From Sunrise to Sunset: A Seven-Day Saga of Self-Exploration
Have you ever noticed how the journey of a week’s getaway mirrors the chapters of a life? From your excited arrival to that bittersweet farewell, each passing day brings realisations, emotions and perspectives that seem to echo the cycle of a lifespan.
Day One — Adolescence / Pure Possibility
Your journey begins with such excitement and expectation, as you skip around the terminal in sweatpants and a warm smile, happily repurchasing the sun cream you binned at security.
Seated beside your best friends, head above the clouds, you pop that little bag of chive-dusted mini pretzels and imagine all the things you’re going to see and do — all the happiness you’ll feel. Perhaps you’ll fall for a local at a bonfire on the beach and stay, or a colourful snorkel might inspire a distinguished career in marine biology. Right now, the island is your oyster.
Day Two — Twenties / Growing Disillusionment
On your first full day you wake up early as planned. From a gap in the long, white curtains you catch a sparkling silver sea.
The morning kicks off with a cool dip, followed by ‘tastiest pineapple ever’, and whips by in a haze of similarly thrilling first-times. ‘Look! A blue crab!’ ‘Wow, goat curry is actually really f***ing good!’
By the end of lunch, you and your friends have worked out everything you want to do and see whilst you’re here, starting with the popular climb to the top of Slog’s Peak.
Jumping off the boat at the base of the mountain, you begin the hike. Far from the mix of playful banter and deep and meaningfuls you’d imagined having as you loped to the top, the climb is grueling and everyone is single file and silent. You’re not even halfway and the inside of your ears are lunch for a swarm of mosquitos and your inner thighs are producing a portrait of Africa out of your own raw skin.
‘Still’, you tell yourself, ‘it’ll all be worth it when I reach the top…’
After two more hours of dodging the same loose rocks and poisonous ferns, you finally arrive. Throwing down backpacks heavy with bottled water and bruised fruit, you look out over the view.
‘Yeah? …It’s nice,’ you think to yourself. ‘I mean, no, it’s beautiful.’ However, you have to admit that your loudest thought is, ‘What’s next?’
You look over at your friends. They seem spread open, like a row of sunflowers. You start to wonder, is there something you’re missing? Or perhaps there’s something missing in you? In the distance is another mountain on another island. Maybe you’d feel differently over there?
Day 3 — Thirties / Status Anxiety
On day three whilst lounging by the pool and working on your second basket of fries, it dawns on you that tomorrow you’ll be halfway through. How did that even happen? You’re supposed to have done so much more.
As your friend Norah salutes the sun on a yoga mat beside you, you use a finger to sweep up the salt in your basket and brighten at the fact that at least you can say you’ve been to the highest point on the island!
Later on, over a ‘Ting and Sting’ at Russell’s Rum Hut, you meet a couple of young married influencers, Jason and Jasmine. They climbed Slog’s Peak the day they landed and yesterday, did a free cookery class. After a lunch of saltfish and green figs, they spent the afternoon on scooters, keeping up with local entrepreneur Ziggy, as he free-styled a tour of the Rastafari community hidden high up in the hills. In the evening they beat a drum at a ‘Reasoning’, smoked herb, and Jasmine took a bunch of black and white portraits she plans to turn into a book. This morning they posted themselves galloping down the beach and in an hour will board a boat for a tour of the rare wildlife found on a chain of nearby, uninhabited islands. They’ve been here less time than you!
Day Four— Forties / Focus
On day four you wake up to something like a mid-life crisis — time is slipping away and there’s still so much you haven’t done, so much happiness you haven’t yet felt. You make a plan. You’ll do the Botanical Gardens first thing, visit the Old Quarter before lunch, and get your scuba certificate in the afternoon. To keep on schedule, there is literally no time to stop and smell the flowers and Rosie ends up calling you a ‘Nazi’ by the hibiscus tree, before marching off to do her own thing.
Later on, you discover that, without your imposed structure, Rosie’s ‘thing’ was falling in love on the back of Clarence’s bike, the hotel barman, as he zipped her through St Paul on route to Runaway Bay. ‘Well’, you brood, ‘you might not have had any fun, but at least you’re a certified diver now!’
That night, in another stab at happiness via a heap of rice, beans and plantain, you’re hit with a wave of grief. You think back to that girl at the start, dropping her bags, slipping into jewelled sandals and venturing out into the hot night. If only she’d realised how lucky she was back then, how she still had everything ahead of her.
If only you could go back and start again. Do it differently.
Day Five — Fifties / Legacy
On day five, after Rosie drops by for a change of clothes on her way to Clarence’s Mother’s birthday bacchanal, you begin to wonder about your own legacy. Soon you will leave this place and it will be as if you were never here. Whose heart have you touched? Whose image have you captured? You decide to write a blog.
With nothing but your swimsuit and the notepad and pen from your hotel room, you stride down to the end of the beach, and scrabbling up a cluster of hot, lavender rocks, find a perch.
You start to write something about how the stages of a vacation mimic the cycle of life. However, before you’ve written anything that even hints at the truth, the tide is twisting around your toes and your bottom is numb. You decide to go back, start drinking and try again tomorrow… Maybe some lined paper will help.
Day Six — Sixties / Retirement
Day six comes and abandoning the whole ‘blog thing’, and a run, you decide instead that you’re just going to enjoy what little time you have left. From now on you’re only going to do what it is you really want to do. So you leave Becks and Norah to spot the lionfish and sea cucumbers on Scuba Selly’s ‘Coral Garden Majesty Tour’, and instead, stay at breakfast and spend some time checking in with yourself over a final round of mini danish pastries.
In a bold maxi dress and statement lipstick, you set out for the Sunday market. As the only tourist on the bus, you channel all the explorers that have gone before you. For example, you discover that, with no actual bell, you have to shout ‘Bus stop!’ and pray that ‘Charles in Charge’ will hear you over the sound of Bruk Off Yuh Back, detonating his speakers, and competing with his own rendition.
Disembarking, you proudly step from one local experience straight into another, patting yourself on the back for your spirited choices. But, after an hour of window-shopping breadfruit and dead fish, your new freedom feels like a prison. With an entire afternoon to fill, your great island adventure slides into a mozzarella and pesto panini at the only Starbucks on the island, followed by a manicure. Disappointed at who you are as a person and in need of a task, you spend the rest of the day buying gifts for all your friends back home… Sure, they’ll never actually wear their cowry shell choker, but at least they’ll have a nice wooden box, shaped like a tortoise, to keep it in!
Day Seven — Old Age / Acceptance
On day seven you wake up wishing you weren’t here anymore. There is nothing left you want to do or see. Turing down a morning by the pool, you choose instead to spend it reading and napping in the room, the curtains pulled closed.
When you wake at midday, you do so to a frightening silence. Loneliness, threatening to pull you under, you leap up and tear open the curtains. As the balcony door sucks open, it immediately connects you to the heat and activity behind it, and you breathe the life deep into your lungs. The sight of your friends, floating on neon noodles in the pool below, floods you with relief, and wrapping yourself in your new tie-dye sarong, you run down to be with them.
That afternoon, gathered on white wicker chairs in the breezy hotel lobby, as your friends battle it out for their vision of the perfect last supper, you melt blissfully into the moment, watching as this little drama plays itself out. Amazingly, you no longer have any expectations.
On the walk to a nearby patty shack, you have never been so aware of the beauty that surrounds you — tumbling purple and orange bougainvillea over a crumbling white wall, the great green tongue of a banana leaf, a goat on a string, the logo on your bottle of Red Stripe! There’s just so much beauty that you feel full on it, so full, in fact, that you let a heart-broken Rosie eat the crimped, orange crust of your beef patty.
Departure Day — Death / Letting Go
On your last day, lining up to check-in, your newfound wisdom is tested momentarily, by a wave of remorse. You finally know how to do this right! If only you had just a little more time.
For a minute you contemplate dashing around the chilly terminal buying up all the things you never tried when you had the chance — spiced ginger cake, overproof rum, jars of tamarind jelly and hot pickle. But, you know you can’t actually take this place with you. Not really. So instead you find an empty seat in front of a huge glass window, facing the tarmac, and wait to be called.
As you sit there, in your final hour, you watch as plane after plane takes off and fades into a little spec of dust. Soon that will be you, and when your turn finally comes, and you’re carried back up into that great big, glorious, white sky, you go feeling grateful. Grateful for the time that you did have, and for the people you got to share it with.
