Update from Costa Rica: The Halfway Edition

     In Costa Rica, today is a national holiday, Dia de las Culturas. It also is a momentous day of sorts: eight Mondays ago I left the United States and eight Mondays from now will be my first full day back in the U.S. in four months. It is a bit of a shock when I think I've reached the midpoint of my time in this country. It's terribly easy to take the natural beauty here--the volcanos, the palm trees, the exotic birds--for granted on a day-to-day basis. And yet, how many more times will my classmates and I get to experience that to which we have quickly grown acclimated if perhaps not fully accustomed during our brief sojourn? Perhaps a handful of times?

     This weekend, I went to a national park for three days with a few friends. One of them had another friend from her college back in the U.S. visiting for the weekend. It was neat to see a stranger to this country find her footing and her Spanish (she ended one of the evenings with the oft-forgotten send-off Buen Nocho). I have the utmost respect for people who are willing to put themselves in new and uncomfortable situations. I'm not even specifically advocating travel abroad, although that certainly fits the bill. It could even be as simple as spending an afternoon in a different part of town. Or it could be choosing not to move because of a noble reason: taking care of a family member or living a life a simplicity away from the distractions of a consumeristic society.


      In my life there's been plenty of instances where I feared or was at least uneasy about a new challenge or experience. I was nervous in high school to spend six weeks in the summer Washington, D.C. by myself with a group of total strangers. The next year, I questioned whether I could lead a retreat and give two 30 minute talks to a group of my peers. Entering college, I wondered if my decision to go away to Washington was the right one. Even this trip to Costa Rica was a tough decision. In all these examples, I decided to go ahead even without complete certainty. I trusted that God would provide me with whatever provisions would be necessary. As it turned out, all of those experiences were greater than I could have ever imagined. I've received support in every sense of the word from my family, friends and even strangers. What scares me today is not to say yes to such a new challenge, but to say no; to have a strong feeling that I should do something and not pursue it out of fear of failure. As Edward Field wrote:

Icarus

Only the feathers floating around the hat

Showed that anything more spectacular had occurred

Than the usual drowning.  The police preferred to ignore

The confusing aspects of the case, 

And the witnesses ran off to a gang war.

So the report filed and forgotten in the archives read simply

“Drowned,” but it was wrong: Icarus

Had swum away, coming at last to the city

Where he rented a house and tended the garden.

“That nice Mr. Hicks” the neighbors called,

Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit

Concealed arms that had controlled huge wings

Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once 

Compelled the sun.  And had he told them

They would have answered with a shocked,

uncomprehending stare.

No, he could not disturb their neat front yards

Yet all his books insisted that this was a horrible mistake:

What was he doing aging in a suburb?

Can the genius of the hero fall

To the middling stature of the merely talented?

And nightly Icarus probes his wound

And daily in his workshop, curtains carefully drawn,

Constructs small wings and tries to fly

To the lighting fixture on the ceiling:

Fails every time and hates himself for trying.

He had thought himself a hero, had acted heroically,

And dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero;

But now rides commuter trains,

Serves on various committees,

And wishes he had drowned. 

     Build wings big enough to make this world a little better for your being in it.