TRANSCRIPT
A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to go to Costa Rica. For a week, I was living with a local family who I met in the most lovely and random way. With one of their sons, a young man who I got along well with quite nicely, we were hiking up in a gorge. While we were up in this gorge, I saw a frog hopping around, and I love frogs. I’ve loved frogs since I was a little kid. So I looked closely at it, and it had this really bright green mixed with black. It was the most interesting frog I’d seen.
I looked at it and was like, it kind of looked like one of those things that I’d read about when I was a kid called a poison dart frog, where indigenous people would catch these frogs—all in some blue, some red, from yellow, from what I remember. They would catch them, and they would get them to excrete the poison out of that they held in glands in their skin. They would put it on their arrow tips, and they would go hunting. If this pierced the skin, it would cause the animal that they’d shot to die.
Well, I was like, is that what it is? So I asked my friend in Spanish, “Is it okay? Is this a dangerous frog, or can I catch?” He says, “No, no, it’s fine. That’s fine.” So I went and I put my hands over it, and I picked it up. I looked at it on my hand, and it just sat there totally calm. I was kind of like, so beautiful. I wanted to see it up close to see what does this frog really look like. I felt totally safe.
Then, from what I remember, I turned my hand over and I held it up. I looked at it right in the eye, and it stared me in the eye. Then I set my hand down, and the frog hopped away happily. I felt totally fine, felt totally safe.
Went back home. An hour later, I was showing the photographs of our hike to my friend’s mom, and she saw the pictures of the frog. She says, “Danielle,” and she was looking at me. Then she asked me in Spanish, “¿Tus manos? ¿Sí, qué mae? ¿Es tu mano? ¿Está quemada? ¿Está quemada? ¿Te acercaste demasiado? ¿Te quemaste de ella?” And I was like, “No, no, no, it’s totally fine. It’s fine.” She was like, “Oh my God!” She didn’t want to touch me.
Then I read about it on the internet. It was a green and black poison dart frog, and according to Wikipedia, it’s actually a safe frog to handle if you are calm, if you’re relaxed. But the frogs can sense if you’re not relaxed, or if you shake them up, or you treat them badly in a disrespectful way. Then they get anxious, and sometimes they hold the poison in these glands for years. They eat certain beetles, from what I understand, that have the poison, and the frogs hold the poison in their glands. When they feel threatened, or they feel the person—if it is a person handling them—is anxious, they squirt out the toxin onto their skin. It gets on you, and you can actually die of a heart attack from this frog.
Now, apparently, the green and black poison dart frog is not the most toxic frog. There are other ones that are more toxic that’ll kill you more easily, but this can kill you.
So I went to my friend who I’d been hiking with, and I said, “¿Qué piensas de eso? What do you think about this?” And he said, and he told me in Spanish, but I’ll translate it into English. He says, “But you were relaxed. You were calm. You didn’t make the frog stressed out. The frog was fine. The frog was probably curious about you.” And I thought, how interesting.
But then I think about it metaphorically, about this journey we have emotionally through life and how we are like cats in some ways who have nine lives. I think maybe this is one of the nine that I—well, I could have died from it. But I think so, so, so many times I could have died. And sometimes I think, well, maybe I just have a guiding star, or I have good fortune, or I have friends who I trust because they know me well enough to know the world in those situations.
This was one of the riskier things that happened, I think, at least most clearly and simply risky. All this hitchhiking I’ve done, I’ve sometimes wondered, of the thousand or who knows, 2000 cars that I’ve gotten into when I’ve hitchhiked, were any of them serial killers? Did any of them have an intention to rob me or harm me in some way? I think about that, and I think it’s quite possible. I’ve read accounts of serial killers who go around picking up hitchhikers, and sometimes they pick up someone who they have an intention to kill or harm or do other awful things to. And something this person says changes the dynamic, and the serial killer says, “You know, I’m not going to harm this person.”
I remember once in Central Park, I was sitting playing guitar in Central Park in New York City, right up by Strawberry Fields. I was sitting playing guitar under a tree, and a branch from the tree that probably weighed about 150 pounds, that was dead, that was about probably about 60 feet up, it fell. Boom! It landed about two or three feet away from me, and it made the loudest crash. I jumped away, and if that had fallen on me, I probably would have died. If it had fallen on my shoulder, it would have broken my shoulder. On my leg, I would have been crushed. If it had fallen on my head, game over. And I thought, there’s another one of my lives.
So why do I say this? Yes, I think I’m saying it because life is a risky venture. Stepping out of one’s comfort zone is a risky venture. Being out in nature is a risky venture. Hitchhiking is a risky venture. Growing and healing is a risky venture. I know people who have opened up their pain, and it’s overwhelmed their bodies. I think being a therapist for me practically killed me physically. I got ulcerative colitis that could have killed me.
But you know what? I think part of me, the more I’ve become a real healed person, I’m a wild animal in my soul also. I know I’m going to die someday. I don’t want to die. I wish I could live forever. I think most people wish to some degree, if they were healthy, if their brains worked well, if they had friends and allies and purpose, they’d like to live forever. I certainly would. But I know I’m going to die. I know my day will come sometime, hopefully a long ways away. Hopefully, I have a lot more that I can accomplish. I don’t feel I fully lived out my mission.
But I think back on being able to make friends with a little frog, make friends, as it were. Who knows what that frog really thought of me? Maybe he thought, “Don’t mess with me, guy. I’ll kill you.” But that was an experience that was fun, actually. And I think I got to hold a poison dart frog and live to tell the tale. And so I think life, for me, it’s worth it to be out in the world. It’s worth it to try things. It’s worth it to take risks. It’s worth it to explore this experience called existence.
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