The Aloha Spirit

            If you’ve ever been to Hawaii you’ll understand the concept of the “aloha spirit”.  The aloha spirit is the idea that you can stand on the side of the road with one thumb out and not actually know where you are hitch hiking to. It’s the fact that riding in the back of pick up trucks is completely legal in Hawaii. It’s the casual manner in which a WWOOFer leaves the farm with a one-way ticket to Kauai bringing only a camel-back sized bag, a one person tent and surf board with him. After spending four months on the farm, with less than $35 dollars to his name, and answering the question ‘what’s your plan?’ with ‘to surf!’. The aloha spirit means that things will happen in their own time, with their own direction and meaning. The aloha spirit means a panic attack for people like me.

            For one reason or another, parenting or culture or community or peers, I have grown up to be a rather anxious individual, despite my efforts to be otherwise. I’d like say to that adjectives to describe me include ‘flexible’, ‘adaptable’ and ‘easy-going’ but that would be far from the truth. I like plans, and organization and to have confidence in what I’m doing and where I’m going. I abhor mess and chaos. And I wish it was different. This gap year has been a plan for a long time, but the closer it got the more I realized that the reasons I was so determined to do it had changed. I wanted to see things I had never seen and contribute in different parts of the world, but if I’m honest, more than anything, I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to challenge myself to delve into unorganized and chaotic territory, to go out and have no plan, and have plans fail and to have to adapt and teach myself that happiness and comfort are relative and are completely reliant on perspective. That I didn’t have to have to have the plan play out, that I could simply be and be happy. And jumping jelly fish, it’s easier said than done.

            Nothing has gone according to plan, and nothing has mirrored my expectations since we stepped foot off the plane. And in the past I would have said that if it didn’t follow the plan, it wasn’t necessarily a success. But that just can’t be true. Claire and I have been thrown about a bit, and we’re completely off course. But it’s all a little wonderful. The lettuce farm is starting to feel just right. I couldn’t have imagined or predicted this place; it just exists as its self, a mystery to those who haven’t experienced it. The ‘farmily’ as it’s called is becoming our community. We’re all very different, but we’re all here. I’m learning to appreciate people for all varieties of reasons, not just the basics. No one cares what level of education you’ve achieved, what you own, or what your weaknesses are. You do what you can with your strengths to contribute to the community and then what you can’t do is irrelevant.

            So we’re warming up. We’ll be at the lettuce farm for a month, and I have no doubts that it will be a month well spent. And I’m learning. Learning to sit on the beach for four hours and just be content. To hop in the back of the pick up truck without knowing where we’re going. To leave the house without a backpack. To leave behind my phone. To do only my own dishes and not the whole pile. To not need a reason to get up in the morning. To go to bed without laying out clothes for the next day. To have very, very dirty feet. To be somewhere extraordinary and not worrying about where I’ll be next. To exist for the sake of existing.