My Family's Modest Quest for Awesomeness

"What's wrong with him?" I ask my wife.  

She had just sent me a National Geographic article about Geoff Tabin, which I dare anyone to read and not conclude: "In my next life, I want to be that guy!"   Tabin has degrees from Yale, Harvard, and Oxford.  [Right, so he's kind of an book worm, right; doesn't get out much?]  He was #1 on the tennis team at Yale, a member of the "Dangerous Sports Club" at Oxford (and father of modern day bungee jumping), and took two trips to scale Mt. Everest while in medical school at Harvard.  [Okay, fine, so he's self-centered; a playboy, perhaps?]  He's devoted much of his professional life to curing preventable blindness in Nepal, Tibet, and Africa.  [Good grief.  He's got to be a loner, though, doesn't he?  Someone out tilting at windmills like a modern Don Quixote?]  He's married with five kids.  [For the love of . . . this guy is freakin' awesome!]

I had the pleasure of hearing Tabin speak to a group of University of Utah students with whom my wife and daughters are traveling to Costa Rica in a couple weeks (more on that in a minute).  The most interesting part of the presentation was how he came to be an ophthalmologist curing preventable blindness in Tibet.  The short answer is that -- in order for him to attempt to scale Mt. Everest's east side and not get kicked out of medical school for good -- he had to reframe his request for a leave of absence from Harvard to a request to do research on the effects of high altitude on the eyes.  The more fundamental answer, though, is that he pursued activities he enjoyed while paying attention to the needs of those with whom he came in contact during his adventures.  He didn't chart out a specific path of awesomeness; he simply built a foundation of educational discipline, adventurous spirit, and concern for others… awesomeness just got built on that foundation.  

In support of my family's own humble quest for awesomeness, my wife and younger daughters are going with the University's community service center on a spring break trip to Costa Rica to learn about ways to help (my two older kids and I are meeting up with them later).  We went to Costa Rica five years ago (call it Quest for Awesome, Take I) and it didn’t go as planned.  First, we showed up at the airport without passports for the kids; passports, apparently, had become mandatory since the printing of our travel book.  So our Costa Rica trip really started with a two day trip from New York to Philadelphia to get expedited passports (we managed to see a Phillies game and ride the duck boats while we were there -- not awesome).  When we finally got to the country, we drove in, starving, to a little beach town on the Pacific side.  The first place we saw was a Pizza Hut.  It's embarrassing to think that we just spent days trying to make it to Costa Rica only to eat at a Pizza Hut, but  such are the limitations of our inherent awesomeness.  We were seated for about 3 minutes when one of the kids looked out the window and saw a two foot lizard on the grass.  Immediately, all the kids jumped up and ran out to see it.  Within seconds, another kid saw another one, then another.  Turns out big lizards there are as common as squirrels here, which was probably the most mind-blowing eye-opener of the whole trip.  The other thing we all remember is a particular restaurant with the weirdest mix of South American and pan-Asian cuisine, all somehow based on fresh avocados, mangoes, and tuna.  Delicious.  We've considered going back just to eat at this place again.

Anyway, back to the present.  You may wonder how our family came to decide to go back to Costa Rica on a humanitarian-based trip.  Well, the short answer is that the university service group, with whom my wife and I have been involved since our college days, invited us (or it's possible that we heard they were going to Costa Rica, and invited ourselves).  The more fundamental answer, though, is that my wife and I are trying to help our kids build a foundation for awesomeness: educational discipline, adventurous spirit, and concern for others.  It's really no more complicated, noble, or thoughtful than that.  

Our trip to Costa Rica might not sound as impressive as scaling Everest, but it's an adventure nonetheless.  Our hope is to gain some valuable perspective that could be helpful to others at some point, but the main reason is to have another family adventure.

One that hopefully doesn’t involve riding any ducks in Philadelphia.

[Editors Note: We expect a full debriefing from John and his family from Costa Rica when they return.]