Technically translated it means "Pure Life" but personally translated I think it means more of "Viva La Vida" which is technically translated as "Live the Life." Pura Vida has never been about having a pure life and living the perfect life with no mistakes and no errors. It's not been about living a life filled with following the perfect path your religion seeks you to follow to end up in the holiest of please and it's never been about not occasionally having to restart and try moving in a different direction and a better life.

Pura Vida is about setting out on a journey to find your "Pure" happiness. For me that meant a lot of hardships, it meant overcoming a lot of tears, pain and anger. I had to fight through a lot of lost nights and days through the process along with making a lot of mistakes I'm not proud of. I took out the toxic living in my life and sometimes the toxic people. I by passed my comfort zone since like Neale Donald Walsch once said, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone”, and exploring these limits and opening myself to a new life helped me find my new self. They also helped me find my happiness, and nothing could change from that point on life only got better.

I saw the world so differently; it went from being bland and a constant struggle to beautiful and refreshing. Instead of always walking with my head held low and oblivious to the world around me I started to raise my head up high and saw a world filled with beauty and colors. I saw the creatures I never even knew were there and the beauty that I was once afraid of. Instead of being afraid to go up and say hello to nature I used to run away from it, and now I would rather get to know it and learn about it. I explored and became in touch with the world I never knew existed of springs, rivers, waterfalls, volcanoes and so much more.

I realized God's beauty and God's love. This was the main thing that I had lost. My faith and once I started reconnecting with it and with God I realized that living a “Pura Vida” was also having a pure and good influence to lean on to and follow. I also reopened the doors to those who made me happy. Instead of constantly closing the doors to those that filled my heart I reopened the gates for them to flood, and they did. I reconnected with those that I never could've lived without, and I realized that I truly didn't live without them because I wasn't living. I was just floating through life finding things to fill the void and pretend to make me happy.

Pura Vida is truly living the life, a life that you dreamed of having and seek endlessly. It's living in pure and eternal happiness even through the bad. It's pushing for the happiness. It’s taking out the bad and bringing in the positive.