time, travel, vacation, volunteer

My Year of Hopefulness – Honoring Time

Christa Avampato

I have only been here three days and I am amazed by how easy it has been to leave behind life in the U.S. for a while. I miss my family, my friends, and my neighborhood, though I don’t miss anything else. I can imagine being here for a very long time with no problem at all. It’s a delicious feeling, far different than any feeling I have experienced on any other vacation. How did this place begin to feel like home so quickly?

Today I had a chance conversation with another volunteer about her experience working at a school just outside of Cartago. She told me what struck her most was the great honor that Costa Ricans feel when an international volunteer works with them. They know how many other ways people have to spend their time and the fact that people travel from foreign countries to participate with Costa Ricans, improving the neighborhoods in this country, is truly a gift for them. This idea of honoring time is so different from the way so many feel in the U.S., and it is a pervasive sentiment throughout this country. Costa Ricans place the highest value on time and the way that it is spent.

At the senior center today in San Rafael, we spent time coloring with the seniors and making reindeer Christmas ornaments from pipe cleaners, clothes pins, and glitter. These simple activities brought them so much joy. Truly what they wanted was just to spend time with us, to talk to us about our lives and theirs. I continue to be struck by how little people need to be happy here, and how sad it is for us in the U.S. to believe that we need so much. My great hope for today is that once I return to the U.S. on Saturday night, I will be able to embrace the idea of honoring time, my own and that of others, and to hang onto the idea that truly we need so little in the way of material items. I need to find a way to carry a little Costa Rica with me wherever I go.

change, faith, religion

My Year of Hopefulness – Holy Water

Christa Avampato

In the center of Cartago there is a church known as La Basilica de la Virgen de los Angeles. In 1635, it is told that a statue of the Virgin was found in the forest by an Indian girl. She took it home and put it in a box. When she returned to the forest the next day, she found the statue again in the same place. When she went home, the statue was gone from the box. This same sequence of events happened to her several more times. She told her priest about the miracle and he took the statue from the forest and locked it in a box in his church. The statue performed the same miracle, and so it was decreed that the Virgin must have wanted a church built over that very spot in the forest.

On August 2nd every year, Costa Ricans come to La Basilica as a pilgrimage, some walking for days across the country and crawling on their knees from the start of the aisle up to the altar. Several of us went to the church yesterday and today to witness the extreme devotion that Costa Ricans feel for this church and for the Virgin Mary. They come here to ask for help and healing and peace and luck, something we can all use a little more of. There is a river that flows under the church and there is a small spring where people collect the holy water in bottle, wash their faces in it, and drink it as an elixir of all things in their lives that they wish to come true, things that they wish to change.

I am not a religious person, and haven’t been for a long time, though I do find religion to be a compelling area of study and I do believe fervently in a higher purpose and power. I do believe we are all connected; my religion is simply kindness. Hearing the miracles that the church has performed for people in Costa Rica, I felt compelled to pay my respects, to ask the Universe for help me now at this time in my life as I make big changes to transform it into the life I want to live, and I did wash my face in the holy water.

Sometimes, we must accept that there are things that do not make sense to us, things that happen and sources of power that we cannot see nor explain. I don’t know if the Virgin appeared in the forest and I don’t know that a church needed to be built on that site in Cartago. I do know that faith is a very powerful feeling, that it is capable of accomplishing that which we cannot possibly accomplish without it. I do believe in our ability to change, and every once in a while I believe that miracles really do happen. Today, was one of those days.

I left the church and I did feel a little bit more brave as I headed back to the house. Perhaps bravery and our ability to change that which we do not like in our lives is a miracle in and of itself.

change, learning, travel

My Year of Hopefulness – Turn Right at the Fancy House

Christa Avampato

(Internet has returned to my house in Costa Rica so I can begin recording all of my experiences here so long as the connection holds – ‘via a Dios’.)

I am famously bad with directions. I never know where I’m going, even with a map. I have to repeat the same path many times over and mentally make note of landmarks along the way. I suppose I could hunker down and just get a little bit better at this skill, though to be honest I’ve just gotten comfortable feeling lost. I enjoy it because every road, whether I’ve been on it or not, is a new adventure this way.

Imagine my great happiness to learn that there is an entire country full of people with this same issue! In Costa Rica, there are no postal addresses. There is barely a postal service at all. Address are something akin to ‘go 25 meters east from the large yellow building with the slat windows and blue shutters, then turn north at the Soda Pollo (literally means Chicken Restaurant) and go another 100 meters until you reach two little stray dogs, one brown and one black, that are always outside an orange house’. As our program manager, Santi, said when giving us directions to our volunteer placement, “Turn right at the fancy house and walk up the hill.”

This is the greatest pleasure of travel – to learn the customs and history and culture of other people, to realize that our little lives in our little cities, no matter how big they are, are just one tiny slice of life on this planet. We learn that there are so many other options to conduct our lives. For people like me who are considering a jump off the cliff, travel helps us see that what to us seems like a big risk is not really a big risk at all. It is just a step change; it is just a different choice and this realization is a great comfort.

There are so many people on my program who made this same leap into a different life. Their courage is encouraging me, inspiring me. I know I am here in the lovely town of Cartago, today, for a very specific reason. I know I was brought here at this time in my life to help me see that this different way forward that I imagine is not only possible, but probable, bordering on certainty. The comfort I am finding in this house, with these people, in this town, in this beautiful and loving country, is a great gift.

Life

Internet in Costa Rica

Christa Avampato

The internet in Costa Rica is horrendous and everything else is incredible. I will likely be unable to post to this blog for the remainder of this week, but never fear. I´ll be writing every day and will upload all of the posts when I return to the U.S. this weekend.

I will say that the people in Costa Rica are among the friendliest and most genuine I´ve ever met. My Spanish is flooding back into my mind, and I immediately felt at home here. In just one day, I have so much to share. This is a place of tremendous healing and happiness. This will be a turning point in my life that I will look back on with great fondness.

Hasta Domingo….

change, Spanish, travel

My Year of Hopefulness – Finding Pura Vida

Christa Avampato

“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.” ~Leonardo Da Vinci

I’ve had the good fortune to travel a lot as an adult – both for work and for leisure. It should have come as no surprise to me that my travel to Costa Rica would be just what I needed to lift myself up out of sadness, disappointment, frustration, loss, and anger of the last few months. I agree that so often what’s needed is a change of self and not a change of scene – I just find that a change of scene, even if it’s just for a short time, kick starts the change of self.

I left for the airport at 5am – my preferred leave time when I’m traveling. I like to jump up out of bed, throw on my clothes, grab my bags, and run to the M60 bus that carries me away to LaGuardia airport. On the bus this morning, my mind was still reeling from some circumstances in my life that I cannot change. I just couldn’t let go; I couldn’t clear my head.

I boarded the plane and stashed my carry-on bag. I was worried. “Are my disappointments going to follow me around for the next weeks? Are they going to ruin this vacation I’ve been planning for almost a year?” I thought. And then I heard the announcements come over the loudspeaker in Spanish. I have been practicing my Spanish, reminding myself of vocabulary and grammatical structures that I haven’t thought about in years. The excitement began to mount.

I leaned my head against the window as we backed away from the gate, my Spanish phrasebook in hand. “Please God, let this go well,” I prayed. The whirring of the plane’s engines put me to sleep for about 30 minutes, and I woke up to a face full of sunshine. We had broken through the cloud cover. We had soared to a place where my disappointments could not go – I literally felt them fall away and go crashing to the ground below. I imagined them as angry little characters down there on the ground I could no longer see, shaking their fists at me as I went on my way without them. And then they hung their heads and sulked away, lamenting the one, me, who got away.

In Costa Rica, the common greeting that people exchange is “Pura Vida”, which literally translates to “Pure Life”. From the moment I set foot in this beautiful country, I vowed to embrace that as my motto going forward, no matter where in the world I am. I will be my one guiding principle for how to live each moment: with the feeling of being truly alive. The time of contentment and “good enough” and “maybe tomorrow” is not an option anymore – I left those sentiments back there with my disappointments, far below the cloud cover.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

change, community service, hope, travel, volunteer, wishes

My Year of Hopefulness – You Get What You Give

Christa Avampato

“What I know for sure is that what you give comes back to you.” ~ Oprah Winfrey

I’m off to Costa Rica tomorrow on a volunteer project with Cross-Cultural Solutions. A lot of people have asked me why I chose to do a volunteer vacation. Why would I spend my vacation working? There are several small reasons: I did a volunteer vacation in the south of France in 2005 and loved it, it’s a great way to truly experience the culture of a new country, it’s a fun way to travel alone without being alone, and I enjoy meeting new people more than I enjoy just about anything else. The true reason I’m volunteering on vacation? It’s good for the world – Oprah’s right, as usual. What we give comes back to us, and I would add that it comes back to us 10-fold.

Though I am volunteering to help others, truly it’s me that I’m helping. I am certain that the Cross-Cultural Solutions program will teach me and help me far more than I could ever teach or help anyone else. It’s an interesting fact about service – you go into it to help others and you’re the one who ends up with the greatest benefit from the work. In theory, this doesn’t make sense. In practice, it is most certainly true.

For the past few months I’ve heard a lot of people wishing out loud. They need a better job, a better place to live, better relationships, better health. They have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to acquire these things, and I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I can help them. I wonder if service might be the best remedy for wishing.

I wonder if it’s really true that what we seek for ourselves we can obtain by providing that very thing for someone else. Love, confidence, money, health, a positive outlook on life, trust, friendship, courage. Our list of wishes is never-ending, and therefore the number of opportunities for service is unlimited. How do our lives change if we take on the view “we only get what we give”? And in the process, how can this view change the whole world? I’ll let you know if I find some answers in Costa Rica. Talk to you tomorrow from beautiful Cartago!

career, change, dreams, friendship, risk

My Year of Hopefulness – Safety in Change

Christa Avampato

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” ~ Alan Cohen

My friend, Rob, and I were talking about safety a few weeks ago. Rob talked to me about how we’ve conned ourselves into believing that a company, a job, can give us some feeling of security and stability when really it’s a house of cards. I’ve seen it happen to so many of my friends – they are cranking along in their jobs, exhibiting exceptional performance and results, and then the pink slip. Rob’s advice on my news of moving on: “You’ve done the hard part: making the choice to step outside the box that hems one in, and keeps one from dreaming bigger dreams…know you are supported from many quadrants. More as it goes…”

I emailed some friends about my impending jump off the cliff. I told them that it feels great to have made this decision, though my friend, Eric, in his characteristic empathy sensed that I’m scared. And then in his continuing characteristic empathy, he responded : “Don’t worry, Christa – I already hit rock bottom underneath that cliff – so I’ll be there to catch you!” Not at all surprising since Eric honestly saved my life as I muddled through my MBA. My friend Laura simply responded “I am 150000% behind you.” My friend, Allan, said “You are very brave and thoughtful.” These are the very messages I needed today to lift me up.

When I think about finding security and stability, I’m reminded that it’s in our friends and family and in the chance we take on our own abilities that we can find a haven. The safest route for me is not to stand on that cliff hoping that it doesn’t crumble beneath me; it’s to jump, knowing that friends like Rob, Eric. Laura, and so many others are there to catch me if I need catching. They are the ones I can place my faith and trust in.

My friend, Jamie, finished up his last day at his job today. We went for a celebratory dinner, yummy cheap Thai food around the corner from my apartment at Sura. We toasted to our new adventures, to our choice to be free and to build the lives we want to live. And while there is still that underlying ripple of fear of the unknown, fear of what’s next, there is also a tremendous sense of excitement, of realizing that we are on the edge of becoming more ourselves.

I was reminded all day today, through so many different channels, that in September I came very close to never getting a tomorrow. I stood on West 96th Street, watching smoke billow out of my building, realizing I was living a life of great comfort and little meaning. That great “what if” hangs over my head every day, and rather than being plagued by it, I am so grateful for it. What if I hadn’t made it out of that building? What if that was the end? Could I have looked back on September 4th and said, “yes, I’m so glad that I was living that life?” No – not at all. In that moment, change became not an option, but an inevitability, and it’s been driving me forward, upward, and onward toward a life lived with greater meaning, greater purpose, every day since.

The image above is not my own. It can be found here.

curiosity, happiness

My Year of Hopefulness – The Gift of Curiosity

Christa Avampato

“You can’t always be happy, but you can almost always be profoundly aware and curious, and reap the psychological and physical benefits. Thankfully, curiosity is not a fixed characteristic. It’s a strength we can develop and wield on the path to a more fulfilling life.” ~ Todd Kashdan

This quote has special meaning for me today. I learned about some unkind things that someone in my life has been spreading around about me, things that simply are just not true. This isn’t someone I trusted, or someone I even liked for that matter, but it is someone I see every day and who has some impact on my life. At first I was a little shocked to learn this information, though now that I reflect on this person a bit more, it all makes sense really.

In the first few minutes of learning this information I was very unhappy. If someone drags my name through the mud because of something I actually did, then I’ll take the consequences. To say things that just aren’t true is another thing entirely. And then after a few minutes, I had a good laugh at myself. I had turned the corner to curiosity. Why would she do this? What could she possibly hope to gain from it?

Life throws us curve balls all the time, things we don’t understand, things that make us anxious and weary. I’m finding that the trick is to develop one good question from each difficult situation, one lesson learned that we can hang our hat on and use going forward. Curiosity dissipates unhappiness and anger, it frees us up to be the kind of people we’d like to be, to live the kind of lives we’d like to live. It provides us with possibilities.

career, change, dreams, hope, theatre

My Year of Hopefulness – Climb Up A Ways

Christa Avampato

One of the first Broadway shows I worked on was Cabaret at Studio 54. I would sit in the back of the theatre night after night and watch that story unfold, every show more beautiful than the show before. One of my favorite lines is from Herr Schultz (played by Ron Rifkin) to Fräulein Schneider (played by Blair Brown). Herr Schultz is trying to convince Fräulein Schneider to enter into a relationship with him, despite the fact that he is Jewish and the world is looking a little bleak for people of his heritage. He tells her that the apples at the base of tree are easy to pick up, though the fruit at the top of tree, if she is willing to climb up a ways, is so much sweeter. I worked on that show almost 11 years ago, and still I think of that line and how applicable it is to our lives every day.

I feel comfortable admitting in this blog post that very soon I will be moving on to a new position in my career. I’ve had an honest conversation with my boss and explained my intentions. I hope she understands. At the end of the day, the future of her team that she’s laid out is just not what gets me going. I completely understand that she’s in charge of the team and has every right to change the direction of the bus. My obligation is to decide whether or not to whole-heartedly get on the bus. I’ve decided to actively look for a new bus, and there are some stupendous options on the horizon.

Some people think I’m a little crazy for making this move. I’ve done a lot of good work in my position; I’ve built solid relationships that would serve me so well and get me promoted quickly. If only I could put my head down, keep my mouth shut, and phone it in just the way that I’ve been scripted, I’d be just fine. I could coast right through to the end of this recession no matter how long it lasts.

Those who know me a bit better just smile and nod when I say I’m looking for new opportunities that get me up out of bed in the morning. They know I’m not built for coasting. Yes, coasting is much easier in that it requires no exertion on my part. The trouble is that for me coasting is just an unbearable existence. Putting the pedal to the metal and ‘trying to get up that great big hill of hope’ is more my style. Herr Schultz was right: The vistas up there are so much wider and more open and beautiful. Fräulein Schneider didn’t know what she was missing.

The photo above is not my own. It can be found here.

change, dreams, leadership

My Year of Hopefulness – The Great Progression

Christa Avampato

“We must be silent before we can listen. We must listen before we can learn. We must learn before we can prepare. We must prepare before we can serve. We must serve before we can lead.” ~ William Arthur Ward

The Universe is trying to tell me something. Here I am on Day 2 with no voice. I can get out a squeak here and there. My friends have commented that I sound like a cross between Marge Simpson and those people on talk shows who want their identities to remain hidden. There is an odd kind of peace found in being silent. I can be silent about as long as I can sit still, which is to say roughly 5 seconds or so. At the moment, the universe is not giving me any choice in the matter. So I’m parked on my couch, being vewy, vewy quiet….

Those telepathic folks over at DailyGood sent me this quote last night about silence. I have definitely felt conflicting messages flooding my life lately – how to keep up and slow down at the same time, how to balance the effort to enjoy our lives with a constant eye on achievement and success. These are tough things to do. They don’t all play nicely together in the sandbox and often make us feel like we are at odds with ourselves.

So what if we begin with silence. My great hope is that you have not been forced into silence like me, but that it’s something you can choose, just for an hour or two. What can we find in silence? What kind of ideas can we get by sitting and being and doing nothing else? What do we listen to when we quiet our audible voice and the narrative inside our own minds?

Today, I am listening to the message that my life has many options. I don’t feel trapped at all – right now I feel like I have more options before me than I have ever had in my life. I am now most concerned with how to provide myself with the greatest amount of flexibility and freedom possible. And I’m learning that there are many ways to be free. We are free as soon as we choose to be.

I’ve also found that every day for the past several months I am learning so much about myself. I am becoming increasingly aware of what I enjoy and don’t enjoy, what makes me happy and what makes me sad, what kind of people I want to surround myself with and sadly which people I must release from my life, at least for now. I’m learning about the contribution I want to make to humanity, and I’m learning how my actions and words effect others and vice versa. To tell you the truth, it’s fun, albeit sometimes a little exhausting, to be in a state of hyper-learning.

And now the preparation. I was on the subway yesterday riding home from work and reading the following on one of the NYC subway posters: “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. ~ Abraham Lincoln, A House Divided” This sentiment was true not only for the U.S. in 1858, when Lincoln made this speech, but for our own lives as well. Silence and listening leads us to know the first first piece of Lincoln’s statement so that we can then prepare, serve, and lead our futures.

I’m finding it very hard to have different segments of my life call for a different kind of personality. I certainly believe in and practice the principle of knowing my audience, though I also believe ardently that we must be authentic at every moment, we must be more like who actually are at every moment. In this new life that I am creating for myself, filled with freedom and flexibility, I am preparing the way, offering myself a variety of options for income and making way for opportunities to pursue whatever makes me happy and piques my interest. Yoga, teaching, creating products and services, writing, travel, and research. With solid preparation, it is all possible.

All this preparation leads us to serve the world and our own happiness in the best way for each of us. We all have unique talents and abilities. The way to happiness for one of us is not necessarily the way to happiness for someone else. We have different priorities and interests, we have different goals and different paths we’d like to take to get to those goals. The key is to always ask “is this the best way forward? Am I providing an optimal amount of service by going about my life this particular way.”

And then finally all of our service leads us naturally on to leadership. Leadership is a funny thing. While there are some that feel the best way to lead is with strong opinions, to develop a clear delineated chain of command structure, I couldn’t disagree more. To me, leadership is service in its highest form. As a leader, and by leadership I don’t mean a title but a behavior, my only role is to serve those I’m leading, to lift them up to be the very best people they can become, to lead the very best lives possible.

I have been abundantly blessed with great leaders in my life, in my family, at work, in school, and among my friends, people who actively gave me tough advice and great support and love all at once. The greatest hope of my life as I begin Act 2 is that I can bundle up that advice, love, and support for others who I will lead going forward, whether they are in a classroom, at work, or people who come to me for any kind of advice or help. Success will be that I can impart any wisdom on them with the same degree of grace and humility that my leaders have shown me. And then I will be certain that the great progression that Williams Arthur Ward discusses will be well on its way.

The images above is not my own. It can be found here.