paradise, interrupted

It has taken this long to sit in front of a computer and begin to write. Life invites response. I could either scroll pinterest, and continue to find my identity through my likes and dislikes, or, I could do something entirely new. So here I am.

A moment to breathe and let go. My little corner of the internet. I wonder who might read this, if anyone, in the vast expanses of the world wide web. Do I have anything interesting to say? That remains to be seen. It does seem presumptuous to think that any of these thoughts would matter to anyone else besides myself, yet here I go.

I should start with perhaps explaining the name of this blog “paradise, interrupted”. Yes, it’s a play on that other title, “Girl, Interrupted” which I have never seen or read. I thought it was a catchy and clever name, and one which describes, in a nutshell, my feelings on being human. Paradise is subjective. We’d like to think that there is such as thing, but really I would call it and ideal. The closest I can get to is paradise as an experience. Next is a word that seems the poster-child of our modern-era, that which is interrupted. A sudden, perhaps jarring, disruption of whatever is going on. How rude.

I have lived on the Big Island of Hawaii almost my entire life. My parents moved me here when I was a wee girl of eleven, so I came here not of my own choice but from the ideals of my parents. Here in Hawaii I have witnessed the droves of outsiders visiting, even moving, here expecting for this place to be their paradise. Then, like everything and everywhere else, reality sets in and they realize that life can suck even when you have unlimited access to beaches and tropical fruits. Worse yet are the folks that come here to escape. Escape from what? People. Yes, people. Big city lives, the rat race, the in-laws, the neighbors, and (heaven forbid) the exes. They just want to live alone, isolated, in the middle of the pacific ocean, drinking their coconuts. With 300,000 other people. On and island of 4,000 square miles.

I write as if jaded, and that I am. I am doing everything in my power to get off this rock of an island, this “paradise”, which has been my home for the last 21 years. I love this place, but I am outgrowing it. Like most of my peers, I long for greener pastures. I am pursuing my own idea of paradise, which is not Hawaii. Yet I know in my bones that the mirage of the holy land is a facade, that true paradise is within. And yet I cannot help but seek it outside of myself.

Such is the dilemma of the human journey. The futility of the effort to create an everlasting paradise here on Earth, yet the pursuit of which is unavoidable, and one could say written in the very fabric of our being. To chase the ideal, the comfortable, the pleasurable, and to reject everything that is not that, is what mother nature has gifted us for our survival. It is not wrong. And it is not paradise. The interruption of which is the reminder of this very fact.

So, I hope you enjoy my ramblings (if you’ve made it this far!). I hope they may be of some use to you. I am very glad that I chose to take this invitation to write, rather than rot away scrolling pinterest.