The Road Never Traveled: What We've Received By Living In Costa Rica

The Road Never Traveled.

Three years ago when we moved to Costa Rica, I wouldn't have guessed that one of the side effects I would value most for myself and for our three kids is the constant shot in the arm of facing the unknown. It's never an easy feeling but it's quite impossible to avoid when you are forced to face it on a daily dosage.

"On today’s journey to the future you don’t have a choice between the road less traveled and the road more traveled. No one has been where you are going. No one has experienced the future you will experience. The only choice you have is the road never traveled." HB Gelatt 

It's great when it looks like this:

or this:

and I'd be lying if I didn't say that we've learned not to put things off that we want to do or see and that means getting out and about.

But sometimes, it looks like this:

In your bed or in your room. Twice in one night. This recently happened when we were traveling with Swedish friends we met 20 years ago backpacking around the world. 

My friend's reaction (brave as hell and honest at the same time about how much it terrified her) got me thinking about what's happened to our kids over the last three years and how it adds up.

Persistence. Living abroad delivers you a lot of obstacles. There's not a lot of room for giving up on a daily or hourly basis. The obstacles start looking more like chance events or something to move through, around, under, or over. Because time has a quality of finiteness (How much longer will we be here? That's a real question.) taking action or inaction is easy to spot. 

Flexibility. You have to become really adaptable. There's a lot of 'unfolding' that happens and things that just can't or won't be rushed. One of my Swedish friend's said he would go crazy living here when we attempted to buy him a chip for his phone. The sitcom-esque experience that took place in the shop was just another day on my end but drove him nuts when he viewed the interaction through the lens of Scandinavian efficiency and customer service. I'm not saying for a second ineffieciency should be to a model to follow or that I don't get driven absolutely crazy sometimes, but I have found that it's easier to be mindful of my reaction because it's in my face all the time. 

Risk-taking. There's a lot more shifting of this behavior into the 'necessary' category. There's just no way around it. There was a recent article that was titled, 'The Odds are Better than you Think' that talks about the human habit of over-estimating the probability of something going wrong. And how we underestimate our ability to handle the consequences of risk. Or that pesky way that we tend to exaggerate the consequences of what will happen when things go wrong. . .

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

-Horace

In a nutshell, there's just a hell of a lot of chances for things to go wrong, and they do. And to doubt ourselves, and to have to jump anyway. I'm convinced that one of the reasons that people love to visit Costa Rica so much is the ubiquitous zip-lining. The Swedes tell me it's the first thing that pops up in a search about the country. Sure, the beaches and sloths are exhilarating to experience, but it's nothing like facing yourself and coming out whole. Every time (and it's often) I see the kids do it I am grateful for taking the sabbatical plunge which turned into becoming an expatriate family.

20 years ago we met 'The Swedes' on the deck of an Indoneasian ship. We would go on to miraculously meet up again in Hong Kong on a street corner (these were the days before cell phones so that our plan worked felt like a miracle). We went on to travel through China together, meet in Sweden and later in France. We love them in a way that is profound. Together, we experienced serendipity and the wonder that is possible when you travel. Now our collective children are the ones playing hours of card games, fording rivers, and surmising what makes a place phenomenal or 'meh'. 

When we talked about pursuing the plan we hatched 20 years ago to motorcycle the Silk Road once the kids have left the roost, the kids first reaction was, "But we want to come too!" 

The roads we've traveled with 'The Swedes' are precisely the ones I would never ever give up, they've been amongst the most meaningful, exhilarating and fun of my life. 

It's January 2015. How long have you been thinking about traveling or taking a family sabbatical? 

Don't let the fact that there's no bridge slow you down.