Where do You Belong?
Which of these "Happy" Countries is Right for You?
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Where do You Belong?
Which of these “Happy” Countries is Right for You?
(Me visiting my family in the woods of North Carolina, 1 year before returning from Costa Rica.)
If Costa Rica is so great, why doesn’t everyone move there?
You might ask, if Costa Rica is so beautiful, the life is so tranquilo, and the people are so kind, why aren’t more people flocking towards it? Why don’t more people quit their jobs and fly off to join us?
I don’t know.
People are stupid.
They often do things that aren’t in their best interests.
Maybe that’s harsh.
To be honest, I know this kind of Pura Vida, tranquilo life is not for everyone. There are a few people who come here with dreams of mangoes and hammocks who wind up disappointed with some of the downsides of living here. They miss their families. Or they find it isn’t as easy as they think to make a living online, and they wind up going back home.
As the quarantine restrictions start to lift, a new bakery opens up next to Java Café. Outside the bakery a youngish looking man stands, waving to people and quietly shouting across the courtyard, “Bonjour.” Could it be? Is there a legitimate Frenchman in Coco, with a legitimate French Patiserrie?
I Make Friends with a Real Frenchman!
Not only do I find this man, Jean, is French but he is also an appreciatior of poetry. When I tell him what I do for a living he invites me to come have a coffee and discuss my craft with him. We bond over “Autumn Song” by Paul Valerain, a French poet who died tragically in his twenties.
Jean is actually not French exactly, but Portuguese. His family immigrated to Paris when he was a baby, and so he speaks fluent Portuguese, which means, he tells me, that he also gets French and Spanish for free, since Portuguese is essentially a conglomeration of both of those languages, hit with a slight Dutch accent just to be more confusing.
Jean and his girlfriend, Soleil came from Paris just before the pandemic to open a yoga retreat because she is a yoga teacher. However, when the pandemic hit, they had to change plans. He learned to bake croissants, and she learned to cook a few traditional French dishes and they opened this bakery instead.
I ask Jean where Soleil is now and he tells me that she is back in Paris. A week later when I return to chat and practice my French I ask again and he tells me she has prolongued her stay in Paris. “She doesn’t like it here” he tells me. Unlike him, she only speaks one language, French. All of her family is in Paris. All of her friends. And she is trying to convince him to return back home.
I understand this well.
For me it’s not my husband trying to convince me to move back to the United States, definitely not before there’s a vaccine, but there is my sister. Whenever I get on the phone with her I try to convince her to move down to Costa Rica and she tries to get me to return to the US.
Pura Vida isn’t for Everyone.
My sister is my complete opposite. If there is something I love, chances are she hates it. And vice Versa.
When I told her I was moving to Costa Rica she said “Of Course you are. You’ll arrive and be like, ‘Hi. I’m Tresha. I just met you but give me your hand and we’ll go ride our bikes together and pick mangoes and develop an amazing friendship based on love and trust and our mutual admiration for Macaw parrots.”
I, on the other hand would say “Hi. I’m Elizabeth. You are too close to my personal bubble. I need you to back at least three feet away.”
My sister is a Virgo. I’m a Pisces. My sister is an introvert. I am an extrovert. My sister is organized and plans things out. I like to see where the adventure will take me.
I once told my sister my idea of a great vacation would be if someone picked me up, didn’t tell me anything about where we’re going, then took me to a surprise location and showed me around. My sister compares this to kidnapping. She says there is literally no difference. And that this would be her nightmare.
When we travel together my sister is the one who plans things out. She makes the reservations, prints out an itinerary, makes sure everyone knows where they are going and how to get there. I am the one who makes conversation. I go into the hotel and perform an awkward charades trying to communicate in my fragmented Italian or French about the reservation we made, and to somehow procure the keys while my sister waits in the car avoiding eye contact.
I don’t mind making a fool of myself in front of other people.
I have very high self-esteem.
We call my sister the mind. I am the mouth.
When we went to New York we walked down the street from our hotel to our coffee shop and I kept pointing to things saying, “Look at that man playing the trash can like drums. Look at that pigeon eating pizza. Look a real life cockroach like the kind you see on t.v.”
Once we got to the coffee shop my sister pushed me inside and said “ Here’s some money, please order me a latte” while she shut the door behind us like baraccading us against the entirety of the city outside.
She came to visit us in Costa Rica before the Pandemic.
For Some People, the “Pure Life” Means Having Time to Organize Their Spoon Drawer.
For her, “Pure Living” would mean organizing her spoon drawer. Making a nice spreadsheet. Lining up all the spaghetti noodles in a tidy row before eating them.
It would not mean interacting with the public or swimming in an ocean with strangers.
I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but Costa Rica does not have exact street addresses. The major businesses do, but individual homes do not. If you need something shipped to you, you have it sent to the post office. If you have people visiting you meet them at the airport and drive them to your house, or else you give them directions like, “Go past the Auto Mercado, then make a right at the first street, turn another right when you see the big Gunacaste tree and look for the house that is painted yellow.”
“What happens if you get lost?” My sister asks.
“You pull over and ask a local to help you” I tell her.
She is disgusted by this and says “You talk to another person? Someone you don’t know?”
For a semi-professional singer, my sister is surprisingly shy.
I didn’t know this about my sister, but she gets something called “Heat Rage.” Her anger rises with the temperature.
She started to enjoy Costa Rica better once we got into an air conditioned environment. I took her to a gelato shop which was a balmy 70 degrees with air conditioning. My sister got some dragonfruit gelato which my sister said was “stupid good.”
The whole shop was lined with windows. She looked out at the mist on the mountains, the fishing boats on the water, the parrots flying through the palm trees and she said, “Oh, I hadn’t realized this before, but Costa Rica is quite beautiful. I understand why you like it here.”
Then someone opened the door, she felt a wave of heat hit her, and all of a sudden started talking about how she wanted to return to the United States.
While browsing through the local free book exchange I found a book called The Geography of Bliss, a book practically designed for merry wanderers like myself. It’s written by a man named Eric Weiner, yes, Weiner, who notes his name is appropriate because he is a self diagnosed curmudgeon. He is not prone to bouts of happiness. He is in fact quite unhappy because he is a journalist who spends most of his times covering news of wars and disasters around the world.
In an effort to learn more about happiness he decided to travel to some of the happiest countries in the world, according to the World Happiness Index to see what makes them all so happy. What he found is that different countries are happy for different reasons.
Different Countries Have Different Reasons to Be Happy.
In Switzerland, for example, citizens are happy because their government keeps life well-organized for all of its citizens. The Swiss are well informed about how their government works, vote to do things that make life more efficient for everyone, and thus have more time to enjoy hiking in the Alps and yodeling over cups of hot chocolate. Also, they have strong ordinances against noise pollution and if you live in an apartment it is illegal to flush your toilet after 10 pm, so as not to disturb your neighbors. I think my sister would be happy in a place like Switzerland.
In Thailand people do not have nearly so efficient a government. In fact Weiner witnessed a coup when he was traveling there. However, the Thai have a concept that other people’s success or failure is really none of their business. They, culturally speaking, believe in reincarnation, and karma, so they don’t have to worry about punishing other people or being jealous of what others have. You’re on top today, but tomorrow you fall. You’re on bottom today, but tomorrow you’re reborn with a silver spoon in your mouth. Enjoy what you have and don’t think too hard about others.
There are Two Ways to Be Happy in Your Location.
For myself, in the many years I’ve been travelling, I’ve got my own hypothesis.
I think there are two ways to be happy in a place. One is to find somewhere where everyone is like you, and you can all agree on what you need together. The other way is to find a place where everyone is generally like-able. Everyone is friendly and welcoming.
As far as I have experienced thus far, Costa Rica as a whole is a very likeable country. People smile at each other. They offer strangers support. They make basic living more affordable. They care about the environment, preserving it for everyone, and they make delicious fruit salad.
As much as I love Costa Rica, the main thing that it teaches you is the value of your family. I couldn’t possibly live here long term without them. I am coming to realize that no matter how much I might love a place like Costa Rica or France or Thailand, I don’t think I could really settle down anywhere too far from my parents or my sister. I also know that my husband wouldn’t be happy full time in Costa Rica.
My husband, like my sister, is also my opposite in many ways. While he likes interacting with people, he does not, generally speaking, like being out of doors. If we leave the window open he gets a 3rd degree sunburn. If we go to the beach he has to sit under an umbrella. For him, Costa Rica has been “fine.” He acknowledges it’s beautiful and people are nice, but to him the beach is just a big pile of sand. The jungle is just a place to get bitten by mosquitos.
What bothers him most is that nobody understands his jokes because of the language barrier.
I think my husband would be most happy is a place like New York in the 70’s. Since that place doesn’t exist, I think he’d like a place like London. It’s cold and damp and people spend all their time indoors, in bookstores or movie houses complaining about things in a funny or interesting way. Maybe the 4th thing he cares about is British Comedy.
The reason he’s been able to stick it out in Costa Rica for so long is that he is a man who lives mainly online. Whatever he needs he can get largely through the internet. Comedy. Information. Resources. For him, wherever there is high speed internet access can be home.
Still, I know he misses certain things about the United States.
Is There a Place Where Everyone Can be Happy?
It makes me wonder, is there a place where I fit in, and my sister and husband fit in too? Or will we always be making compromises? My husband jokes that since I chose to live in Costa Rica he gets to choose the next place we live, though he doesn’t know where that will be.
For people like me and my new friend, Jean, there is a sense that our stay here in Costa Rica is only temporary. Eventually we are going to need to move on, to find other places where we and our significant others can both feel a sense that we are at home.
*No pictures of my sister are posted here because I am afraid of her wrath.