The Rewards

I cannot even begin to express my absolute joy and thrill to have heard from so many folks these last weeks about the super fun things they have happening in their lives!

If you were one of the people who shared with me, I want to give a HUGE thank you— it brightened my return home immeasurably and I so appreciate it.

While I might normally tell you all about my time in Costa Rica, this one was a little different and included folks I didn't get permission to write about, so I'm not going to give you a big recap.

What I do want to tell you is that this trip was a perfect example of what curiosity looks like in practice, and the rich rewards that it offers.

Because here's the thing that gets overlooked sometimes when we talk about these abstract concepts like curiosity or staying present:

We don't care about them for themselves, we care about what they get us in our real, everyday lives.

There's a line I love in Pema Chodron's book When Things Fall Apart  where she says, "We don't sit in meditation to be good meditators. We sit in meditation so that we'll become more awake in our lives."

In other words, the thing isn't the point, it's the tool to get us what we really want.

Curiosity and being present aren't the point when considered in the abstract, they are simply the tools to get us what we really want: richer, more meaningful, more connected lives.

There were a lot of things about this trip that were quite challenging for a variety of reasons.

I don't enjoy the heat, for one, so sweating through my days (and nights) wasn't comfortable.

My Spanish leaves a lot to be desired and the family we were visiting didn't speak a lick of English, so I struggled to communicate (I may or may not have accidentally agreed to do the actual slaughtering of the chicken we were eating for dinner...something I would certainly need more instruction on in a language I comprehend before wielding that big ol' knife).

There was a moment that brought up an old trauma and I had to do the mental and emotional gymnastics to convince my body that I was, indeed, entirely safe and okay.

Every single moment of discomfort was an opportunity to lean into my curiosity.

So I leaned hard.

I let go of a default desire for comfort and the known and the easy and the expected, and I opened up to what was in front of me, to learning and listening and participating. 

And I was rewarded time and time and time again with experiences that were so, so rich and connective and moving and that I will carry with me for the rest of my life as deep and meaningful gifts.

I cannot imagine all I'd have missed if I'd clung to some preconceived expectation or notion of what this trip would be.

We spent a grand total of about two hours at the beach (which included some hilarity...graceful I am not) and I got to see a sloth in the wild, which was thrilling, but the majority of this trip did not include typical "vacation" moments.

I do not eschew touristy things— often attractions are attractions because they're awesome and I don't want to miss out (I wrote about this a long time ago here)— and ALSO, I'm absolutely thrilled that pretty much none of this trip was interchangeable with a tropical vacation anywhere.

Staying curious isn't a tagline.

It's a real tool to wield in our lives.

It's the pathway to the richest possible lives we can be living, full of experiences and meaning and real connection.

And we have the opportunity to embrace it and practice it every single day.

So where can you lean into your curiosity today?

You know I'd love to hear about it.