Can simplicity set us free?
We gave up our comfortable life to embrace hardship and simplicity of the off-grid life. Could grappling with the primal unlock something more essential?
We had it all — financial stability, a comfortable home, and a secure future. But, as the saying goes, comfort can be a silent killer of dreams. In our 40s, my partner and I found ourselves at a crossroads. Was this the life we truly wanted, or were we merely prisoners of our own comfort?
I had a very fulfilling life in the Netherlands before making the leap to off-grid living in Costa Rica. A flexible job as a web developer, a nice income, lots of enriching hobbies and travel. It wasn’t an empty, meaningless existence by any stretch.
Despite pursuing passions like photography, dance, sports and singing — things that brought me joy and growth — I still felt like a hamster on a wheel at times. Like I was going through motions without fully comprehending the meaning or purpose behind it all.
Trips to the lush jungles of Costa Rica showed us a radically different path and eventually planted a seed. What if I could live in this paradise, shedding many of the superficial comforts to get to the essence of what truly mattered? I felt called to find out.
So in our 40s, my husband and I took the crazy leap. We sold nearly everything and moved to a remote area in the jungle of Costa Rica, building an off-grid life from scratch. We were trading the familiar for the unknown, leaving the paved streets of Europe for the rugged trails of Costa Rica. No more lucrative jobs, no more shiny toys, no more artsy hobbies. Just us, the land, and a new existence to carve out.
Our decision to leave everything behind and build an off-grid life in the jungle of Costa Rica might sound terribly romantic to some. Just another case of privileged North Europeans seeking eden and a new surf spot (guilty as charged on some of those fronts!). Our story can be seen just as another “expat in paradise” escape — the cliche “snowbirds” fleeing winter for flip-flops and hammocks. Looking back, I think there was a deeper drive than just midlife crisis escapism. That maybe having “too much” can actually disconnect us from what’s most essential.
I’m also a little afraid of hitting the common places in this story. But please forget that mindfulness, simplicity, minimalism, getting back to nature became just buzzwords and trendy soul-fodder — this existence has been raw, unvarnished and at times soul-crushingly difficult.
The truth is, building on this off-grid existence in the jungle of Costa Rica hasn’t felt like some curated, filtered fantasy from a polished instagram feed. While Costa Rica’s natural beauty is indeed intoxicating, our reality here has felt profoundly unglamorous so far. It’s been a raw, unvarnished, soul-shakingly raw experience of dealing with failures, back-breaking manual labor, loneliness, and struggles with the most basic needs.
Here, I’m sharing my personal reckoning — how stripping away nearly everything has opened me to question assumptions and awaken to new perspectives.
So now I’m a full-time, as I like to call myself, apprentice farmer, doing grueling manual labor, often failing at essential tasks like getting water or power, dealing with scarce resources and the battle to survive off the land.
My husband and I have both been utterly humbled as we clumsily stumble through the most fundamental tasks of farming and survival. The frustrations and doubts inevitably creep in — did we make a terrible mistake? Were we too naive to think we could do this on our own? It’s put our relationship through the wringer. The journey has felt very lonely sometimes, with all the friends and family left behind, even despite the new friendships emerging.
But amidst that simplicity and daily obstacles, something profound has happened. I’ve been shaken out of complacency. Without the constant noise and distractions, I’ve had the mental space to confront bigger questions. Without the familiar comforts, my mind has opened to reassessing what’s truly essential and meaningful. Even the brutal failures and exhausting manual labor have connected me to something primal. The process of learning from the land lets me rediscover what it means to simply be human. Through the sweat, tears, and a fair share of mosquito bites, we are discovering a richness in life that goes beyond the material.
What insights am I getting? Stay tuned — I’m still very much a work in progress, trying to make sense of it all. But stripping away to this raw existence has already unearthed startling new perspectives. Every rainstorm and bird song reverberates with more intensity. Every success in coaxing crops from the soil or solving a power issue triggers a primal sense of aliveness. Even the failures and exhausting physical toil have connected me to a drive and vitality I never could have accessed in my previous life. It isn’t only about starting a farm; it’s about building a new perspective on life.
There are those magical Avatar-like moments. Our friend Bruno the bold coati climbing our rain gutters in search of bananas, looking me straight into the eyes as if ready to talk to me. Frequent visits of anteaters, indifferent to our interest and very close vicinity. Various kinds of monkeys posing at funny angles, seemingly curious but alert. Huge amounts of various colorful, cheerful, noisy birds. This all makes our life here the perfect canvas for wildlife photography enthusiasts like myself. It’s as if the jungle whispers, “open your eyes wider, listen deeper, feel the thrum of life.”
In the hours hacking machete through four-meter tall weeds, fundamental questions surface: What is the path to deeper fulfillment and meaning? Is radical simplicity and struggle the answer, or just another form of delusion? Am I running from something, from myself? or finally running towards my truest self? Wrestling with these questions has been uncomfortable but also deeply eye-opening. And that’s before I even broach the philosophies of the local sloths…
I already wrote about forced mindfulness and different rhythms of life in the jungle. The only deadlines are those of the sun and the rain. The projects we invent for ourselves give us a sense of direction. The failures are a great way to learn and discover our level of resilience. Scarcity makes us grateful for the things we might miss now and forces us to get creative.
I treasure the rich experiences I’ve had in my previous urban life. But immersing myself in the raw simplicity has triggered an awakening I didn’t expect. It feels as if I’m reinventing myself in profound ways simply forced by the hardships of our new hardscrabble farm existence.
The incessant struggles and stark simplicity of this radically stripped-down life would seem a far cry from any conventional notions of success. Battling daily for basic survival in the jungle would seem worlds apart from my previous comfortable existence.
The things I used to see as big accomplishments and the achievements I thought made me happy? They feel less relevant now. Facing constant grueling work, constant failures with really fundamental stuff like power and water, and just daily scarcity… this existence, in its rawness, has become a masterclass in cultivating resourcefulness and resilience. Because through all this difficulty, I’ve actually started to feel a deeper sense of meaning. And important questions keep surfacing.
This existence has created the perfect ecosystem — the open time, the open space, the very struggles themselves — to ponder the fundamental questions that comfort too often obscures: What truly makes me whole and happy? How can I uncover my full potential? Am I finally on the right path towards my most essential self?
So much feels uncertain, and old doubts linger. But positioning myself in this new life as an apprentice, in every aspect of it, frees me from feeling inadequate or impostor — something that plagued me in my previous busy life. Instead, I’ve developed a huge respect for the wisdom of the people here who generously share what they know.
It’s like I’m nurturing a little seedling of inner growth right alongside the crops I’m learning to grow. It’s still young, fragile but undeniably alive. A “new me” is starting to emerge through this total reinvention of my life.
There’s no boasting here — it’s just been grunt work and constant humbling lessons in survival. Doubts, frustrations and emotional exhaustion inevitably creep in as I stumble through the basics. But I’m staying open to this disruption as it may lead to some profound realizations.
I’m trying my best to be patient with the process. To keep looking at everything with the humility of a total apprentice, ready to learn life’s most elemental lessons one day at a time. I don’t know exactly where this will lead. But I’m surrendering to this existence, trusting it might unveil some deeper truths. After all, the unexpected paths lead to the most extraordinary destinations.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach…” — Henry David Thoreau
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