Life is Good in Costa Rica
It’s somewhat sad to say, but I’m officially back at home and back to the grind again after an awesome three weeks in Costa Rica. But as with all trips, there are always lessons learned while traveling that can be remembered after returning to normal life at home.
One of the best things about traveling, aside from the obvious excitement of experiencing new places and cultures, is the simple act of taking a breather from life. It’s always eye opening to be able to simply walk away from the chaos and the routine of life at home, and to get back to simply living, if only even for a few days. To be able to wake up and have nothing more to do for the day than to relax, to eat good food, to enjoy good company, and to wander around without an agenda. Even though it is impractical for most people to try to live this way after returning home, for me it’s always a good reminder about how so few of the stresses of life at home are really important, and how much we get wrapped up with being busy with mostly trivial activities.
Every time I arrive home, I try to hold onto those realizations, and when I start getting stressed out with work or bills or finances I remind myself that none of those things are truly important. My focus after this trip in particular is to work on that one simple thing, to try to simplify more and more, to be able to get my home life to contain only those truly important things that really matter at the end of the day. And in particular, to tackle distractions as they arise so they don’t continue to weigh in my mind.
One of the first places we stayed at during our trip was in Puerto Viejo and was run by a lovely French Canadian couple, Pierre and Marice. We enjoyed our stay with them so much that two weeks later, after having dropped friends at the airport in San Jose and with another five days to left of our own trip, we decided to return back to Puerto Viejo and stay at the same hotel again with them. When the time came again for us to part ways, Pierre said something to us that was so simple, but something worth remembering always. In his french accent he looked us in the eyes and and with the utmost sincerity said
Enjoy the rest of your time here, enjoy the rest of your trip, but most importantly, enjoy life. That is the most important.
With those words sinking into my head, we took our leave, and we certainly did enjoy the rest of our trip. And I plan to continue enjoying the trip — the trip of life, and I challenge you to do the same.
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Originally posted on Friday, January 13th, 2012 at 12:17 PM .
