What would life be like in Paradise if it were everyday? My first hint came when I was in a mile long back up on the “highway” on Maui. Road construction had stopped traffic. I wanted to get to the beach, hurry up! I caught myself that day. I was astonished to see that with a few weeks of being in Hawaii I had forgotten my easy, vacation attitude.
It seems that the reason we all love vacations in the tropics is because they can lift us out of our everydayness. We break from worry and timelines and ‘got to be there’. We slow down and see things differently. On Maui I counted rainbows and orchids. I thrilled at the colors. But slowly, after two weeks or so I started to take the world I was in for granted a bit. I stopped watching the weather because it was always nice, then I expected it to be nice and didn’t pay much attention to it, or the beauty of it. I ran errands – the post office, buy groceries and slowly the every day way life crept in.
Here on the Big Island of Hawaii, I have been to the beach three times – but they all happened in the first week or so. Now that I can go whenever I want to – I don’t. I let other things get more important. I have helped the woman who I am living with get her garbage to the dump, return movies to the video store, and get an estimate on her car for repairs. All things that can happen anywhere you live. I can see how I could so easily take the beautiful view from her Lanai for granted, or the sunshine, or the bougainvillea spilling outrageous colors over walls and houses.
Being in paradise, or anywhere else won’t guarantee that any of us will appreciate it. We have to commit to it. I have to choose to see the beauty anew each day. Hawaii has lots of problems, just like any other place. Traffic, high prices, crime. If I think I can escape them because the land is so beautiful, I am mistaken. My worries and fears are still with me as well. I can’t escape them either.
On vacation we take a break from so much more than work, we break from ourselves and our everyday worries. If I choose and commit I can keep that vacation spirit alive wherever I am. Wherever I go, I take myself, so I am learning to keep the best of me, the one that is filled with gratitude and kindness and let her live in paradise or wherever.
