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Jean A. Costa / Posts tagged "adventure"
April 28, 2019 In Affirmations

A Safer World

Affirmation:  The world is safer than we believe it to be.
She didn’t phrase the affirmation in the positive, so I had to re-wright it.  She actually said, “The world is not as dangerous as we imagine it to be.”  She was backpacking through So. Africa.  She was crossing the border from Zimbabwe into Botswana.  She was all alone, no travel buddy along and she would be spending the night in a camp site, somewhere about which she knew very little.  “Will you be in a tent?” I asked.  She didn’t know.  She appeared to be in her early thirties and while I was dressed to be sure the mosquitos didn’t find a free square inch on me, she was in a tank top and shorts.  Her name was Anya.  I told her she was one of my newest heroines.  I have many but she was definitely the latest and I was so pleased to meet her, to share a little time with her and to learn from her.  “The world is not as dangerous as we imagine it to be.”  I felt like someone had opened a door in a stuffy, small room,  Yes, I was in So. Africa too.  I had only been here a few days when we were traveled to Chobe to cruise the river and ride through the jungle to see lions and giraffes and elephants and whatever other exotic creatures chose to show themselves.  I, however was with a buddy, Susan Auman and we had hired a guide to help facilitate the transfer across the border.  I was in awe of Anya.  
This was towards the end of our trip.  

It can be hard to imagine the world as safe.  The news is so gruesome most days.  It is the focus of the media and it leaves many feeling anxious and afraid.  Fear can be useful.  We are genetically wired to use fear as a warning system but when we always are in a “flight or fight” response, it becomes debilitating, cortisol levels rise and our systems are overloaded.  

Susan and I had already visited Cairo.  We had seen the pyramids, the Sphinx and visited mosques and several holy sites where the Holy Family had lived, according to the legends told.  We had also sailed the Nile and visited temples as old as three thousand plus years old.  (We had used some toilets that we were sure were just as old. Toilette paper was handed out by the sheet and that only with the payment of a dollar or more.) We had danced and hiked and rode in a hot air balloon over the desert but I still wasn’t sure if the world was more or less dangerous than I imagined but I was beginning to see the world differently, more like Anya.  

We were traveling during Lent and finishing our Egypt segment at the end of Holy Week.  Egypt is 80 percent Muslim and I was feeling very unsure about our journey.  I always wear a small cross necklace and I just wasn’t sure how advisable that was.  I took the cross off for a few days but I felt very uncomfortable without it and so, I put it back on.  I once read a story about a man who decided to wear a large (I don’t know how large.) wooden cross around his neck for Lent.  He was fairly sure people would react to his new pendant, he just didn’t know how they would react.  Imagine his surprise when no one reacted at all.  His decision to wear the cross was a very brave statement.  The only thing that mattered was how it made him feel.  That’s how I felt about wearing my little necklace.  The good news is no one reacted to it, positively or negatively but it was very important to me to openly claim my faith.  I felt very brave. 

So. Africa was a very different environment than Egypt.  I fell in love with the people.  We arrived and were eventually met by Sindy.  He was definitely one of the highlights of our travel.  Actually, for me, meeting the people wherever we went was the most fun.  Whoever we met, we were greeted warmly and courteously.  Susan and I did always present with a smile and I think that’s a universal language.  Very seldom was there not a response in kind.  

We had both prayed that God would send his angels ahead to pave the path with grace, ease, compassion and love and I must say, we were in awe of how well our travels went.  When met by our last tour representative we knew our prayers had definitely been answered.  His name was Blessing.  The names of the people we met in Victoria Falls were inspiring.  One of our waiters was named Tadiwa. He told us it meant, “We are loved.”  I asked him if it were true and he said, “yes” he was loved.  Sindy’s wife’s name is Simangaliso.  Her name means, “Great wonder” and according to Sindy, she is.  

Sindy had stories galore for us.  His enthusiasm for the falls was contagious.  As we walked the path to the Danger Point and the Devil’s Pool, he quoted Livingston.  “These are signs so wonderful that the angels must have gazed upon them in their flight.”  As we were leaving, this unassuming, gentle man he told us one last tale about being invited to speak in 2015 at the “Be the Change Conference” in Atlanta, GA.  It was his first time to fly and when he arrived, he spoke to five thousand people about helping women develop their own businesses because they are the mothers who nurture our future. 

The quality of the So. African people I found most striking was how they looked you right in the eye.  When you asked them how they were, they would always smile and engage you in a way that I found to be endearing and unusual.  


“The world is not as dangerous a place as we imagine it to be.” I am so grateful to my friend, Susan, for inviting me to join her on this pilgrimage.  Her desire to see and experience the world and her willingness to share it with me, dragged me out of fear and into love.  It’s not the first time she has led me this way.  It was she who led me to walk the Camino in 2017.  I can fall into fear very easily but she reminds me that “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.”  We said our prayers and then stepped out into a whole new world.  She would tell me periodically that “You knew you weren’t in Kansas any longer,” when you had warthogs on the front lawn, elephants crossing the road, baboons climbing out of inn windows and monkeys waiting to steal your breakfast.  We were in a different world and I had conquered my fears, again.  It’s a gift I gave myself. It’s keeping me excited and enthusiastic about life, about the future, about our future.  It’s a reminder of a phrase I heard while at the Haden Institute, “God loves me exactly as I am but She loves me too much to leave me there.”  Thank you, God!  Thank you, Susan.  

April 14, 2013 In Uncategorized

Life is a Banquet

Affirmation:  “The world is an amazing place and the more I learn about it and its inhabitants, the more I learn about myself.”

If you’ve ever been to Disney Land or Disney World you’ve probably been to the Small World ride that plays the song “It’s a Small World After All”, over and over and over.  My children always seemed to enjoy the ride but after going on it just once, I found the song to be very disturbing.

While traveling out of the country I began to think about living in a small world.  I had a tour guide hand me extra passes to the Pope’s Wednesday morning audience and say “You never know who you’ll meet.  It’s a small world, especially in Rome.”  In this instance, even with a million people there I didn’t meet anyone I knew.  I must admit I have been very far from home when I’ve been stunned to meet someone from my local area. But, for the most part, I rarely meet an acquaintance when traveling.  Mind you I meet a lot of new acquaintances, just not a lot of old ones.  And, isn’t that one of the reasons to travel? 

I traveled with Owen, my thirteen year old grandson to London to visit with my adult daughter Ellen and her fiancé, Adam.  Then Ellen, Owen and I headed to Rome.  Two years ago I took the same trip with my granddaughter, Isabelle.  She too was thirteen at the time.  After visiting London on that trip we then headed to Paris.  Yes, I feel blessed to be able to share the world with them.  I feel blessed that they want to come with me.  As Isabelle and I deplaned in Raleigh and were heading towards customs, she asked me where we were going next.  “We need to go through customs, Honey.”  “Oh no, Grandma, that’s not what I meant.”  And she smiled.  Throughout this trip, Owen has suggested I adopt a “travel buddy.”  He has suggested himself. 

When Ellen, Owen and I were in Rome, the tour guide mentioned in passing that one corner shop had “the best gelato in Rome” and that “the line for the gelato is sometimes longer than the line to enter the Vatican.”  When we finished our Vatican tour I was ready to find our way back to our hotel and rest for a while but that wasn’t Ellen’s plan.  She whipped out her trusty iPhone and located that shop.  We walked this way and that way and what did we find, the best gelato shop in Rome. So there we stood in line with a group of nuns from Albania who had also discovered the shop.  When they told us where they were from, Ellen surprised them by announcing she’d been to Albania.  The nun told her to come visit the next time she had a reason to go there.  We would have missed out on that whole experience if it wasn’t for her desire to experience it all and to have the “the best gelato in Rome.”

I have friends who have traveled all over the world.  They aren’t the least bit concerned with safety or even worse, Montezuma’s revenge and if they are concerned, well too bad, the adventure is more important than the worry.  I think of them as having a huge appetite for life.  They want to experience it all.  They don’t care if they encounter challenges along the way.  In fact, they relish the challenges.  Remember the movie Auntie Mame with Rosalind Russell? She says, “Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.”  I don’t want to starve to death.  I too want feast from the banquet of life.

What happens when one travels?  Your world becomes larger.  It’s true, life is a banquet.  There is such diversity, so many delightful flavors.  I think that’s why the Amazing Race is one of my favorite TV shows.  In it a dozen or more people travel around the world engaging in the local traditions and customs of the country they are visiting. What is of the greatest interest is not what they see or do and I certainly don’t recommend racing through any worthwhile experience.  What is of the greatest interest is what happens to one’s thinking when one steps outside of their box.  It’s what happens inside us that’s so amazing.
We get to choose whether or not we want to live inside a tiny little box, the known world or expand the box.  The world can be a scary place but at some point we will no longer be a part of it.  While we are here we should embrace the concept of living in a big space, of learning about our planet and its people and therefore, about ourselves.  It’s too easy to stay safe and comfortable and to let our world shrink to our size.  Maybe one doesn’t really need to hop a plane or a train in order to stay green and growing.  I see how small our world can become every time I visit an assisted living facility.  We get to choose if we want to eat from a buffet or have the same food over and over.  If travel is beyond your means, go to the library, go to the theatre, and borrow some travel videos.  There is no reason in this day and age to miss out on all that’s available in the world that can nourish our minds, hearts and our souls and help us to live a life of abundance and adventure, even if we’re confined physically by old age, illness or finances.

Because of Ellen’s sense of adventure we got to meet Albanian nuns.  How many people outside of Albania can claim that?  Because of my sense of adventure we got to go to Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica and view the Pieta and see Pope Francis.  Owen’s interests took us to see some of Banksy’s London street art.  Each of us journeyed to a new place.  We discovered new people, new visions, and new appreciations and therefore, we discovered more about both our outer and most important, about our inner worlds.  I’m pleased my grandchildren and I have had the opportunity to travel together.  This trip certainly wasn’t the first but the trip to Europe was the farthest, not however, the longest. The longest journey is the one we take to know ourselves better, the one within and by spending time together, especially in a foreign location, we learned a great deal about each other and about ourselves.  We not only created some amazing shared memories but we ate from the banquet of life and it was great!

February 3, 2013 In Uncategorized

Embracing Adventure

Affirmation:  I am a bold adventuress.

This is a
very clear example of creating an affirmation to change the way I want to
think.   I want to believe with all my
heart that I am not afraid of most things, especially an “adventure.”  There are all types of adventures some we
choose and some which are chosen for us. 
I don’t care; I want to embrace every one of them.  I want to embrace every aspect of life and I
think most of life is that which happens between our plans and usually that
requires a sense of adventure.  Perhaps
being a daring adventurer requires all those skills I’ve worked on over the
years and have in my “tool box?”

It seems
to me an adventurer or adventuress needs to be flexible. My husband and I were
on our way to a vacation and it required us to fly there.  We were meeting our daughter and future
son-in-law in the Caribbean.  I’ve come
to believe anytime flying is involved, some sort of adventure will present
itself and all the survival skills I’ve been practicing over the years will be
needed to finish the journey.  On this
particular occasion I was right.  It
seemed anything that could delay a flight, delayed our flight from a malfunctioning de-icer to a sick passenger, to mechanical difficulties.  There we sat going nowhere.  After a three hour delay, we took off.  If there were a miracle we would make our next
flight.  There might have been one but we
weren’t aware of it.  We missed the next
flight by 20 minutes. All of the flights the next day were full.  They could send us through Puerto Rico and
then onto our final destination.  We’d
arrive, hopefully, 12 hours after our original time.

The
greatest loss I experienced with cancer was the loss of my intuition.  I always trusted I knew, without reason, what
was going to happen.  I had had many life
experiences when I knew ahead of time how things were going to work out even
when no one else could see it.  When the
word “cancer” was first mentioned to me, it didn’t register.  I had no forewarning.  I couldn’t imagine what they were talking
about.  I didn’t believe them.  The poor physician who first uttered
“breast cancer” to me, I just about attacked him.  What did he know?  That was ridiculous!  I knew he was wrong.  They weren’t wrong and there I was going on
an adventure I hadn’t chosen and of which I’d never even dreamed. 

I’d
always worked hard to be healthy.  I
exercised, I gave up smoking, I only drank alcohol periodically and I really
did try to eat healthily.  After the
cancer treatments were discontinued I began to look at more modalities I could
enlist to stay healthy. I’ve spoken with many people who go searching for those
things that will keep disease at bay.  It
doesn’t have to be cancer.  It can be
heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, high blood pressure.  The list is long.  Sometimes I hear about ailments that only a
tiny portion of the population ever experience and hope that I never have to
deal with something so rare but rare or not, there’s always that tiny,
sometimes not so tiny, voice that is questioning what is going on inside my
body that I have no knowledge of and of which I have no control over.  Oh, I’m trying to control it.  That’s what all those extra measures for
staying healthy are all about, vegan eating, no alcohol, exercise every day,
take my vitamins and have my yearly screenings. 
It’s my attempt to keep illness at bay, to trick myself into believing I
have control over what’s going on but I don’t really, do I?  Certainly, I can do all within my ability but
after that, who really knows?

My
husband handed me a short story about a young man who was so anxious about his
health that he had stopped living.  It
revolved around an older professor and his assistant.  After the professor listened to his young
friend’s concerns, he went to tell him about his great-grandfather.  His great grandfather had had all sorts of
health ailments, including losing an arm in one of the wars but he wasn’t as
concerned with disease and death as he was with living.  He had a zest for life and it couldn’t be
dimmed.  He wasn’t going to go quietly
into the night and if he did, he was going to go with the vast, colorful
memories of a life well lived. 

Balance
is another skill I’ve worked on over the years. 
In yoga you normally have one or two balance poses you practice in every
session.  There is a balance between
living recklessly and living so small that you might as well already be
dead.  That’s where being an adventurer
or adventuress comes in.  It’s deciding
to embrace the experience whatever it is or whenever it presents itself.  

As we
boarded the second plane to Puerto Rico a petite blonde women came and sat in
the window seat next to me.  I don’t
remember how the conversant started, probably with just a nod and a hello, like
so many casual meetings.  We exchanged a few
niceties about where we were going and why. 
I on vacation with my family, she returning to one of her two homes, one
in Majorca and one in Antigua.   She
lived on a ship.  It was being restored
in English Harbor, Antigua.  It was a
classic and she invited me to come see it. 
The name?  The Adventuress. 

We took
one day from the delights of the resort and headed out to see some of the
island.  We finally reached English
Harbor.  I guess I wasn’t really thinking
about how to find her ship, I thought I’d just ask.  There were hundreds of ships in the
harbor.  After a while and a few
questions a delightful young man offered us a ride in his Zodiac.  He thought the ship at the very end of the
other side of the harbor might be the one we were looking for.  Off we went. 
Yes, it was her ship, The Adventuress. 
No, she was nowhere to be found but with the mention of her name, we
were invited aboard for a short tour.  It
was stunning and certainly something far removed from my realm of
experience.  I’ve not been on a lot of
sailing ships.  In fact the person who
gave us the tour was the “sail master.”  I didn’t even know there was such a title. 

I kept
thinking about my intention to be grateful for all things at all times.  If we hadn’t missed our flight, I never would
have met the owner of The Adventuress. 
Once again I was faced with the belief that if I’d just relax, trust and
rest in God’s infinite care, I’d be so much happier, so much calmer.  Perhaps I’d even begin to trust my instinct
again.  Perhaps I’d be able to see the
adventure thrust on me with the onset of breast cancer.  Maybe if I could embrace that aspect of the
diagnosis, the one that lets me see all of life as an adventure, maybe then I
could finally fully claim the intention I’ve had for so very long, “I am a
bold adventuress.”  I’m not afraid
to fully live life and with that, perhaps, like the old man in the story, I’ll
go to my death with the vast colorful memories of a well lived life.