Costa Rican’s have a saying: Pura Vida, Full Life. It is not successful life, or happy life, or life of dreams, it’s just full, a life lived to the fullest.
If you are going to college, almost every one you ever met told you to study hard, go to a good school, get a good job. But the people you probably wanted to listen to were the crazy ones, the ones who said: follow your dream. They are crazy, and they are bullshit.
The reason why following the dream doesn’t work and neither does ambition is because it doesn’t matter. In the end the winners in life are not the ones in history books and not even the ones with million and not even people with medals or feelings that “they did something”. That’s the nice feelings their friends and family get, pride and importance by association. No the true winners are the ones who will say: I lived and I had a fucking blast. Why? Because it doesn’t matter. If you are poor, rich, successful or a looser, what matter is that you lived a good life of integrity and had a good time doing it. Means no guilt of not spending time with family, no guilt of having fights with parents, no guilt of backstabbing friends, no guilt of failing on the job and no guilt of trying to do too much to impress people. Including yourself. Because at the end of the day, when you’re dying of cancer at thirty or a 100, if you get shot or roll over in a car, at that moment you will say to yourself: am I ok with dying? Did I live a good life? Not did I write a book or did I make a million, no, you will think will my kids grow up ok because I gave them a good start, will my wife feel lucky to have married me because I showed her love, do I feel like I explored the world and found out what it is to live in the 21st century? If you say yes you won.
As far as picking a job, don’t do what others think is cool or what you think is cool. Dreams are made of bullshit. Do what you were born to do. If you like doing something, make it a profession. If it is not a profession, find a way. If you are good at something and you love doing it. Do it and if you all of a sudden don’t like it and find something else. Do that. Because doing stupid shit you hate is the anti-thesis of a good life, well lived.
So don’t be ambitious, don’t follow your dreams, don’t do anything that causes you to work for someone else (including yourself) so much that you miss the most important thing: living life so well that you love every freaking moment of it.
So stop chasing stupid shit, like pride and appreciation, chase Pura Vida.
But… should you ignore my warning, know, that there is no greater feeling, than finding out just how great your limits are, achieving goals and dreams. There is no greater gift to your kids, than knowing that in their blood flows an ability to succeed, to do that which others thought impossible before.
It is that moment, that moment of accomplishment that is the true Pura Vida, and it is a high that people who achieved it chase until their death.
seven year degree 