I am grateful to my new island friends Charlene, Rudolph and Andrea, and my youngest new bestest friend Sheena, for their kindness and love. By their beautiful example, they showed me that one of the greatest lessons of Roatan is that love and life are the most basic elements of living simply and honestly. When Sheena hugged me I thought she was going to squeeze the stuffings out of me! Pure sweetness and love. How refreshing, energizing and mind clearing it is to escape the never-enough culture of American consumerism. How relaxing and relieving it is to forgo the stresses of competitiveness and the constant consciousness of material keep-up-ism. On Roatan; it is what it is. You are who you are. No pretense. No flash. No "bling" to distort or blind your values. You are not your car. You are not your house. You are not your job title. You are not your clothes You are not your jeweley. You are your face, your smile, your warmth, your demeanor, your family, your honor, your belief, your friendship, your kindness, your courtesy, your word. That is not to say that the Roatanians are simple minded or a simple people. They are bright and beautiful, educated, principled, honorable, hard working, God loving, hopeful and desirous of a better life, for themselves and for their families and children. But in the midst of having little or having less they do not miss "things" they never had. They are a people of grace and gratitide. They don't envy the visiting travelers for their possessions. I think they gracefully forgive the visitors for their "trespasses". In fact I sense the native Roatanians entirely understand the trap and the trappings of capitalistic materialism. For those wonderful strangers who quickly became friends and those kind souls who befriended me I found they have the knowledge and the gift of joy and a natural deep wisdom grounded in common sense and common decency. They are grounded spiritually, too. What a lesson they give and in such a quiet and un-imposing way, just being who and how they are: grace, Godly good and sincere in every way. We are much more alike than we are different. The seeming differences of time, era, region, country, race, language, age, culture, all seemed dissapate or nearly dissapear on Roatan. What a great lesson for me, if not for us all.
