Issue #28: Between Worlds: Navigating the Transition from Old to New

Reflecting on the Journey from Familiar Comfort to the Uncharted Terrain of Costa Rican Life

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Summer! The time when schools pause and many in the world go on Holiday away from their homes to exotic or not so exotic destinations, to relax and unwind. For many of us, July is the time when we go "back home". That is many of us take the opportunity to go back to the places we came from, to visit old friends and family and to see if the old world is still alive and well or whether it has crumbled under the weight of immigration, elections, soccer tournaments, inflation, WEF, capitalists, communists, leftists, rightists, pro-this and anti-that movements or any other social order disturbing event.

To much of our surprise and perhaps even a bit of dismay, the old world seems to operate more or less exactly how we left it, just a bit more expensive and a little less tolerant(or a lot depending on where you are from).

My family has only(only!) been in Costa Rica for 3 years, and every time we come back to the States and New York in particular, it feels a bit more foreign, a little less like home and a bit more like "the place we once lived, but don't think we'll return to". It still has the familiar feeling of home and it hasn't really changed all that much despite what they tell us. Yet somehow we don't belong like we used to. The local baker(yes, we have a local baker!) still remembers us and greets us with that same smile, yet somehow her familiar eyes feel less warm. The bread is still as tasty as ever, but the people lost some of the fluff. Its not that the people changed, no, I suppose the only explanation is that we somehow changed.

Surely its all the personal growth work we've been doing! I mean I meditate just about every Sunday morning with only a few skips per month, sometimes going for as long as 5 or even 7 minutes! And lets not forget all the relationship work we've done, also known as arguing about the optimal number of coconuts we can fit into the fridge. Or may be its all the medicine journeys I've gone on, I don't mean to boast, but I drink large dosages of the green stuff, also known as Trifala, and boy what a journey to the bathroom that causes. Perhaps I'm just getting old? wise? mature? No, definitely not mature.

No, its something else, its how the jungle changes us, in subtle ways that we can't quite detect. The trees silently whispering into our deafly ears day-by-day, one vibration at a time. The message may not be very clear, but somehow the old world with its old ways feels less authentic, less real, less meaningful than it used to. The old missions that used to matter a lot, matter much less. Yet the new missions have not yet fully materialized and so we find ourselves in the place of "transition". A place where old Home is no longer home and the new home is while certainly homey, it is not yet Home.

It is in this place where the magic happens if we just let it. It's in this place of leaving the old life and building a new one where all kinds of things come into the forefront and one is forced to address. Its in this place of "what are we doing here exactly?" that the answers materialize - usually in a form of more questions.

Stability, certainty, safety, clarity around the future, these are all things that historically have been implicit in the “old world” ways of being. If you worked at a boring big company, it paid steady pay check, you had insurance, went to boring doctors that had predictable diagnosis and treatment for your ills, took vacations to predictable places. Your kids went to public or private schools, but in either case those schools have been around forever and had a steady curriculum with grades and teachers and directors that have been there for quite some time and in fact the path for your kids is also in many ways pre-determined, as in there is a set number of colleges and “career” paths that they could take. There is something both boring but also comfortable in that, the ultimate comfort that the life you’re leading and the life you’re expecting is the life that will unfold.

But not here, the only thing that’s constant here is change. After 3 years in the valley, I find myself as “the elders”, the people who have been here “since the dawn of time”, the “native” ex-pats, who got here before ESM was even an acronym and Alegria was still selling its first lots. “His wife can even speak Spanish in full sentences” they say about us.

And yet, after “all these years”(3!), it doesn’t quite feel homey in the “stability” sense. We'‘re on land, we have a home, we like it here, we have friends, but its all seems fleeting, temporary, not real. The constant change of people leaving, schools merging, dramas unfolding, rains falling(oh the rains how they fall!), always reminds us of our temporality. As if one day a storm big enough can come and wipe the slate clean once again.

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And now for a bit of humor…

This is my actual journey back to Costa Rica from our Summer New York trip. Yes, this is exactly as it happened.

Saturday - our flight back home is tomorrow early morning, time to check-in! I log-in, select all passengers, wait a minute - where is my name? My wife, my kids, but no me!?

She didn't book my flight back!? I should've double checked it. She always does that! If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

- Honey! Did you book my flight back?

She did.

Stupid airline messed up the booking again, those airlines are always trying to screw us!

I call the airline, I listen to their hold music(Opus No. 1 · Tim Carleton) for 2 hours.

Perhaps we should be putting the CEO of the airline on an island, with no food or people for 10 years and playing Opus No. 1 all day long, just to even out the pain his company causes to all poor suffering souls listening to this masterpiece 78 times in a row. I wonder what Tim Carleton would have thought of that.

You did what? Canceled? And why did you do that? Because I didn't show up on my flight there? I'm a what? A "no-show"? And so you cancel my leg back!? But I had to go a few days earlier so I booked an earlier flight, I still want to go back! Why did you cancel it, I didn't show up there, but I'm showing up now. I am a "yes-show" to this flight. I paid for it, I deserve a seat!

Yes, please do "re-instate" my itinerary.

It's full? No more seats? Next flight? Tomorrow?

20 years on the Island for that CEO! With a volleyball(I'm not cruel)

Sunday, drive to Newark, drop off family, wave good bye, see you tomorrow, I'll miss you. Drive back home.

Monday, drive to Newark, get on my new flight, laptop, 3 Body Problem - Season 1, noise canceling headphones, sweatshirt, hat, let's go.

Episode 2, we're still at the gate

Episode 3, still the gate

Episode 4, we're on the runway

Episode 5, back at the gate

No information, no real announcement, some minor commotion, everyone is confused.

"If you'd like to get off the plane, you can do so now"

What? What does that mean? Why would I want to get off the plane? If I didn't want to be on the plane, I wouldn't have gotten on it to begin with?!

"Actually, everyone please get off the plane, and take your bags with you"

Drive back home. Call airline.

2 more hours of Opus No. 1. Its starting to grow on me.

Yes please, lets just skip to the chase! I'd like a plane, my own personal plane to get me to Costa Rica, pronto! That's quick in Spanish. And lets just skip the niceties and patch me straight to the CEO, otherwise I'm taking away his volleyball!

Tuesday, drive to Newark, the terminal is starting to grow on me. I think the Starbucks girl likes me. But the duty free lady is on to me, only so much hand cream one can try before the cosmetics police gets on your case.

Gate, flight, laptop, 3 Body Problem - Season 1, only 3 episodes left! The sweet taste finale is upon me. Sweatshirt, Headphones, Headphones cable... where is the cable!?

She didn't pack it!? Wait, she's in Costa Rica. It's not here. I left it on the previous "flight" or "runway joyride" as I called it. Sh*t.

30 years on an Island for that CEO! And no volleyball!