t he rather tend to sit back and play the role of “neutral sportscaster?” Why would HE get down and dirty for a particular team? I just don’t get it. In that sense maybe the true path to knowing Him is to stay off any particular team. That does not mean that I am thereby rooting for the A-team (the “Agnostic” team). I don’t because I do in fact wholly believe in the existence of God….I just have a hard time believing he takes sides. What do you think?
My Life
I have one of those sticky notes on my bathroom mirror that reads “I wonder how my life will turn out today?” The intended emphasis is wonder…the wonder-ment of life. But tonight I read it differently. Tonight what spoke to me is a sense of possession. In our Western capitalistic society we are all too familiar with possession, aren’t we? That is what life is all about…possessing things. But sometimes things we think we possess, we really don’t at all. We have a home until the bank takes it. We have our health until disease takes it. We have our looks until age takes it. We have our spouses until separation, divorce, or death takes them. We have our children until adulthood takes them. We have our hopes and dreams until disillusionment takes them. So, what is it that we are really capable of possessing in this life of ours? That brings me back to my little sticky note….this life that I have is indeed mine…it truly is “my life.” That is so easy to miss, isn’t it? We are persuaded throughout our lives that we don’t really possess them at all….that is, our very lives. Our work, our kids, our spouses, our debts, our commitments, our infirmities are the real possessors of our lives. But it really isn’t so. My life is mine…it is the one thing that is truly mine. The proof is in the fact that it is solely my decisions that control the direction of my life. You really can’t say that about anything else. I determine the quality, or lack thereof, of my life. So I have made a decision to do just that. That is, to stop obsessing about what I can’t possess and fully take ownership of what I can…my life.
When You’re Strange
“When you’re strange, no one remembers your name,” sang Jim Morrison. Right now, I feel dreadfully strange, for all the reasons Morrison mentions in that strange song. He was of course an expert on the topic of strangeness. This place, Perez Zeledon, is strange….strangely exotic. I don’t quite know what to make of it. It is the gateway to the wild frontier of Costa Rica’s southern zone….a place where jaguars roam the jungles and macaws color the sky. Every morning I wake, not to the sound of flagellating jake-brakes, but the symphony of the chicharas. I have heard tales of a waterfall nearby that approaches 1,000 feet in height. Can it all be true? Have I really found paradise? I don’t know, but in this moment, it all seems a bit strange. I guess I have just been living in the city too long and I am experiencing a bout of urban withdrawal (not to mention withdrawal from any meaningful human to human relationship). And as Morrison put it “People are strange when you’re a stranger. Faces look ugly when you’re alone. Women seem wicked when you’re unwanted. Streets are uneven when you’re down.” That last part is really quite poignant, because I turned the crap out of my ankle walking down the street the other night (blame it on the “uneven” street, or one too many shots of Flor de Caña??). How long will I be a stranger? When will all these beautiful women seem less than wicked? I guess only time will tell, along with a good therapist. So far, the “Doors” of my perception remain a bit sullied.
Zuckerberged
The world owes a deep debt of gratitude to Mark Elliot Zuckerberg. Just in case you have been cryogenically frozen for the past ten years or so, Zuckerberg is the inventor of Facebook and also the world’s youngest billionaire. What’s Facebook you ask? Oh yea, that is a web site that allows you to pursue a cyberspacial existence in parallel with your actual existence. In some extreme cases those two can merge and you actually enter into the matrix. Zuckerberg’s invention stemmed from his penchant for cyber-stalking hot chicks at his almost alma mater, Harvard University. So he set about inventing a medium that would make cyber-stalking easy for the rest of us non-geek types. Early on he entered into a partnership with the Winklevoss twins, but since they were “jocks” and really didn’t need a cyber-stalking tool, he decided to show that he really was one by co-opting the entire venture for himself. And the rest as they say, is cyber-history. Why do we owe such a deep sense of gratitude to this young man? Because he gave us a new drug to medicate ourselves into non-reality…..Facebook. The whole world is now addicted to this new cyber-opiate. No age group is immune…..from 10 to 10 times 10, people are Facebooking and becoming wholly Zuckerberged in the process. And Mark, well he just keeps on laughing his way to the bank. Now we even have the ability to place our entire lives online via Facebook’s new “timeline” format. We even have Facebook separations whereby boyfriends, girlfriends and spouses can de-friend their mates and carry on their cyber-lives in a cyber-secretive way. Doesn’t this all sound a bit creepy? I love the movie The Matrix, but I don’t want to actually live in it…..do you? The coolest thing about The Matrix was Keanu Reeves ability to fly around, but that was reserved for The One. I am sure in the Facebook generated matrix, that role will be for Zuckerberg himself. Remember, he was the only one in the room smart enough to have invented it. Well, I wonder if he had been in the room at Nasa when they brought Apollo 13 back to earth….would he have been the smartest in that one too? After all, Pablo Escobar invented cocaine trafficking, but that doesn’t necessarily make him Einstein, now does it? I am all for the dissemination of ideas and the whole social media phenomenon has greatly facilitated that. But this Facebook thing may be getting out of hand….don’t you think??
From Test to Testimony
Consider the following string of events: I begin the year in Colombia with “family” only to return first and learn that my “wife” has no intentions of ever returning; I move to a new place where I know no one, my only companion being Wilson, and then he up and vanishes; I get a $400 parking ticket and my license plates are taken from my car in my new paradise; I come down with a case of “gripe de Perez.” Thankfully, at this moment, it ends there. I am thinking this morning, is this all just a test? If so, who is administering it and why is he, she, or it so sadistic?? Often it seems, life is nothing more than a Time for us to Endure really Serious (and others no so) Trials. So, what does that make us, victims of life? Yes, poor little ones, we are all just pitiful minions being cast to and fro by the rough hands of father fate. I for one don’t believe that garbage for a moment. We are only victims as long as we act like ones. Which is exactly what this freakin “chatterbox” keeps telling me to do. Why is it that this little voice inside our brains is so full of negativity? On and on it drones, day and night, until we get to the point where we just want to silence it by whatever means available, often very destructive means at that. So this morning I sat down to analyze its claims to my unhappiness. And you know what, I found that once each was weighed and measured, each was definitely found wanting. They consisted wholly of either outright lies, or extremely bad advice. So why in the name of god do I, do any of us, listen to that crap? Thank god we have this other self, a “higher” self, who actually has the ability to analyze the chatterbox and then send it straight to the hell. Which is exactly what I did this morning. I can still hear a faint, small voice in the background, but not nearly as loud and boisterous as before. No, life is not a test. No one likes tests. There is no one behind the scenes observing us to determine if we pass or fail. The book of Job is a great allegorical tale, but I don’t really believe that God and Satan are locked in some celestial chess match ala Fischer vs Spassky with the game pieces being our very lives. Life is life and it is an opportunity, a privilege, for a time to experience and then to leave behind the legacy of that experience.
