Here All Along

3 weeks ago

“We have no more hope”, she said.

I hovered in the back galley, the metal drawers and cabinets slamming slightly, but not alarmingly, in the turbulence 35,000 feet above the Earth.

The seatbelt sign was unlit, and after 4 or 5 hours into a 12-hour flight, I was cramped from sitting too long. The open space in the back of the plane and chatting with the flight attendants with close proximity to free wine and snacks was more alluring than the in-flight movie selection.

On these cross-Atlantic flights, which I used to do more often, and often cross-Pacific, chatting with the airline staff to while away the time and stretch came easily.

Her name was also Christy (Christine?) and we started musing about life in the UK, in the US, and in Central America, and the unlikely commonality of discovering we were both owners of tripawds – her, a cat, and me, a pup,  The fact that we both had roots in LA and in London felt less significant after learning that she and I were both owners of lovely and unusual pets.

Whilst chatting, I learned that she used to own a ballet studio as an American living in London. This had been her full-time dream-turned-reality: to own a ballet studio, which she ran successfully for years. But, burnt out by the admin and payroll duties and all the things we business owners endure despite the glory of our title, she had left that life.  She now engaged in conversation with travelers like me, hurtling through the sky faster than I’d like to think about.

“Life these days”, she’d shared, her eyes colored deep, “doesn’t seem to instill much hope in the younger generations.” And this, despite the tasty freebies in the unsteady galley, made us both feel a little sad.

***

2 weeks ago

“We have no community”, she said, and her eyes scanned the shore ahead of us, the warm ocean lapping to our left, the damp sand drying out as it stretched to our right.  What little sun we would see that week shone now, warming our free-falling hair and reflecting off the curling waves.

I squinted over at her, empathizing with her lack of connection with others, while at the same time, appreciating the connections I’ve nurtured over the years, along this same stretch of beach.

She was one of our guests on a recent retreat here in Nicaragua, and these morning beach walks, though orchestrated to wake our bodies and minds, often also beget new friendships.  We could walk, talk, and breathe in the sea.  Exhale our thoughts and relax our walls.  We could listen.

What had happened to her community, she wondered.  Why do we feel so far apart from each other?

She went on to give voice to her thoughts that harbored a little loneliness, or at least a lack of kinship.  Her kids were now raised, and she found herself at a crossroads.  The last 40 or 50 years had supported a career and family, but what the next 40 or 50 years held felt as unsteady as a plane propelling through rough weather.  A new career, likely. One that enabled her to care for the well-being of others was what she had in mind.

Like so many who arrive with the intention to relax and rejuvenate on the beaches here, they discover something uncertain pacing their minds. Perhaps some have found their way to their 50s with satisfaction.  But alongside those decades of nurturing kids and careers, a community was not something that made it onto their rigorous schedules.  Community, neighbors, and friendships were not woven into the tapestry of a week. Who has the time?

Although I stood on the opposite side of this chasm she pondered, I could understand how she felt, looking at the open spaces where neighborly comradery should be.  For me, community is survival, and often all I have.

Having chosen not to start a family, and to live half a continent away from my siblings and their families, my friends and neighbors have stepped easily into these open spaces. My community and relationships are as important to me as food on the table.

More so, actually, since often I put my energy into time with other people instead of stocking the fridge and coming up with a meal plan.  Who wants to prepare a marinade when there is a porch to perch on and a friend to join you for a chat?

But I digress.  While the surf, the yoga, and the beachy tropical way of life beckon visitors to travel here, what they most relate to me is the strong sense of community shared amongst the residents here.  Visitors come to wiggle their bare toes in the warm sand and to turn down the volume on their regular lives, but their senses pick up something unseen.

The genuine greeting of hugs, the years of friendly history, the aura of connection that rises from the water and the treetops.  Our community is family here, complete with its dysfunctions and grudges, sure. But family just the same.

When we change our routine, we create the chance to bring into focus the thing we are missing. 

Which, I suppose, at least in my companion’s case on the beach that morning, was the connection with a caring community. Humans on the side of humans.

My conversation with her did not leave me sad, but the words exchanged on our sandy stroll left me reflective, on what life can offer, but doesn’t always seem to.  On what our world is capable of, but doesn’t create.  The connections with others that we don’t always nurture.

***

1 week ago

“We have our gratitude,” he said with a smile that turned up the light in his sky-blue eyes.  We were minutes away from beginning our yoga practice, waiting for our instructor to take to her mat and lead us into the first posture of the morning.

But what a dismal morning it was.  When the rain wasn’t falling in unyielding sheets, it threatened to.

While the recently re-built yoga palapa felt strong, its wooden columns holding up layers of new palm roof over a shiny, uncracked floor, the space surrounding was still under construction.  Gray skies.  Gray step ladders left at attention, unattended.  Gray piles of building materials amongst jungle shrubs distracted me from the gray ocean waving just across the sand.

I might have uttered a complaint.

“We are easily spoiled, living here”, he continued.  “Most people practice yoga in crammed studios under fluorescent lights, their mats only inches apart from strangers. Here we have the fresh sea air, we can see and hear the ocean.” And he smiled as he looked past the palapa, towards the water.

And most people who join these yoga sessions, I continued his narrative quietly with my own thoughts, are our friends and neighbors who we can chat to easily while we wait to begin.   

“Gratitude lifts me up whenever I feel I have too much to complain about,” he finished, but not self-righteously, or with any chastise.  He was sharing his go-to.

Gratitude trumps disappointment by revealing the things in front of us, instead of lamenting the things that are not.

Minutes later, we began in child pose, eyes-closed, and I could re-run the hundreds of conversations I’d had the last month. The past events and thoughts spiraled in my mind; many made it to paper, but most not yet to print.

***

This week

In case you’re counting, I haven’t published a piece in several weeks.  I have been writing, but it’s the kind of writing that feels more like the messy working out of knots that recent events have left me tangled with.

So much I want to shine a light on and share.  Mountain-sized surprises, overseas travel that crossed timelines, life-changing health scares, and the refining of important relationships.  There have been a few “come-to-Jesus” moments worth writing about. Likely I will in time.

The sadness, the loss of hope, the lack of community, and the fears and complaints that have peppered this first half of 2024 are worth giving pages to if only to contain their fires. If only to glean what lessons I can from them.

But in considering that, this year so far has also delivered so much of the opposite.  On the summit of those mountains, in the forgotten familiarity of crossing oceans, I have found genuine happiness and connection.  In the overdue reunions with long-time friends, in the crisp pages of new books, in the flutes of chilled champagne, and in the warmth of last-minute airport coffees.

→ My vulnerable conversation with the kindhearted flight attendant didn’t highlight an absence of hope.  It reminded me of the hope and dreams I still carry, and how important hope is to cultivate in others.

→ My beach walk with a lovely retreat guest, though we felt the mist of doubt and uncertainty, didn’t emphasize broken communities, but incited me to see where community still flourished, and to cherish it.

→ And rainy day yoga cupped all of what is still here, still within our sights, with gratitude – a perspective I had forgotten to reach for on gray, damp days.

I suppose while there are stories within stories from the last 6 months to snap up and write down, it’s these open-hearted conversations that have percolated my thinking about the perceived absence of things.

Unexpected chats, that felt a little forlorn at first, but then rounded off by reminding me that hope, community, and gratitude – these are things still here within our sights.

They have been here all along. We only need to remember to see them, to create them, and to share them when we can.

~Christy

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