Three Core Values I Built My Life Around

 

Seven years ago my wife and I pulled up stakes and set off to Uruguay. Getting out of Dodge proved to be no easy task — surviving a shipwreck might have been easier.

Eventually, the chaos and turmoil of moving overseas subsided. We settled into a small, thatched-roof casita in the idyllic coastal town of Balneario Solís.

For the first time, our lives were blank slates. The tyranny of wage slavery was over. We were free.

Most mornings, after a leisurely breakfast, I’d head to the virtually deserted beach that stretched for miles along the Río de la Plata. My sole companions on my long, leisurely walks were the rhythmic pounding of the waves and seagulls crying out.

But an uneasy feeling was just under the surface. I knew the seemingly endless days would soon fill up with obligations like weeds overtaking a garden. What I needed were some clear, non-negotiable priorities that I would attend to no matter what else was happening. After a lot of contemplation, what surfaced were three core values. They boiled down to taking care of my body, my mind, and my relationships. Everything else needed to flow around these anchor points.

Being a Good Steward of My Body

The first weeks of retirement were like a long vacation at the beach. All bets were off. My diet went off the rails immediately. In Uruguay, cream comes in a plastic bag. You snip the corner off and it squeezes out like frosting. I was putting scoops of that in my coffee. I got in the habit of sawing off huge hunks of cheese for a snack and generally eating far too many calories. When lab results came back and my total cholesterol was 326, it was apparent I needed to take care of my health or perish. Part of this was eating well, and part of this was establishing some sort of workout routine.

In Uruguay, the nearest place to work out was several miles from the house. It was a far cry from the gleaming fitness haven I had enjoyed for years back in the states. The Uruguayan version of a fitness center was a dim, miserable little place with some rusty weights, cobbled together workout stations, and three or four exercise bikes.

One day I was bitching about the lack of proper gyms in the area. An ex-pat named Drake was within earshot. Drake bragged about getting drunk most nights on cheap wine, but every morning he’d get up and hike up the Cerro Pan de Azúcar, a smallish hump of a mountain in Piriápolis with a huge cross at the top. During the summer he’d swim in the sea. His body was lean and his pecs were sharply defined. When Drake heard me complaining he gave me a funny look and said, “What are you talking about? Walk outside and grab a tree limb and do pull-ups. Drop down and do 20 pushups, five times a day. Hike every day, walk everywhere, and swim in the ocean until the weather turns cold. You don’t need no gym.”

His words sunk home. He was right. That afternoon I found a suitable tree limb outside my front door and started doing pull-ups several times a day. I did push-ups every time I thought about it. Walking a lot was inevitable in Uruguay. Soon I was in better shape than I’d been in years.

Five years later, now living in Italy, my fitness routine is still in place. I have some weights and a dip station in my garage that helps with upper body tone. A game-changer has been an electric bike — fun, practical, and great cardio with the steep hills around here.

There have been some bumps in the road with emotional eating, but that’s getting better after some struggles. I’m learning to be more friendly and at home with my body, more comfortable in my own skin rather than acting like my body is some sort of machine I’m trying to calibrate.

Meditation

Once I retired I had no excuse for not taking 20 to 30 minutes each morning to drop into a spacious, gentle field of silence. I wanted a reliable process that actually quieted my mind and an inner silence and centeredness that carried into the day. Most of all, I needed a sustainable practice that I actually wanted to do.

I started out with a program from Jeff Carreira that I could listen to with headphones. Over time I gravitated towards various tracks that are layered with brainwave entrainment technology — frequencies or tones that basically force your brain into brainwave frequencies such as theta or delta. It works. I’m still using these products daily. Meditations by Joseph Kao have been especially powerful. Recently I started doing a morning ritual that focuses on getting the day started right with gratitude and an open-hearted smile rather than the usual harried irritation.

Relationships

The essential need for connections with a supportive community showed up immediately when we first got to Uruguay. We needed a base camp once we arrived so we could start exploring the area. We lined up a place online that looked pretty good. We couldn’t have known, but the first inhabitable village worth looking at, Balneario Solís, is an hour’s drive from the airport. We sort of landed in the middle of nowhere. The place we had thought would be an ideal central location, rented sight unseen, was crude enough to be described quite accurately as a shit hole.

We were saved by a disaster a couple of days after settling in. A torrential rain blew through and we got up one morning and found our suitcases floating in the living room. Water was gushing from the gaps around the chimney. Thank God — the guy who had rented us the place let us off the hook and refunded our money. We called Jan, an ex-pat my wife had met on Facebook. She showed up with a borrowed truck, loaded us up, and we stayed at her place until we rented the casita next to her. Through Jan’s connections, we fell into a large ex-pat community. Everybody knew everybody.

Growing up in the states, self-sufficiency was prized. Needing to rely on others evoked a squeamish feeling of weakness. Living near Portland, Oregon, I knew many people. But my network of true friends was thin at best and at the end of the day, there was hardly anyone I could really count on.

It’s different when you live in a foreign country. You can wind up in dire straights in the blink of an eye. Living with integrity, honesty, and generosity aren’t abstract concepts. They are survival skills. If you piss off a lot of people you can be in for a very rough ride. If a friend needed a ride to the airport at 4 AM, I’d gladly do it. I knew they’d be there for me if I needed a hand.

A young man who became a friend brought this home one day. He said, “We all have a past. Now, we’re here, and what we are judged by are our words and our deeds.” In a place like Uruguay, everybody is on equal footing. In the unforgiving light of equality, how you show up is something you can’t hide.

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I once had a professor who said, “People need to be driven to excellence. They don’t tend to do it on their own.” The brutal disruption of relinquishing all I had known and moving overseas was strong medicine that forced me to grow in the direction of developing compassion for others and learning to care for myself. Growing comfortable with interdependent relationships, and learning to ask for help, has been fertile new ground for me — and a blessed relief!

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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