Why Rootedness Matters
By Core Team Member Tim O’Hara
Costa Rica is a popular destination for North American and European families looking to resettle in a place where life appears more promising. These desires may come from the need to escape a bad situation or a wish to find a better life. It’s a phenomenon that dates back thousands of years. We are a species that suffers from what I refer to as the “grass is greener syndrome”. We commonly dream of finding our Shangri-La somewhere different from where we were raised.
I grew up developing relatively deep roots in my hometown in upstate New York. But as a result of societal pressures, I moved away for college and never went back to my hometown to live full-time. These non-provincial experiences have been fruitful, transformational, and important to me to develop a more well-rounded view of the world. They also helped to nurture a tolerance and understanding for how others live. Nevertheless, they pushed against the societal benefits of growing deeper roots in the towns where we are born. With so many people uprooted, due to climate catastrophe, war, persecution, the desire to see the world or economic pressures, I fear that like a plant ripped up from the ground, this type of restless movement can result in community erosion, family disintegration, and a loss of geographical literacy. There are always tradeoffs, but I think that we should, when appropriate and possible, put more effort into encouraging humans to stay closer to home to do the good work that’s needed in every community around the world. Wealth continues to congregate in the “best” cities, leaving small towns and rural areas bereft of intellectual and physical stamina. I say this having left my home 30 years ago, so admittedly my perspective might come across as “curious.”
Robin and I started this business in 2000. We moved to rural Costa Rica in 2001 and in 2008 started a family with the arrival of our daughter Sole. Mastatal has been a challenging and amazing place to run an enterprise and raise a little girl. Sole has had what many people would consider a non-traditional upbringing. She grew up without diapers, went to an elementary school with 1 teacher and 10 students, and goes to a high school with 25. She plays unorganized soccer just about everyday and hikes to a nearby waterfall multiple days a week where she jumps off cliffs and catches freshwater shrimp and crabs. She watches out for snakes on her nightly trips home to an earthen house overlooking La Cangreja and has had to survive her early teenage years with horrible internet. She cooks for our entire community and is by far the best baker in town. We are so thankful for the environment that she has spent her first 15 years in, though it has been far from perfect.
Upon our arrival to Mastatal, we were definitive outsiders who had moved from afar into a small, quiet, depopulating village without much happening. There were no phones, terrible road access, and no formal businesses. Our first years here required a lot of energy to begin developing relationships and friendships with the people of our adopted village. It was some of the hardest but most rewarding work that we did and continue to do. To feel at home anywhere requires a certain level of acceptance and connection, and this only comes with intention, compassion, understanding, sharing, and an acceptance of vulnerability. And it usually takes time. It was not an easy or fast path for us, but one that gradually crept into our lives quietly. It led to the rootedness that community strength is built on, and a vested interest in the future of what has become our home.
This lifestyle choice has come with its sacrifices. For me the largest of these has been 2 precious decades geographically distant from the people that I hold nearest and dearest to my heart. It has not been a minor loss. We have missed important family gatherings, weddings, births, deaths and precious time with kin. Our lives are full of compromises, and this choice, although it has brought great joy and happiness, has a sad component that is part of being a human living on this earth at this time. We have to pick our battles, and being able to go through a well-thought out decision making process when contemplating a move like we did is important. I would suggest not running for the hills with each passing doom and gloom story that you hear about on the news. Our problems at home are oftentimes universal, and the battles should sometimes be fought at home, where we can garner the most support, and perhaps have the greatest positive impact. This might seem strange advice from a transplant who has carved out a nice life abroad, but I think that rootedness is an important consideration for many people striving to attain meaning and happiness in their lives.
Rootedness can create compassion and understanding for the place where we are, know, and love. I have seen the benefits firsthand from some of amazing people that were born in Mastatal and continue to call this place home. They anchor the business and environmental communities here. They are smart, savvy, entrepreneurial, caring and vested. They are raising their families here, inheriting their family farms, planting food, and against all odds bringing about the revitalization of a small rural community. They are selling organic chocolate, offering amazing natural history and birding tours, preserving forests, planting trees, and running our local government. And after 22 years I do finally feel rooted here, but it took time, energy and resources that I could’ve also dedicated to the town that gave me so much as a youth, and I think that’s worth looking into a bit deeper for everyone contemplating where to call home.