My (R)evolution, part 1.

That rug is just a metaphor, because I live in a place that isn’t really fit for rugs. In the tropics, we don’t have rugs. Door mats maybe, but no rugs.

Since 2005 I call Little Corn Island my home base. It’s a tiny tropical island off the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. Turquoise seas, white sandy beaches, waving palm trees, my own little yoga and massage studio set in a lush garden right next to my tiny but super-comfortable home.

Of course, now you all think I’m living the dream. Well, maybe I was. Until April 19 of this year. Now I’m living in what some of you would more likely call a nightmare. A friend of mine described it as “living on the edge”. Whichever way you want to label it, when the country you’re living in as a foreign entrepeneur throws itself into a revolution, you cannot help but feel as if the rug got pulled out from underneath your feet.

From one day to the next the Nicaragua people woke up from peacefully dozing to fiercely demanding that the president and his wife step down. In a month’s time more than 70 people have found their death and hundreds have been injured in riots caused by police violence and looting. Road blocks are disabling proper transport, due to which many regions (amongst which our little island) are cut off from their regular supplies of food and fuel.

 

Living your dream isn't brave.

For the last 10 years, I have been living my dream, by myself, in a strange land far from everything that is (or was) familiar.

People see that and they think they would never be able to do it themselves, so they tell me I’m brave.

But I don’t really deserve a medal. Living your dream isn’t brave.

To me, brave people are those who risk their own lives or freedom for the sake of others. The people who overcome tremendous difficulty in life and can still find a smile in their hearts. The people who suffer deeply, but don’t give up hope.

Those are the brave ones, and I’m not of their calibre.

All I have done is get sacked from a job, pack a bag, and take off travelling, leaving the demands of modern society behind for some adventure and freedom. How brave is that?

So no, living your dream isn’t brave. I’m not brave. It’s that I have been able to let go of most of my fears.

Many of us are full of fears of all shapes and sizes: fear of losing our jobs, partners, money, or health; fear of losing face, of rejection, of abandonment; fear of gaining weight, not being pretty or good enough.

We fear failure in every way.

But when the fears subside, life begins. Continue reading “Living Your Dream isn’t Brave.”

Think in full colour.

Spring greens and endless hues of blues. Squinting against the intense sunlight, you feel the moist salt on your skin, the breeze playing with your hair, the trickles of sweat running down your body from every fold of skin because that sun is hot.

Your nose picks up the sweetness of flowers attracting their love bugs; your ears are soothed by sounds of lapping waves. A hammock strung in the shade of the palm trees is inviting you for a siesta in paradise.

You’re living the dream: a stress-free life on a tiny tropical island.

Actually, I am living your dream. The picture I just painted in your mind’s eye really exists. It’s not a dream though.

I live in that dream picture—it’s just not the whole picture.

There’s much more to living on a tiny tropical island, and it isn’t all fun.