For a month at the beginning of this summer, I lived with a family in San José, Costa Rica while I took Spanish courses at the University of Costa Rica. I obviously went with the intent of improving my fluency in Spanish and experiencing the culture, and was thankful for the opportunity to live with a host family in order to do so. My host family was eager to give counsel and provide suggestions on what to do and see as well as answer any questions I had regarding life and culture in Costa Rica
One of the first things I did when I arrived was convert my American currency into Costa Rican colones, and I immediately had questions about the appearance of the currency. Each paper bill was brightly colored and had either a prominent Costa Rican person or a type of animal across the front. I quickly picked out a bright green bill with a huge sloth on it as my favorite, and as soon as I got home, I made sure to ask my host parents why a sloth was Costa Rica’s chosen representative on one of their most common bills.
“Oh, we have lots of those,” my host mom informed me. Apparently, sloths could be spotted in parks, along beaches and even on the campus where I was studying for the month. You would have to look pretty hard to find them sometimes, but if there was a cluster of trees, there was probably a sloth wrapped around one of the trees’ branches. My host mom explained to me that sloths are highly respected by Costa Ricans, so they appear in many places within Costa Rica’s culture, including on some of the currency.
It makes sense that Costa Ricans hold sloths in high regard. The country is said to be one of the happiest in the world, and its people swear by the concept of “pura vida,” or “pure life.” This phrase can be used as a greeting, a description, an encouragement or to express contentment. It implies that your troubles are temporary because life in its purest form is good. “Pure life” means keeping your life free of worry in order to maintain its purity. The more time I spent in Costa Rica, I started to realize that sloths are the perfect embodiment of the concept of “pure life.” I never saw a sloth that didn’t have a kind of creepy, but definitely content grin on its face. Sloths aren’t worried about much at all–they pick a tree to climb into and settle into one of its branches for days at a time. Sometimes they will hang from the branch by their hands or feet to get a better view of the forest, and every few days they’ll come down off of their tree for a little while, but other than that, they hardly move at all. Their diet mostly consists of vegetation, so they never have to worry about hunting for their meals (which is good, because anything they tried to hunt would definitely outrun them). They spend most of their lives lazing away in their trees and don’t have a single worry in the world. For the most part, they live pure lives free of much trouble.
I studied abroad with the intent of learning a language and immersing myself in a different culture, and I was definitely able to accomplish this. But one of the biggest lessons I took away from my summer was to live my life a little more like I was a sloth. Not in the sense that I should be lazy and pick a spot that I’ll only move from once a week, but that I should be content in the life I have. I should take life as it comes to me and be happy with it. I’ve been abundantly blessed in my life, far beyond what any sloth will likely experience, and I often let stress and menial worries get the better of me. If sloths had schoolwork and deadlines and “real life problems,” they probably wouldn’t freak out about them like I do–they would probably take their problems in stride and not let them intrude upon their happiness. They would basically do the opposite of what I do, and they are probably a lot more content than I am most of the time.
So with the school year starting back up, I’m trying to tackle the semester with the most sloth-like attitude possible. If things start to get busy and I start to get stressed out, which is inevitable, I will take a moment to breathe, maybe sit in a tree and eat some leaves, and remember that life really is good when you stop and think about it.
By Katie Kemp, features editor
