Happiness

I realized many things in my time in Costa Rica, but one thing in particular really excites me to no end. Though I risk sounding really cliche or jinxing my own good fortune, I really want to further explore this realization: happiness is everything.

For anyone who is really truly happy, I congratulate you and say just keep doing whatever it is that you're doing (as long as it's not hurting anyone). For the rest of the population, attaining happiness is an ongoing challenge, an internal dialogue full of some combination of self-doubt (why can't I make myself happy, dammit), identity crisis (do I really know myself and what makes me happy), longing (I just want to be happy so bad), comparisons (hmm, I wonder if so-and-so is happier than me), worry (shit, what if I never become happy), greed (maybe more money will make me happy, even though people say it shouldn't) and so on. It's not such a happy dialogue. I've been there and it got me nowhere.

Well, something wonderful happened to me in Costa Rica. I stopped trying to be anything. It coincided with a book I was reading about Eastern philosophy called The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts. I became a fan of his over the summer and realized through my readings that I already was an Easterner, in my own outlook of the world. Most of what he writes about is man's relationship to his environment. How man and environment are actually one, despite man's inclination to view himself as a separate entity, at odds against the world and trying to navigate his way through it. And what we think makes us so highly evolved, the human mind, so often works against us when we 1) divide everything in the world into endless compartments, 2) use it to live in the past or the future, in a world of hypotheticals, or 3) analyze shit to death. One particular quote that I jotted down was about the possibility of man's role in the universe as "neither an isolated person nor an expendable, humanoid working-machine," but instead "one particular focal point at which the whole universe expresses itself." I absolutely love that possibility. So I got to Costa Rica feeling so much more harmony with my environment. And with such a lighter load. I was simply living, just BEING, observing the world, observing my own feelings and appreciating them for what they were. (Granted they were not always good, which I guess is pretty obvious if you've read any of my previous blog drama!) It's amazing what can happen if you just stop trying.

Now, there's another part to the new-found happiness. I loved my environment. It was just what my soul had been craving: tons of natural beauty, a very simple way of life, nurturing the earth, maximizing the resources we had, including those within us, spending our free time just hanging out and talking, no cell phones (and hallelujah, no texting!), no showing off, no makeup, and a whole lot of self-discovery. It was like a dream. I had escaped the madness of New York and the lame suburban sprawl of San Diego. I lived in a town that was actually a community. A town that had a center, where you could count on running into your friends or sometimes meet new people. A town so simple that my visits usually involved just two people: pineapple guy and internet lady. Ok, and sometimes ice cream nazi:) And there is nothing that brought me back down to earth like my struggles to communicate in Spanish. Though sometimes quite embarrassing, those humbling moments brought out a childlike innocence I didn't know I still had. And perhaps most importantly, I was out of the rat-race. No corporation, no competition, no pressure to buy stuff, no malls, no excess (or shall I just call it waste). It makes me wonder if the American way of life is really something to be desired. Is all that stuff making anyone any happier? Then I wonder about the Ticos...are they happy or are they poppin' pills too, wishing that they just had more stuff? Maybe the grass is always greener until you've actually rolled around in it for a long time.

For me, the choice is easy. I don't actually like stuff. I like people. I like nature. I like experiences. By finding a lifestyle that better suited me, I became so much happier. So if I can impart any words of wisdom, they would be this: surround yourself with the things that you value the most and just experience life. It's actually pretty amazing when you're not judging it too harshly. I'm living a very off-the-beaten-path kind of existence, slowly but surely running out of money, but it's so worth it! I love being happy. If it means being a broke-ass embarrassment to society, so be it. I have dropped out of the race to nowhere, so now I can just sit on the sidelines and watch. It is so much more fun.

Wishing everyone a very HAPPY New Year:)

Back in action!

Why hello!
It's been a while now, yeah? :-/
So much happened and all so quickly, and I'm so excited to start writing again. Let me start to recap on what has happened in the last month. As you know, there was quite a bit of drama on the farm. Frank almost kicked me out, changed his mind, had a nasty egg-white orgy with himself, made up a new rule to test our slave-worthiness, and that's where I left off.

In time, the drama with Frank eventually subsided. But first, in another attempt to "test" me, he threatened to take away my bed. He tried to pass it off as a logical request as follows: a new volunteer, some guy from Switzerland, was coming. Since he could very well weigh more than me, it made more sense for him to take the thickest mattress. So I asked, 'is he really large??' and Frank answered, 'well I guess we can weigh him when he gets here.' I suggested we wait and see. Then the joke, or at least the totally fun image in my head, was making the Swiss guy into a giant Pillsbury Doughboy, trudging through the farm, barely squeezing through the doorway into the cabin and then crushing his bed. Again, if I could draw better, this would be a cartoon. As it turns out, Swiss guy came just after another couple arrived, and there turned out to be no room at all for him. This is after he got mugged at the airport, poor guy. Frank took him to a friend's resort the next day where he could stay and volunteer. The ironic part was that he was actually really small and frail. So it worked out. Lucky little Swiss guy gets to stay somewhere far better, and I get to keep my bed:)

The next day I had a follow-up conversation with Frank. I told him I was willing to be more cooperative, but that I wasn't willing to be mistreated (ie, bed threats and slavery). He essentially agreed to stop picking on me, and there were no major weird or note-worthy incidents after that. He also revoked the new rule. Unfortunately, oh-so-unfortunately, more drama ensued on the farm, but this time amongst the volunteers. Ugh, I'm feeling reluctant to relive it right now, so I'll just recap it super briefly by saying that the couple, Carol and Allen, berated me one night for what they thought might be an affair between me and Angel. Ha. Ha. Ha. Actually, I shouldn't laugh. Though the idea is funny, the incident was absolutely horrible. It was a perfectly pleasant Friday night and they ruined it by yelling at me, in front of everyone and totally out of the blue, making a boatload of assumptions about me and Angel because he flirts with me. I just sat there in shock, not knowing whether or not they were really drunk or totally crazy, and eventually brought myself to say something like, 'I'm sorry, but I can't communicate like this. If you want to have a regular conversation in a regular tone of voice, I'll listen to what you have to say.' Well, that never happened, and we hardly talked from that point on.

Luckily, I had plans to leave the farm anyway. Hallelujah, no more farm drama!
(enter ex-boyfriend's love letter...I'll save that for a future blog)