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:)