Filtrado

Finca Elda, Caldas, Colombia

El único peligro es quiere quedarse

The only danger is wanting to stay.

It’s a beautiful danger.

These words & this conversation were graciously shared with me by my host, a week into my stay outside of a lesser-known town in the Zona Cafetera of Colombia.

I find it interesting when Colombians thank me for visiting their country. I thought we had moved past its once tainted reputation, but apparently old beliefs linger on.

What we believe creates the lens in which we view the world and that filter shades and jades our experience with it.

I’ve always seen Colombia as a country rich in spirit; a place filled with color and life and warm people bounding with energy.

Which is exactly how I experienced her to be. 3 trips in the past 5 years has left me nothing but enamored with the country.

Long ago, I heard the rumors and felt some sort of obligation to believe them. After I considered them, I scraped them away with the grain of salt I took them with. You can never really know a place (or person) until you…know them.

So I’ve chosen to show up and let the places (and people) reveal themselves as they are, void of suspicions and expectations. Fresh eyes brimming with wonder and curiosity allows for its true essence to unravel, for its spirit to emit without confinement.

It’s a new region for me, but I recognize the rolling mountains right away. The way to the northern end of the Coffee zone is dramatically steep and emphatically bending, which only compounds its allure.

One particularly memorable day, I spend blissed out in the rural countryside. I meet the  owner of a local coffee finca in the town center where he picks up his 7-year old daughter from school. I hop on the back of his bike and he sweeps us away to their home in the mountains, 20-something minutes away.

I’m welcomed into his home and into the daily workings of his life. His wife helps strap a bucket to my waist and they lead me up the steep hill to pick coffee. I suppose my Spanish has improved tenfold since my first coffee tour, but I was taught the entire coffee process - de semilla a taza   - from seed to cup.

There is nothing but care and attention to detail and an earnest, raw, and pure intention to share their craft with me.

Truth be told….that’s been most of my experience abroad. From my Spanish mom in Mallorca to las divinas in Buenos Aires to all of the novios I’ve picked up along the way, everyone invites me to stay as long as I want.

Probably because that’s exactly how I view the world: one big loving place filled with people who just want to connect and share a piece of themselves.

There may be much “wrong” with the world, but there is even more that is good. What we focus on expands. How we perceive creates our reality and the little recognized truth is that we’re in control of our reality more than we give ourselves credit for.

While the “bad” must be spoken for, it is vain to do so without action toward a resolution. There is no fruit in bypassing that which needs to evolve, but there is no glory or value in staying in the troughs of despair. For that will be the foundation for how we interact with life itself.

Do we choose

Blissed out or beaten down?

Silver lining or doom & gloom?

How do we filter life? Through which lens?

It may just be an even more important concept to consider than how you filter your coffee.