The breeze gently caresses my face. The sound of the waves rolling softly onto the shore soothes me. A tree behind me in the jungle hums with cicadas. The tide is rising toward the full moon high, and soon we will move to higher ground. Soft music plays in the background.
My day began with deep yoga meditation and a sound bath.
I take a slow breath of clean, warm, salty air, leaving a faint taste of salt on my lips. My new friends are enjoying the surf. It feels blissful, almost trance-like.
This is my day of peace, and I offer any merit I gain simply by being kind, sharing it with all beings who are suffering.
I enter the sea, grateful for its coolness. The waves rise and crest in a foamy froth. The sun dances across the choppy water, stretching as far as I can see. I breathe and submerge beneath a crashing wave. Energy moves through my body as I rise again and breathe. Salt stings my eyes, and the current seems to flow out through my feet. The rhythm repeats, again and again.
I notice the contrast between heat and coolness and reflect on my own state of mind — peace alongside worry, tenderness beside ache. For a moment, I hold a gentle prayer for the safety of those who live for what is right, who serve not only themselves but others. My heart breathes toward their pain, their sacrifice, their suffering — with compassion and quiet hope.🕊️J
It feels as though the world’s leaders have lost their minds. As if they’ve slipped into a dangerous game of power and ego, moving pieces across a board without regard for the lives beneath their hands. And the rest of us, “we the people”, are left standing in fear and disbelief, asking the same question over and over again: What on earth is happening inside their heads?
It is not the powerful who pay the price for this madness. It is the people of every nation…the families, the neighbors, the children – who carry the weight of political insanity and unchecked greed. Not greed for what is rightfully theirs, but hunger for what belongs to everyone else. Somewhere along the way, the balance tipped. The power of the people was quietly traded for the power of the power-hungry. And now we are left wondering: when did this happen… and when will enough finally be enough?
The death toll rises across the globe. Once, as US Americans, we watched distant horrors unfold on foreign soil, believing – naively, that they could never reach us. Now that violence has been carried to our own doorsteps. We the people are no longer observers. We are witnesses. We are participants. And it is time…long past time – to pull our heads from the sand. There can be no more looking away. No more pretending this is someone else’s problem. It is time to wake up, to smell the gunpowder and tear gas, and to say with one voice: enough is enough!
The message we’re fed is muddled and poisonous…voices everywhere, shouting over one another, spewing hate, distraction, and recycled lies. A fog of smoke and mirrors meant to confuse, divide, and exhaust us. And still, astonishingly, so many cling to it. But others are stirring. Others are seeing clearly. Others are standing up and whispering, then speaking, then shouting: this is not okay.
I hear the sorrow in the voices of friends and family left behind to gather the pieces of shattered lives day after day. I see their courage as they stand for what they believe in, even when the deck is cruelly stacked against them. I feel it when my own family must walk into a grocery store accompanying a neighbor, afraid to go alone. That fear brings me to tears. This was once a peaceful place to call home.
When did it become acceptable to plant terror in the soil of a society? When did killing in cold blood become normalized? When did mass violence stop shocking us?
We now watch armed, masked men fire into crowds. We see chemical agents – once banned by the world, now used on citizens. And then we hear the lies, smooth and shameless, poured from the mouths of leaders as the moral fabric of the United States frays before our eyes. It is shameful.
Some days my faith wavers. My resolve feels thin. The obstacles loom so large they seem impossible to climb. And yet…somewhere deep inside – my heart steadies itself and keeps beating. Because even surrounded by madness, truth still exists. Because even drowned out by noise, compassion still speaks. The lies and the truth are both on full display now, painted in living color. And we are being asked, urgently, to choose.
Our lives are already being disrupted. Maybe not by bombs falling from the sky, not yet…but by fear, division, and the slow erosion of safety and trust. The tipping point is no longer ahead of us. It is here. We can choose to stand, peacefully, courageously, together – or we can hide and hope the storm passes us by. History has shown us where silence leads.
This moment is calling us back to ourselves. Back to humanity. Back to the understanding that power has always belonged to the people when they remember who they are. Not through violence, but through unity. Not through hate, but through truth. Not through fear, but through love that refuses to be extinguished.
So I ask again…not in despair, but in determination: When is enough, enough?
I believe the answer is rising, quietly but unmistakably, from the hearts of people everywhere.
I always thought that each New Year’s Resolution I set would bring a new me. What exactly that looked like, I really never knew because I only ever did part of the footwork needed to become that “new me”.
We left on the road now almost exactly 5.5 years ago. The New Year 2026 will be that milestone. In that time, I really feel like a lot of healing has occurred. I loved the traveling, it was dynamic and filled with so many experiences that kindled growth. Mostly, I believe that the oxidation of all parts of the body, caused by stress, was the hardest to undo and repair. It rears its ugly head in so many ways, both mentally and physically.
So much has happened over this time of travel that would probably never have happened if we had stayed put in our comfort level. Not to say we are not spontaneous, and – in the minds of family and friends – probably a bit too reckless at times but we are growing a bit more reserved. I’ve said it before that travel allows the mind to become pliable again. Allows the body to be pushed to its limits and a bit beyond. It teaches you to get out of your self-centeredness and become more selfless.
We’ve now been living in Costa Rica for 9 months and in our own place for 4 months. That’s the longest we’ve stayed put in one place since we left in 2020. I guess we set our first intention in life together back when we said someday we would live here. That intention set in motion all the preparations since have led up to the moment we bought our home here. In 1993, we first came to Costa Rica and fell in love with this tiny but vast country.
With a place to become grounded once again, but with the gift of leisure now ours, this year we can not just make a New Year’s resolution, but set our intentions for the new year. More than I’m going to quit this or that, lose weight or eat better. More than empty words and promises that soon die away as the stress of life settles back in after giving it our best efforts. Ah – therein lies the difference.
Setting intentions can now include seeing how we can achieve these in our new life. It can be not a self-defeating promise but an action-packed movement towards an outcome. We can work on our bodies and our minds by utilizing this leisure time gift as if it were the gift of life itself. We can set ourselves up to succeed and achieve with few hindrances. We have the tools and guidance available all around us here, and have tapped into the knowledge that exists here. In the humans, the nature, and the natural forces of the coming time of change in our universe. If there was ever a year to do it – this is the year.
Two Travelin' Chicas... 