Guilt, Regret, and Saving the Sea Turtles

June 16, 2009

One of the highlights of growing up in Costa Rica is that most of the country is coastal. There’s a little strip of land (okay, volcanoes) in the middle, but mostly it is a Caribbean coast and a Pacific coast. Lots of pretty beaches, great surf, sun tans, and sandy toes. 

It was an awesome place to grow up. As soon as school was out for any vacation, we would all head to the beaches. Back in the day, when I was a kid, this was easier said than done. They didn’t have paved access to most beaches, and certainly no convenience stores or restaurants at the more remote and beautiful spots.

We had a house at Esterillos beach. And when I say house, I am exercising poetic license, because really, it was a large shack full of snakes and bats and crabs that my mom had to clear out before us kids went in it. But, who cares, right? If someone offered me a shack on beachfront property in Costa Rica right now, you’d better believe I’d take it!

The upstairs was one large room with no walls… only mosquito screens and a roof. That was where we all slept. My mom, her best friend, the four of us kids, her kids, and sometimes other friends would all spend the evenings up there, playing cards and listening to the waves crash on the beach. Niiiice…

Usually we stayed two or three weeks, which means, we couldn’t pack enough food for that whole time. We could drive an hour on dirt roads into the nearest town to buy some basics, but mostly we ate what we could find there: mangoes, guavas, icacos, coconuts, and bananas. 

Sometimes the guard, Don Miguel, took us fishing, clamming, or crabbing. If you’ve never been out crabbing, at night, with a flashlight (to blind them), a stick (to whack them on the head), and a bag (to bring them home in), you really haven’t lived. That’s how we got our lean meats.

Why am I telling you this?

Well, one of my deepest regrets (and karma killers) is that we also used to eat sea turtle eggs! To this day, many species of sea turtles go to Costa Rican beaches to lay their eggs, as they used to do it when I was a kid. A momma would crawl, ever so slowly, up the beach… practically to our front porch. She dug her nest and took her time dropping a bunch of eggs in it, then covered them up and went back to sea.

So, under the tutelage of Don Miguel, we dug them up and ate them! Maybe not ALL of them, but enough to make me wonder through the years if WE are the reason sea turtles are an endangered species! It has haunted me, literally, that they might be endangered because I ate their babies! I truly, deeply regret having done that.

The Save The Turtles website calls one spot in CR: “the fourth most critical nesting habitat in the world for the greatly endangered leatherback. The leatherback is so close to extinction that the emptying of just one nest of eggs has huge implications for its survival as a species.”

But I was a kid, I didn’t know better. It didn’t even occur to me that it might have any negative consequences at all. I wasn’t TRYING to exterminate sea turtles, it just seemed like a fun way to get some interesting food (the eggs were like squishy ping pong balls). NOW, I know better. NOW, I know they are endangered. NOW, I don’t eat sea turtle eggs.

What does this have to do with you?

You may not have single-handedly endangered an entire species, but I’m sure you’ve done OTHER things that you are none too proud of. You have made some poor decisions, or behaved in ways that have haunted you ever since. All of us live with regrets, some of them HUGE. I can assure you, eating sea turtle eggs was not the worst thing I’ve done in my life. Stuff happens… and then regret happens.

Once you start collecting a few regrets, guilt starts to take up permanent residence in your heart. Your mind feels entitled to punish you incessantly; after all, YOU did these things. YOU don’t deserve to be happy, right? 

WRONG!

None of these poor choices happened in a vacuum. We were young, confused, frustrated, insecure, threatened, lonely, scared, unaware, exhausted, at our wit’s end… SOMETHING! Most of us do not set out to intentionally do harm to others, yet sometimes others get hurt by our actions anyway.

When you’ve made a poor choice, and you recognize that, don’t repeat it. When you know better, you DO better. There’s no sense punishing yourself forever; that doesn’t benefit anyone. Instead, do something to make amends. Do whatever it takes to make things right. If the person you wronged is no longer around, then help someone else, so they don’t make the same mistake. Some good has to come from all the things we’ve done wrong.

The Dalai Lama says that if you can, you should help others. If you can’t help others, at least do no harm. The New Testament poses the question, “Who among us is without sin?” We have all made mistakes, but don’t continue making them. “Go, and sin no more.” Call them whatever you like: sins, mistakes, poor choices, bad deeds, selfish decisions… it’s all the same. Don’t get so obsessed with past events that you fail to make the most of your life today.

So there. I’m done preaching.

Now, please consider joining me in supporting one of these organizations that work so tirelessly to save the sea turtle population. There may still be hope for my karma, after all.

Ecology Project  (The video of the super cute baby turtle haunts me!)

Save The Turtles  (They said JUST ONE empty nest is a huge deal!)

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Gracias!!!

(Photo Credit)

Related posts:

1. Costa Rica is Paradise (And Why I Don’t Live There)
2. 10 Things You Should Know About Yourself (aka: “So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish!”)

Posted in Overcoming Challenges, acceptance, choices, guilt, regrets