A lifetime in 2 weeks

Our interpreting team and surgeon 

On my last morning here in San Cristobal Las Casas, it’s hard to believe I have been in Chiapas for 2 weeks. It literally feels like a little lifetime, this 2 weeks serving as a volunteer interpreter for Mammoth Medical Missions’ 2015 Chiapas trip.

It’s so interesting how you can live your life, do your regular thing, and time goes by in some semblance of predictability. Stuff happens, yet there’s a flow and a rhythm that is familiar, comfortable, known.

And then there are those peak life experiences, where you make a choice to put yourself smack dab in the middle of a completely new, unfamiliar and unpredictable situation. 

Each day is filled with so many new experiences, emotions, people, events and situations that you are always slightly off kilter, drawing on a deeper well of resilience, resources and energy to meet the day’s and the moment’s unique challenges. You discover you can handle way more than you thought you could, adapt more easily to changes and varying circumstances than you thought possible. You find yourself growing in new ways, stretching your sense of self and what is possible, discovering fresh perspectives.

Having spent these past 2 weeks in constant and intimate proximity to our team, the hospital staff and the people we have been here to serve, I am looking forward to the long plane trip home alone and the chance to process and let it all settle. This has definitely been one of the richest and most rewarding and moving experiences of my life, and after 60+ years on the planet, that is saying a lot!

One of the images that is engraved in my heart, is the beautiful young indigenous woman who woke up from anesthesia in the operating room, crying from relief and gratitude that the inguinal hernia that she had suffered from for years, that had caused her so much pain that she had only been able to eat 2 tortillas a day for the past 2 months, was now gone through the miracle of surgery.

The world’s problems are so vast, and we often feel so hopeless and helpless in the face of the enormity of suffering that surrounds us, it is a huge blessing to be able to have played a small part in relieving the suffering of even one person.

Hasta la vista Chiapas and your beautiful people,  it has been an amazing 2 week lifetime for which I will always be deeply grateful.

Trusting your heart's "Yes"

My life has taken more twists and turns in the last 24 hours than the winding road from San Cristobal Las Casas to San Andrés Larránzair, where I have been volunteering as an interpreter for the last week for the amazing Mammoth Medical Missions team.

So... plan A.  Monday through Saturday: Interpret for teaching week and Mass Disaster Conference. All wonderful, amazing experiences, worked my tushy off and loved every minute of it. Sunday: Meet my beloved friends from Guatemala, spend 2 days catching up on the past 32 years and sightseeing in San Cristobal. Tuesday: Fly back home.

That's when life threw me a curve ball. After weeks of planning and anticipation, and traveling all night, my friends got turned back by Immigration because of a missing stamp on a travel document- arrgh! 

Mother’s Day: What had promised to be a joyous get-together turned into a very teary series of FB phone chats, as we came to terms with the new reality: our longed for reunion was not to be this time.

Plan B: Now that you're not busy, it would be great if you could join us for triage day of surgery week on Monday, says David Page, our Mammoth Medical Missions fearless leader. So that was an immediate Yes. How could I not? The opportunity to meet the rest of the surgical team flying in from Mammoth, the prospect tof being able to be a part of the big day of sorting and evaluating patients waiting for a variety of much needed surgeries, the golden blessing of being able to work with our amazing Tzotzil indigenous interpreters as part of a relay interpreting team.  Ok, wonderful. I’ll just taxi buzz back up the winding climb to San Andrés, put in a great day’s work, and fly back home to my hubby and kitty on Tuesday morning as planned.

Plan C: Can I convince you to stay for surgery week?  We could really use your help, says Fru, the irrestistibly charming surgeon I am interpreting for. Long story short, a texting frenzy back and forth with my dear supportive hubby who not only gives me his blessing to stay on but changes my airline ticket for me, and I am here for surgery week and won't be heading back home until Saturday. Back up the mountain, ready to pitch my tent and who knows what will be around the next bend?

This past week has been kind of like navigating rapids (not that I’ve ever been brave enough to do it!) - you just have go with the flow, lean into life’s curve balls, and make the most of those rapids…. and trust that your heart’s Yeses will carry you safely home, with some wild and wonderful thrills along the way.

Here’s to a big Yes to la vida!

Blast off!

Wow, after weeks of anticipation, planning, translating, preparing and packing the day is finally here!  Chiapas Medical Mission 2015, here I come, ready or not.

My fellow interpreter on this mission, Katherine Allen, had to talk me down of my self-imposed last minute melt down. My back pack is too stuffed, I’ll never close it again (You have to understand, I am not a light packer in the best of times, and I am not a camper so putting everything I will need for 10 days, including sleeping bag and mat, into a carry on back pack is not something I do!   I’ll never learn all the terminology in time for the simultaneous lectures to the local doctors. Even though I’ve been madly translating all the lectures all week, there are still a lot of new WORDS to learn, big ones!  I’m too old for this!  What am I getting myself into?!

Okay, deep breaths. Enough of that silliness!  Everything is going to be OK. My adventure begins.  Back to Mexico, the land of my childhood, which I have not set foot in for about 40 years. I wonder if the jacarandas will still be in bloom?

So if you don’t hear too much from me, dear readers, it’s because we may have sporadic or unreliable internet access in San Andrés Larráinzar where we will be, up in the mountains of Chiapas.  Stay tuned and blessings on your adventures, whatever they may be!

What zaps your zest?

This was just one of the intriguing questions posed by author and speaker Gregg Levoy yesterday during his talk on “The Nature and Nurture of Passion.”

Merriam Webster defines passion as “a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something.”  Levoy speaks of passion as the “impulse towards growth… what stirs your interest in life… maximum aliveness.”

He started his talk out by sharing the story of his own mother, one of the first women on Wall Street, who having lived a life of passion and active involvement for all of her life, started progressively disengaging and losing her zest for life in her early sixties. He described his efforts to inspire, cajole, motivate, entice, and encourage her to try this activity and that, all to no avail. He reluctantly had to come to terms with the fact that he just couldn’t do it for her.

This all rang close to home, as his struggles sounded alarmingly familiar to my own efforts to help my aging mum get her mojo back.  It got me wondering… what happens? Is this loss of zest for life inevitable with the passage of time?

If we look around, there are thankfully plenty of shining examples of inspiring elders who prove the contrary. And there are also many of us, elderly or not, who seem to walk around a bit disinflated.

So, where does our passion eke out of us? What defeats it? What drains our energies?

Maybe it’s the big things in life – a challenging health problem, a job that sucks the life force out of us, a relationship that is no longer right for us… those biggies we all seem to come up against at one point or another, that demand big bold actions to reverse the course.

But often times, states Gregg, it’s the little things. The habits of our own mind. The thought patterns that we have fallen into by default, absorbing the negativity, fear and cynicism, which are all too pervasive in this era of media bombardment.

So, as Greg invites us to fall in love with our own lives all over again, let’s start by simply becoming aware of where our passion and zest for life are being drained. Let’s take a little inventory and start to pay attention.  Just noticing is the first step. Naming it.

Here’s one I found after not too much mental detective work. 

A tendency to fret.

About silly things.

That never actually happen like I worry they will.

That’s my energy vampire.

So, new habit. Next time I find myself fretting, I am going to remember EWOP: Everything Works Out Perfectly.

What about you, darling reader, what zaps your zest? And what will you do instead?

Why our Why matters

“If you’re not living for something, you’re dying of something.”

Dr. Chris Michaels on Healing Your Life 

Holy cajole, you just never know what you are going to hear as you are merrily driving along on a Thursday afternoon to the grocery store.

I like to call my beloved green VW bug my university on wheels. In my role as a freelance interpreter, I’m often on the road to appointments, and I like to take advantage of my time behind the wheel to listen to podcasts -  it’s such a perfect opportunity to learn new things, get inspired, get challenged with ideas I wouldn’t normally encounter, stretch my horizons.

This phrase leapt out at me with the force of a cannonball.  Dr. Chris went on to say “Consciousness does not allow coasting. There is only growth or death. If you’re not growing, you’re dying.”

You know, that is just so true in my experience. We all need something to live for, something that gets us out of bed in the morning with a spring in our step. If we are not living for something, perhaps our bodies start to get the message that there is no purpose in carrying on, so things start shutting down, winding down, especially as we move past those first 5 or 6 decades of doing and accomplishing, and start wondering what is next for us.

And that something to live for?  Well, it’s different for all of us of course, but I believe it is about serving a higher good, being in service to something bigger than our individual egos. It’s about fulfilling our life purpose and our passion. Our why. Our soul journey.

What are you living for, dear reader?

P.S. Not sure what your why is? Here is what I did to help me to get in touch with mine.