We learn from those around us. As tiny sponges we pick up what the people around us throw down. And often we don’t realize it unless we are pulled out of our current cultural beliefs.
Since living in Costa Rica, my fear of bugs has diminished greatly and has become a sort of magical coexisting.
When I first got here, every spider resulted in EEEEKKK DIE!
Every beetle needed to be smashed to bits.
I had grown up thinking bugs were dirty and scary.
One of my friends saw me smash a spider here and she was like “dude, why? They eat the mosquitos. What did he do to you?”
Oh. right. True.
Everything here (and everywhere) has a circle of life. Monkey eat mangos. Mangos drop half eaten to rot on the ground. Bugs and bees come and eat the mangos, the bees go off and make some bomb honey an pollinate more mangos as well.
It’s all connected.
I see it and feel it more and more every day here…how disconnected I was to the natural world.
I posted a video of this beautiful moth the size of a saucer the other night and the response was “omg kill it! buy moth balls it will destroy your clothes.”
And I giggled. What clothes? I hardly own anything any more. I own very little little to preserve or protect from the natural world.
But I keep going back and thinking about that. The desire to just kill things because we grew up thinking they were scary.
Now i see a beetle in my kitchen and I say “hello friend.” I don’t smash it, it doesn’t startle me anymore really. We just co exist.
This morning a lizard barely the size of my thumb nail was chillin next to my can of coffee at 5am.
“Good morning” I said and we both carried on with our day.
It has been a beautiful deprograming. A new appreciation for the connectedness of the world.
It has made me realize the unnecessary fear of things that we grow up in.
But we can choose to make friends with nature instead.
We also fear things like failure, being bad at something not knowing the answer, looking bad.
These are all learned behaviors as well.
When you notice a belief or way of being that doesn’t feel good to you, pause and figure out where is came from, decide if you want to keep it. And if you don’t…
Replace it.
Krissy Krash”
A Krash Course in World Travel 