I wanted to tell him...

I’m torn. I'm grappling with a sense of disloyalty.

Here’s this guy—warm, affable, giving, and receptive—giving me a tour of the construction site for his Costa Rican dream house, perched above the Pacific Ocean. Yet, within me, a surge of indignation tightens in my chest.

“This is our daughter’s room,” he says. “She’s the surfer, so she gets this incredible view of the break.”

With a sweeping gesture of his arms, he directs my attention to a peerless panorama framed by the gap in the concrete wall. This is where the glass windows will go. He’s right. It’s an incredible sight, an unobstructed view of the waves crashing on the rocky shore 100 yards away.

“Truly an extraordinary view,” I say.

I don’t have the heart to tell him that I would never build a house in Costa Rica with glass windows. The whole point of living here is to coexist harmoniously with nature. You don’t need air conditioning if you live in a well-designed house that breathes and there are trees around.

We’re in an American-style development that was planned before Costa Rican zoning laws curbed shoreline construction. There’s no shade, as they’ve felled every tree. Large concrete houses, like this one, line the coast on half-acre lots.

Then, like a blow to the gut, he says the following:  

“I’ve bought 75 acres of forest a few miles inland, where we're planning to build 50 houses. It's a sizable undertaking.”

Not long before, he had said: “The rat race in the USA is so unhealthy.”

I want to tell him: You're bringing the American rat race down here.

Instead, I ask: “But is it necessary to develop that forest?”

“I need to in order to pay for this house," he says.

I want to tell him: You’re not rich enough to build your McMansion.

Instead, I restrain myself and retreat home.

It astounds me how that I can still like this guy and hold him in high regard despite finding myself at odds with his actions. I suppose his attributes of kindness, friendliness, generosity, and openness, are enough to harmonize my sentiments concerning him. I wonder if any of this could be applied to the current political division in our country…