Plot Twist #hawaii
And “No Plans”
If you read my last blog post, it’s now a total sham. Life turned out differently than predicted 6 weeks ago. Here’s a glimpse of what I lost and gathered...
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Step 1 of all-plans-failure happened when I experienced edge case passport issues in January and wasn’t able to travel outside of the US. Volunteering in Rwanda, which I had been planning for 3 years, became impractical in my few weeks of unemployed freedom. With some frustration but also hope, I looked for a warm place in the 50 united states and decided to traverse to Hawaii, the seemingly most exotic location within my limitations.
Before I reached the island, I imagined everyone speaking Hawaiian. And in some ways they did. Not so much with the delicate dead language, but rather with their unique relaxed spirit, grand appreciation of nature, and shared hang loose hand signs (the one thing tourist shops got right).
I spent time with such uninhibited people who showed me the ways of natural island life, places that were far-removed from the rectangular life I often lead — be it living in a contained studio, building a square app, or simply living in a planned mindset.
One moment on the island in particular made my perspective do a “left-turn.”
On my second day of arrival, I hiked a steep valley in Maui, after which I felt like Emerson or Thoreau, whichever one said that nature can teach you what books cannot. An unexpected microclimate of a large storm was passing through (I was literally previously at a sunny beach 10 miles away), and I remember looking down under a precarious bridge I was teetering on with my completely soaked purple raincoat and witnessing the raw rage of muddy rapids.
I wasn’t able to hear my own voice out loud, and I was 100% sure that the slightest misstep would mean an instant departure from life and likely a frantic search party sponsored by my parents 2500 miles away. Still, I couldn’t look away for nearly 10 mins from the vivid destruction unfolding. I had never seen anything more forceful in the world.
A few flashbacks occurred simultaneously while I held on tightly to the bridge railing. First was my recent uprooting of life from Berlin to London. The move required ruthless packing and disposal, and the biggest mind-shift was that saying goodbye to my possessions was not actually losing items, but gaining space. Space too — is tangible. (And in London you literally pay hundreds of pounds for every additional square foot of it.) With every goodbye, I was a lighter person who could move through life easier.
I also flashed back to several times in my life that I felt strong natural forces and then often denied them, like when I resisted feelings for others or myself after plans didn’t work out. Or when my stubbornness to be a certain way was so fierce that I attempted to change outcomes out of my influence. I couldn’t stop smiling at how foolish those actions now seemed. The force of nature was so coarse and all-consuming, that adhering to a planned vision when life wanted to derail seemed like clinging to a pebble during the muddy rapids I was witnessing.
Sticking to my fixed plans was like putting a straight lattice grid on top of life when it was already building a random, awe-inspiring reality. I imagined instead what it would be like to embrace and travel with the destruction — after all, the derailment of 6 weeks’ life plans is what led me to this raw, unexpected, and incredibly happy moment.
Abandoning my lattice grid of an envisioned future meant gaining space for nature and other people to inspire me with their own worlds. I laughed seeing how little I could actually predict, because just as I was changing in that moment, other molecules were doing the same around me.
With my new mantra of “no plans,” I spent the next 2.5 weeks in Hawaii embracing nature in its truest, ruthless forms. I swam with dolphins and turtles in the open sea, counted shooting stars from tiny planes, and hiked heights that I honestly should have signed waivers for. I often let the weather, my mood, and others’ worlds take me to my plans.
I began to trust rather than withstand nature. “Nature,” which to me included the varying forces both in the world and in people, had been destructing for millennium. My world, which before Hawaii I saw as extraordinary, fragile, and in need of constant protection, was actually a direct outcome of, not exception to that force.
In Hawaii, I embraced a new perspective: maybe the best way to preserve my world is not to shield it from the muddy rapids, but rather to allow that energy and the derailment of plans to create more space for the unexpected in my life.
Two years ago, I held a very different outlook. I finally look forward to the future without plans and without anxiety.
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^ (space for dramatic effect)
Mahalo,
niki
