beauty // beauté // belleza

"Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in..."

"It's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment..."

Sometimes I, too am struck by the utter beauty of the world... an incredible sunset over the ocean, a song so poignant or so real it makes my heart break (And the four right chords can make me cry...), tearful reunions, human relations, the realization of my own mortality and that of the people I am close to... sometimes the beauty of life is so much that it is overwhelming. I feel a need to stop it as it wells up inside me, when I don't think that my heart can stand the pressure. Lately-- and I mean in the past week-- when I think about leaving Costa Rica, my heart feels that kind of pressure. It is as though all the emotion I feel about this country, my return home, my leaving part of myself behind-- it's too much. My heart starts to swell and tears come to my eyes and I'm forced to think of something else, of something different, before my heart breaks entirely. It is not, however, because of sadness. It's something much deeper, something in the fiber of my being that seems to transcend levels of emotion like happines or sadness or even fear.

"The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder." -Virginia Woolf-

This has been one of the most difficult and challenging years I have ever had, but I also feel as though I know myself now. I know more clearly the kind of person I am, and the kind of person I want to be. Isn't that a beautiful thing as well, to know yourself? The difficulty-- and this has always been the difficulty for me-- will be remembering that knowledge when I am taken out of yet another comfort zone and thrust into a now-unfamiliar situation. When I first went to college, when I moved to France... soon after arrival, I had a tendency to "lose myself." That is to say, I was so overwhelmed that I kind of lost my sense of self, my identity... and while this can be a good, healthy change, it can also be quite scary, or at least disconcerting. When I moved here, it was a different feeling. I was somewhat overwhelmed, yes, but I knew I could handle it? These are very difficult emotions to articulate. I trust that those of you who know me (or who have been thrust into similar new situations) will have some notion of what I mean. Most importantly, I feel like I know myself now. This has been a year of self-reflection in a strange place, a sort of Narnia or Never Never Land where regular rules don't seem to apply and time moves at a different pace.

"Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time." -Albert Camus-

I feel as though I am on the edge of a grand precipice, with no idea of what lays before me other than an imminent, bittersweet departure. Beyond that, the way is cloudy. I cannot wait to be back home, to see my family, my friends, to be once again settled well inside my comfort zone. And what of Costa Rica? This whole year, everything that has happened... in the grand scheme of history, of the world, this year that has changed me and challenged me and scared me and shocked me... isn't even a blip on the radar. Life is ephemeral. And doesn't beauty flee fastest of all? Flowers wilt, people grow old, the sun sets, much of poetry and music and art is forgotten. This is reason to appreciate it all the more. Costa Rica has been a strange, occasionally terrible place for me, but it has been above all a beautiful place. Now, where to?

And the wheels just keep on turning
The drummers begin to drum
I don't know which way I'm going
I don't know which way I've come...