A Pill for Patience

We make typical small talk as the breeze pulls off the ocean and the sun sinks lower towards the sea. It’s the time of day when people are most relaxed after the heat of the high sun transitions into the fresh evening air.

A frequent at the hotel approached my friend and I, turns out he hasn’t been able to get out on his board lately because of a pain he has been having in his chest. He says surfing hurts. But then says he hasn’t done much besides sit inside the last week and play video games. Previously he had mentioned to me about maybe doing some yoga and stretches to help relieve the pain but was never serious enough to commit the time.

He goes on to say someone gave him a pill to take before he surfed today, but it still didn’t help that much. I joked about how we are always more willing to take a pill for our ailments than to try something that takes more time and effort. Then we all agree that it’s mainly time that he needs for his inflammation to subside for him to feel good lying down on his surfboard again.

“But that requires patience,” he jokes.

“What if patience came in a pill?” I wonder aloud.

“I don’t think it would sell,” he says, “I wouldn’t buy it. It would just make people lazy and procrastinate more.”

“But isn’t patience what we need while we are waiting for things to come to us? After we have put our part in? While laziness is what hold us back from putting in our part in the first place?”

Our friend on my left who has lived in this small town for many years cuts in, “Costa Rica teaches you patience. This is the pura vida.”

Our ears locked to his voice.

“But Pura Vida kills us a little bit,” he continues on with his thick accent. “It is the life here, you know, ‘oh pura vida, pura vida,” his flailing hands in the air mocking a carefree lifestyle.

“When life is good we say, ‘pura vida,” he throws his hands in the air with excitement.

“When we have no control over something we say, ‘pura vida,’ he throws his hands up in an act of surrender.

“When people say, ‘tomorrow,’ we say, ‘pura vida,’ and then we go sit and wait in our hammock. This is what the hammock is for you know?” He nods his head towards us in persuasion.

“When the government steals our money in corruption it’s, ‘pura vida.’ When some gets murdered in the street it’s, ‘pura vida.’ You know, its not easy to sit in a hammock all day.” He shakes his head as he gazes out to the horizon line. “It’s not easy.”

And no, it’s not easy to sit in a hammock all day. To wait. To surrender into doing what you can do, and then waiting for others to follow through. To letting go of expectation.

Do we fight? Or do we, ‘pura vida’? Do we wait in the hammock and sway with our toe hooked onto the string to pull the air beneath us? Or do we take action? Can we use patience while creating action? It is a hard balance to find. But it is a balance we all want to find.

Patience in a pill here in the land of pura vida would look like someone laying in a hammock with a picket sign posted up against the palm tree.

And then we wait. And as the day passes on, we say, ‘pura vida.’

Or do we…