Plan de Vida

A few years ago, I facil­i­tat­ed a yoga retreat in the Costa Rican jun­gle. We spent the week med­i­tat­ing, eat­ing fresh food grown on the prop­er­ty, flow­ing through sun salutes as the mon­keys screamed in the trees. It was time out of time, a mag­i­cal coda of humid sun­shine and cacoph­o­nous tree frogs, hik­ing through the suf­fo­cat­ing under­growth, leaves as large as a bus. There was a shaman­ic heal­er who occa­sion­al­ly offered heal­ing ses­sions. She was from a tiny vil­lage close to Nicoya, a penin­su­la that has been des­ig­nat­ed as a blue zone. Nicoya boasts the sec­ond high­est num­ber of cen­te­nar­i­ans on earth. She might have been over 100 her­self, a tiny, wiz­ened Yoda who nev­er stopped smil­ing, despite sev­er­al miss­ing teeth. Of course I want­ed to know the secret of liv­ing so long and so well.

In my heal­ing ses­sion, she looked at my tongue, held my hands and traced her impos­si­bly soft fin­ger across my col­lar­bones, tut­ting occa­sion­al­ly in dis­ap­proval. Then she declared, using the hand­ful of English words she knew, that my plan de vida was too skin­ny and that I need­ed more sun, more sour fruits, and more “bed time” (which she accom­pa­nied with a uni­ver­sal fist-bump­ing ges­ture that helped me fig­ure out she meant sex instead of sleeping).

I stared at her for a long beat. Ummmmmm, what now? What the hell is a plan de vida and how could I fat­ten it up? She stood and dust­ed off her hands; our time was up and I was being dis­missed. I bleat­ed like a lamb, rav­en­ous for one more crumb of infor­ma­tion. She shooed me out the door, laugh­ing a lit­tle at my con­fu­sion. The whole episode last­ed less than 10 min­utes. I was look­ing for a Big Life Lesson here, an a‑ha moment that would change the tra­jec­to­ry of my entire exis­tence. All I got was a stroked collarbone?

At din­ner that night, I asked the retreat hosts about it. Ah, yes, they agreed, smil­ing. She gives every­one that advice. Always with the fat­ten­ing of your plan de vida. Plan de vida, they explained, is a Costa Rican idea mean­ing Soul’s Purpose. It’s often trans­lat­ed as “why I wake each morn­ing.” The world’s longest liv­ing peo­ple believe that the mod­ern world often alien­ates us from our true call­ing. They believe, like our fin­ger­print, we each are assigned at birth a unique rea­son for exis­tence. Our Soul’s Purpose (or our plan de vida) is to fig­ure out what that is and set about cre­at­ing a life that will ful­fill this destiny.

A strong plan de vida makes you feel need­ed and encour­ages you to con­tribute to the high­er, col­lec­tive good. Blue Zone lessons from Nicoya empha­size find­ing joy in every­day chores and liv­ing close to all gen­er­a­tions of your fam­i­ly (in most homes, at least three gen­er­a­tions live under the same roof). Investing more time and ener­gy into peo­ple than jobs or mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions cre­ates a deep sense of mean­ing and place. The Nicoyan diet is pri­mar­i­ly plant-based. Their drink­ing water con­tains more cal­ci­um and mag­ne­sium than any­where else in Costa Rica, result­ing in few­er fatal hip frac­tures They also drink a lit­tle wine every day, walk every­where and get sen­si­ble amounts of sun. They are geo­graph­i­cal­ly locat­ed close to trop­i­cal forests and the beach, the sym­pho­ny of Nature writ­ing a song on their souls in a way most of us can­not fath­om. Maintaining their cul­tur­al and faith-based tra­di­tions has result­ed in a peo­ple with the low­est stress lev­els on earth.

That bears repeat­ing. These peo­ple don’t only live to be 100 in record num­bers, they dis­play none of the stress­es of mod­ern-day soci­ety. According to blood sam­ples, Nicoyans have the longest telom­ere length of any­one on earth. Telomeres are genet­ic bio­mark­ers that are con­sid­ered good indi­ca­tors of aging. Plan De Vida is writ­ten as much in their cells as on their souls.

A few days lat­er I saw Yoda out­side her heal­ing room, tak­ing a break from telling tourists how to get their shit togeth­er. She was lis­ten­ing to an ipod and drink­ing a Fanta, nod­ding her head to some bare­ly-audi­ble beat, but which sound­ed sus­pi­cious­ly like Destiny’s Child (I’m pret­ty sure it was Bills, Bills, Bills). She caught my eye and grinned, shrug­ging a lit­tle, as if to say, “Oh yeah. Sometimes your Soul Purpose is a seri­ous endeav­or. And some­times it’s some Queen Bey and a fruity Coke product”.

A life les­son indeed.