A tiny piece of poop lands on my keyboard. I look up at the gecko on my ceiling and I smile.
Sometimes, even the sh*ttiest things can be a blessing.
A week alone in my Costa Rican apartment focused on writing a paper and I am having flashbacks of a former life. In my former life, I live alone. I am the only US citizen; the only "outsider" in a new culture and community. My bathing area is outdoors and while I absolutely love the cold, invigorating bucket baths underneath the mango tree, I still feel uncomfortable showing my breasts to the world. I did not do that regularly at home. I walk outside to use my outhouse, something I formerly considered private and rather secretive, and nowI feel 1000 eyes look at me over fences in deep analysis. Children, farmers, even the cows are considering, "What will she do in there? Does she use toilet paper?" I scamper back inside, careful to avoid eye contact, shameful of my contribution to environmental degradation in the form of six sheets of Scott. I arrive back inside my lonely home, painfully aware of my state of confinement and the symbolic separation of my four grey walls. I am alone.
But that was a former life.
I am in Costa Rica now and geckos are pooping on my laptop.
I am not alone. My friends are right next door and below me and it is a bit easier to feel connected in this life. I love my new friends. I feel we all new each other before. Our souls are deeply intertwined. You can tell by the way they say things I am feeling, before my slow and limited mind gets to articulate itself properly. You can tell by the way our smiles are so epidemically contagious.
I wonder why I felt so alone in my former life. Surely, something was pooping on my laptop there, too.
Why and when and where and how do we lose this connection with each other? Does it happen overtime? Are we born with it? How do we awaken it again?
I feel grateful for my former life and I feel grateful for where I walk today. I think I was very close to have fallen into a deep sleep, easily, but I now I feel so awake. I cannot lie, though. It is easier to sleep. Sometimes, I do get back in bed. Sometimes, I even pull the covers up and I ask for my former life. They say "the more you see, the less you know". It is true. And it is scary. But it is also really beautiful, too. You know you cannot have one without the other, right? I have to remind myself of that often. And if I start to forget, or if I want to crawl back underneath the covers, something is sure to poop on me. And I know that is a sign- no matter how challenging it gets- I am on the right path.
I am so in love with the people here. (I love you people, too, out there).
Sometimes, when I look into someone's eyes, I can instantly feel and connect with their soul. I have flashes of stories and I thank the world for conspiring to place our physical bodies before each other.
My cells began to dance during lunch yesterday. I cannot really explain the feeling any better than that. You know, when you get all tingly inside and you just want to smile forever and ever?
My friend and I were sitting across a table from each other eating lunch. There were people all around us chatting, searching for a place to sit or shoo-ing the dogs out of the school cafeteria. But I was walking in Kenya.
The story was long and beautiful and I was there for every minute of it. I wished for a moment, to share it with the world. I longed to capture it all in writing or words, but I wondered how much of the genuine love from his mouth would have been lost or distorted through my own interpretation. That is when I just let it all go and realized it was just meant for me to appreciate in that moment.
But I want to share one bit with you because maybe it will encourage you to experience the dancing of your cells. Sometimes, you know, we get so caught up with these externalities that we forget to feel. And I, myself, too suffer from this silly little thing called a mind- which is quite useless (if you think about it) without heart. But then again, that requires thinking about it, so forget it.
Feel.
The most poignant memories of my life all come with feelings. Those are the things we remember. The breeze on my face and the misty splashing of salt water on my feet as I dangle on the front of my father's boat. The impossible resistance to laughter as I stand beneath a waterfall with my friends. The tears that drained my soul when I missed my family. Feeling reminds us what is more important about living.
So, my friend is there, sitting across from me, telling me more stories about his life in Kenya. He talks about how blessed he feels to be where we are today at UPEACE. He talks about his childhood growing up in a nomadic community, then working in Nairobi, then here in Costa Rica. He works hard for his children back at home. He cares deeply for people all over the world. He wants to help ease inter-tribal violence in his home town. He has started an organization. He works in an international community full of people with unique perspectives. He faces deep challenges on a daily basis. But he talks in a slow and peaceful and loving manner. His words are easy to appreciate, full of passion and emotion. There is a little bit of sadness, some frustration, but more love and faith and compassion than anything else. His journey has been a long one.
He stops for a minute and his face becomes reflective. He looks at me and says, "You know, my mother is 84. She has maybe never left our home town. She has never been to Nairobi. And she is happy!" He smiles wide and I cannot help but join in the laughter because I feel the love emitted from his soul and there are either tears in his eyes or I see the reflection of my own.
Sometimes, the more we see, we wish we hadn't seen.
The world can be a scary and intimidating place. The more we dream the more we get outside of our comfort zone and the more we realize is not as we have been taught. We question everything, we begin to doubt and then wonder.
It is not important how far you go or how big you dream, necessarily. It is how you live each day...each moment of your life. I think it is important to be conscious of our choices, yes, but I think it is more important to be in tune with our values. Then it becomes a more natural way of living. We live more from our heart and our mind is there for guidance.
How do we know our values? I think we feel them in our gut or our cells or our heart- somewhere inside of us. We feel them during great moments or great challenges. We even feel them when a gecko poops on our laptop.
Last week I feared loneliness and today I feel love. This is part of life's journey. I try to cling, often, to the feeling of happiness, but sometimes it eludes me. And why shouldn't it? For I could never know one without the other: The paradox of life that our silly minds sometimes try to decipher.
I feel grateful for the abundance of love and interconnectedness that is shown to me everyday. Without it, I would feel alone and I know that is the biggest deception and worst hunger of the world.
I ask for more support in the ability to see love in the most trying times. Because I know it is always there.
Now, where have you gone little gecko?
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Thank you old friends, new friends, family and geckos who continue to love and support me along my mysterious journey. You know who you are and I have you each in my mind and more importantly in my heart.
