Contagious Joy

Todd’s below piece on Costa Rica, written for Plex: Collective Sense Commons, contains a great summary of the insight, foresight and progressiveness of this country. What I hope it also does is show people in the U.S.that things that can seem impossible there are possible! Low taxes and excellent low-cost health care. (WHO ranks CR above the U.S. in health care quality.) Reversing environmental harm. HAVING NO MILITARY! And maybe most powerfully of all, the possibility for everyday people instead of being divided and at each others’ throats, to be happy.

(First published here)

Howler monkey’s brave leap witnessed from my desk (on the porch)

Just over a year ago Costa Rican UNDP (United Nations Development Program) Resident Representative José Vicente Troya Rodríguez provided the reasons why Costa Rica was the first nation to implement Inner Development Goals in its public sector. His essay is a beautiful encapsulation of the Tico (Costa Rican) philosophy summarized by:

Climate Action is Development,
Protecting Nature is Prosperity,
Women at the center of this Transformation is imperative.

While the country is not perfect–underemployment is an issue, and it has its share of corruption–Costa Rica an amazing place to live and work. It is the first tropical nation to reverse deforestation. It has had no military for three generations. The nation has effectively legislated and enforced gender parity in government. Oil drilling is banned, and 95% of energy generated in the country comes from renewables.

While the US spends just under $13,000 per capita on healthcare, Costa Rica spends under $1,000, but has better outcomes. The country has parallel public and private health systems which provide choices in service and cost. Public health was redesigned thirty years ago, starting with rural communities. Where we live, it's common to see a health worker on a motorbike show up at a neighbor's house for a check up.

These could all be great reasons to move to Costa Rica, but for us, it's not the whole story. After vacationing here for ten years, we wondered whether the hospitality and happiness we experienced while here were reserved for new faces. After more than 100 days of living in Guanacaste, Pia and I can vouch for the authenticity of their collective happiness. People help each other, they greet each other, and they routinely do both with strangers.

On one afternoon in Santa Cruz, our closest city, Pia witnessed a horse that had been hitched get loose and trot down the city street, weaving between trucks. In many northern hemisphere cities, there would have been honking and shouts through windows–complaints that life had been slowed down. But here, traffic stopped, people got out of their cars and trucks to help, and the onlookers on the sidewalk began to corral the horse. The horse's caballero was reunited with his horse, with smiles, laughter, and cheers up and down the street.

My theory is that the uniqueness of Costa Rica starts with their commitment to living in harmony with the land. The landscape smells, tastes, looks, feels, and sounds alive with vitality. (I am still getting accustomed to the spiders, large insects, and muscular, tri-colored squirrels that are a part of that vitality). I wonder whether the widespread warmth and embraces–even for Americans–arise from a sense of pride in their commitment to working with Nature and not against each other. I can't help but wonder what the effects of nearly 75 years of being demilitarized might be.

I experience the neighbors' morning “buenas” as joy that we, too, are taking part in pura vida - the pure life. For Ticos, the pure life is very connected to protecting and nurturing the source of their joy–the lands, animals, and waters they tend–and their connection with life itself.

They share their joy, and it's contagious.