The Things You Always Wanted to Do and the Things You Really Do

I have always wanted to float down the Grand Canyon in a raft or kayak for a week or longer or shorter. I have just always wanted to do it. I have always wanted to climb the Grand Teton that I saw on a road trip with my friend in Jackson Hole, Wyoming when I was 18 years old. What a trip!  We packed up the F150 truck and started the 6,000 mile trip when gas was still around a dollar a gallon.  At the time, I never even heard of Hawaii or the North Shore or Obama.  Later, I saw and dreamed about climbing Yosemite. I stared at the base of the Half Dome for hours when I was traveling as an independent young man and said to myself I can do it.

I don’t know what it is about being out there and hanging by your fingertips or balancing on the balls of your feet.  Maybe it’s that feeling of flirting with nature.  I always just started to do what I wanted to do and as long as no one caught me or stopped me I have usually done it.

Now I want to talk about what I have done. I have lived in Hawaii for six maybe seven years now without leaving the islands.  You know how time flies. I left a good paying construction job to chase my dreams of being independently wealthy in the real estate business so that I can travel and play in the most extreme arenas that mother nature offers thrill seekers.

…and we all know the story of the real estate market. So, I bought, owned, operated, and sold a landscaping company on Maui while staging people’s homes to get a commission. That didn’t work, so I packed my bags to move to the Big Island to sell timeshares. I lived there in a vog-infested environment, lost my health, put on a little weight, and lost a few months of surfing on Oahu to chase that dream of becoming independently wealthy.

The one thing I can say is that I did it. I have done all these things and, in the last year or so, I lived and worked on building a nursery in Waimanalo. I bought and built a music club which has been a great and fulfilling business and musical experience. I broke the first ever C4 waterman stand-up board. (If you know someone else who broke one let me know.) I tried to start a tour company here is Hawaii and failed miserably but guess what — I tried it.

Now that I am thirty and almost thirty-one, I must say I have lived a fulfilling and beautiful life based around one small principle: I do what I want to do and I love doing it. This love came from my parents — mainly my dad.  Like father, like son. He bought me my one way ticket to Hawaii not knowing where I would work or where I would stay. He got me the ticket because I wanted to do it. Key note to homeless island travelers: Don’t sleep at Magic Island overnight because the sprinklers will come on.

Anyways back to the conclusion of this article. Now that I am almost thirty-one, and now that I’ve spent the last year doing what I want to do, I have had the chance to step out of my own narrow line of vision and look at what everyone wants to do and what everyone is doing. So far, I seem to have a little bit of fog in my goggles or water in my eyes because I am not sure what the majority of people my age are looking to do in life. When I look at the whole population of people my age that are in Hawaii I must say some are surfers, some are baby makers, some are business owners (usually of a family business), and the rest are blue collar workers. What I am looking for is some clarity on what people really want to do and the actions they are taking to make it happen. Do other people really have a seed of prosperity they are growing in their own gardens to produce bounty or are they going to continue to shop at someone else’s store of prosperity? Do others have visions like I do?  Are they acting on those visions to achieve their goals or are they just talking about it or saying, “when that happens or all when this happens I do this…” — the old cause and effect?

Well, let me tell you one thing I’ve learned in my near decade of life in Hawaii: You are the cause your reality and life is the effect.  Life effects you and all the people around you as long as you are alive. That is one thing that is as true as Hawaii being the greatest place on earth to live — for a few months out of the year anyways.

The world is a big place.  Let’s go play.

Tags: Barack Obama, Hawaii, North Shore, Oahu, Things To Do, Travel, Waimanalo