On Wonder—and Moving to Hawaii.
“Our life will be a great and continuous unfolding. ”
I was starving back then. Not just the kind where I always went to sleep hungry or the fact that my mind looped around and around when it came to thinking about food. Thoughts came in disarray and chaos, a cyclical sling shot of a thought train where my body was screaming at me for one thing: to feed it. I wasn’t just hungry. My body didn’t just scream for food. It wanted to be fed more than something that required chewing. It was starving for more. Starving for a different life. Starving to dance inside the circle of inclusion and belonging, where I had always felt I was the observer, not the performer. Watching life and how it’s supposed to look from the outside, swaying along the periphery but never dancing in the middle. I was starving to belong. Starving as I began to walk down the path of This Is What I’m Supposed To Be Doing to only find a fork in the road. Starving for the courage to make a change. Starving to answer to the call of my inner-most knowing, the voice that has only told me what direction to go. Starving to listen and integrate that voice. Starving for time. Starving for a solution. Starving for freedom. Starving for safety. Starving for love. Starving for connection. Starving for rest. Starving for wonder. Starving for awe. Starving for something that didn’t drain from my empty cup. Starving for meaning. Starving for a better way.
I never thought the better way would come to me in an instant. The answer came to me screaming with the most unlikely of solutions. It came loud. It came clear. I found myself in the middle of a breakdown, crying on the floor of my apartment in the heart of San Francisco, where I lay on my back with empty, wet eyes staring up at the ceiling. A flicker of a childhood memory played out in my head—where I used to lay on my back in the middle of my bedroom and ask for answers. This time it was out of desperation. This time I made the decision to listen.
“Okay. I’ll listen. I’m ready.”
For all the times I ignored my inner voice, ignored my hunger, I finally surrendered.
I was done starving.
Then I called Alexandra.
“A, I really need to talk to you. Can you meet me?” I met Alexandra by Ft. Mason on a Tuesday in the middle of the week. We would always meet by the water, and we would always be called to the water. It’s now the thing that separates us, but back then it was a place where we could breathe real breaths and speak real truths. I arrive, and she gives me one of those hugs that she would always give, the kind you feel in your soul and the kind that makes you feel instantly connected. Heart to heart. Soul to soul. My essential needs of physical human touch were always automatically recharged by a routine embrace from A. But it felt different this time. I knew one day soon I wouldn’t be able to see her on a random Tuesday because I needed her.
We walked along the Marina, looking at the boats and talking about the mundane daily details of life, but I had something else important up my sleeve. This day, what I had up my sleeve was important and felt urgent. If I didn’t get it out of my throat and out of my body, it might have stayed inside, stayed a stagnant regret for the rest of my life. If I didn’t say it out loud, I didn’t think I could follow through.
“I need to tell you something. It might sound a little crazy, but I want to tell you because my life is going to drastically change.”
“Ok”, she says, offering up a big container of empty space to be held with an attentive ear. If anyone can hold space, it’s Alexandra. I inhaled sharply and prepared to take a leap into the abyss of truth. Saying it breathed it to life. Saying it breathed it to action.
“I’m moving to Hawaii.”
Alexandra looked at me, dead pan, with her pixie hair slightly disheveled from the chilly bite of the onshore San Francisco wind. A scarf she got when she went to India for yoga teacher training was wrapped loosely around her neck, but I could see her jaw tighten, then release. I saw a glimmer of doubt in her eyes until she saw the steadiness in mine. We sat there, blue eyes locked, until she realized I wasn’t messing around. This wasn’t just one of my big ideas that comes on with conviction and fizzles when fear takes the steering wheel. Both hands were on the steering wheel of change, ten and two, and I was ready to drive straight into this crazy idea.
“Ok, what happened?” she says, treading lightly.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
I used to refresh my email no less than 20 times around 6 pm on Friday nights—the time the Vice President of the company I worked for would send out the Weekly Sales Report. By this time, I had viciously built myself into a shark-like woman in the world of sales, relentlessly clawing my way to the top of the company. My weekly revenues were always one of the best in the country. My name would dance from number one to four, to two, back to one. This constant dance often left me anxious and uneasy. A constant fidget. A constant checking of my email. A constant switch left on. I had to be number one.
My competitive nature thrived and felt validated by being at the top. “If you’re not first, you’re last.” A favorite phrase that fit loosely into my repertoire back then. It would roll off my tongue with sly arrogance, punctuated with a smirk and a slight lift of my chin. I would continuously straighten out the wrinkles in my pencil skirt to change the cross of my legs leaning to one side, as my knees stayed tightly bound to one another. My days were spent chained to a desk with this pencil skirt worn tight enough--a shell to keep me from cracking. \
On Fridays I would get home from work and bump into my roommate who had been doing the same. Same rat race. Different jobs. “Happy Hour?” he’d ask. “Yes!” I’d exclaim. A glass of wine was sure to strip away the gnawing edge of uncertainty. My entire worth as a person in that moment rested on some text sent to me through a phone screen. I’d change out of my pencil skirt, let my hair down, and switch into jeans and a leather jacket. Although I was out of uniform, the work never really stopped. We would make our way down to the trendy, hipster, up-and-coming part of the Tenderloin a few blocks away from our apartment, and I’d urgently order a glass of crisp Chardonnay as I sat down. My gaze would be fixed downward at my phone that was left out in front of me on the mahogany bar top. My e-mail stayed open on the screen that never stopped glowing. I’d hit refresh no less than 20 times. Eventually the e-mail from the Vice President would pop up, where I opened it without hesitation. A frantic clicking with no space between, and lack of patience for instant gratification being the status quo.
The e-mail would open, and my name would be at the very top of the list. Amanda Blackwell. Number one in the company, again. Number one in the country, again. I’d sit there smiling with my mouth in a tight line, corners turned up. I’m sure my roommate saw my reaction as pompous insincerity, a confidence that borders arrogance—really just a mask worn to disguise the deep-rooted insecurity that had yet to be addressed. I smugly breathed in the high and raised my wine glass to my lips, closing my eyes and feeling the gulp of crisp white slither down my throat. The wonder from being at the top of my corporate game was temporary; the pride being fleeting. The affirmation in that moment originated from looking downward, neck to chest, eyes beating side to side reading text from a glowing phone screen.
I made my way through the terminal at LAX, on a hot day in October on the brink of an earth-shattering change. As I was waiting for my Hawaiian Airlines flight to board, I looked at all the other passengers around me, laughing and joking, excited to get their vacation started. Most were looking at their phones, likely posting things on social media like, “Hawaii bound!” and “Ready for vacay!” I watched and observed, but mostly stared at my boarding pass. My eyes would go from focused to unfocused as the letters LAX > LIH held me in a trance. A wonderous, nervous trance. It was a one-way ticket. The edges of the glossy paper were wrinkled from my grip and my legs were crossed, free foot wiggling to the rhythm of my erratically beating heart. Deep breaths were all I had to steady the nervous energy. My body was fatigued from waking up at 3 AM to make the drive down the 405, and it would be the last freeway I’d be driving on until I return again. I said goodbye to life as I knew it and went flying into a great unknown, alternating between looking over my shoulder at what I had left and forward towards something new.
“You can always come back,” I said to myself.
But beneath that, I heard a whisper say, “You won’t want to.”
When you move to Hawaii there are a few rites of passage that go unspoken, and mingling with the “local boys” is one of them. The men I chose to spend time with in San Francisco were glorified versions of college kids oozing with privilege with generous start-up salaries, impressive college educations, and a perpetual Peter Pan Syndrome. Their hands never got dirty. They sat in front of computer screens all day donning Patagonia vests as their clean, non-calloused fingers buzzed over a keyboard typing manically to “change the world” or develop a new App. Getting dirty meant sipping Bulleit Rye on a blanket in the middle of the grass at Chrissy Field.
Hawaii has a different breed of men, a little rough around the edges, more salacious, more appealing, and nothing like the type I had become accustomed to. Running away from San Francisco meant undressing and undoing myself from the muck and residue of the city. Running far, far away meant undoing it all. Men included. It was impossible to not be intrigued. The local boys roped me in with their loose tongues, rough hands, big trucks and work boots worn with board shorts. Naturally, I found myself hanging out with a local boy soon after I moved. We hung out with the premise of teaching me how to surf but gave up quickly when we realized I was hopeless (at the time). The sun began to set after spending many hours trying to surf and pearling, falling, and losing my balance. We sat tucked away in a hidden cove on the far-left side of Hanalei Bay, a beach and break called Waikokos, where we found an abandoned teepee some stranger had constructed out of driftwood. He looked at me with boyish wide eyes, with his loose Pigeon tongue and said, “What? You want to make fire?” smiling knowingly through side eyes. He took a big gulp from his Heinekin, and my eyes fixed on his Adams apple while his throat coaxed the beer down to his belly. I traced my gaze along his tan skin, down to his collar bone and across his chest to the tribal tattoos on his upper arm. “Done,” I said. “Ok, going to get my machete.” I laughed thinking to myself, “Of course. He keeps a machete with him.”
We walk to his silver island-beater truck, the kind with massive tires that lifted just past my reach. He opens the bed of his truck and grabs his machete. We make our way back to the fire, and he starts whacking some dry brush with beer still in hand. His confidence showed me that this wasn’t the first time he’s swung a machete one-handed. He spots some fallen coconuts from the tree above, examines one and bursts into a Cheshire-like grin. “You like?” He puts it in the sand and wedges the coconut between his feet, and with a few angled, precise wacks, he opens it and hands it to me. “Fresh coco water.” I drink it and close my eyes. How is this real life? We made our way back to the huge pile of driftwood, and he crouched down, blowing on the dry pieces as they caught aflame. I noticed the dirt under his fingernails.
Sometimes contrast can be exposed in the most unexpected of ways. In this case it was brought to my attention by this local boy. I was reminded of the well-manicured hands of a San Francisco tech guy typing on a keyboard while I gazed at the strong, weathered hands that clutched a machete.
The fire was soon roaring, the flames reaching past the top of my head. I sat in the sand, legs crossed, feeling the soft, velvety, grainy texture against the backs of my legs as I watched the colors move from blue to yellow to orange. The heat was like a blanket against the slightest of tinge of cool air from the evening onshore breeze. My head was toasty and buzzing from the sips of Casadores, and I began to feel uninhibited and loose. I looked up. Stars. Everywhere. Layers and layers of light and twinkling, and I couldn’t remember the last time I looked up and saw this sort of magic. Do you know what it’s like to look up and see a show of stars in a night sky after living in a city that left them dim, left them absent? The kind of night sky that looks like someone took a pencil and poked a million holes in a black piece of paper and let the glitter seep through.
Tequila made me hazy, but clarity seemed to come within reach. I uncrossed my legs and put my hands behind my back, arms locked, and tilted my head all the way back. My jaw loosened and I leaned into my hands, mouth agape with the heat of fire illuminating my sense of wonder. Under the stars and a blazing fire, something within me knew I was edging closer to the girl I wanted to be. The salt in my hair and the fire seemed to burn off the outer layer of city grime, and looking up at the stars filled me with open wonder and astonishment. Here, at the precipice of massive change, I had begun reorienting my gaze to look up at the sky above.
My own answers, my own steps in the right direction towards wholeness, had really never been found by looking down at a glowing phone screen. The answers had been found in the stars, in the massive unknown and the massive significant insignificance we bring in this lifetime. The answers are never the answers themselves, because life doesn’t have one concrete solution to all the problems. But the steps in aligned direction can make a difference in grounded contentment or settling for walking a misled, miserable, even shallow life. We have the voice within ourselves. We just have to listen.
If we ever have those moments of feeling hopelessly lost, we must remember to look up. Up to the stars, up to God, up to whatever resonates within you. The answers might not always come. But go. Go in that direction, because wonder and meaning is not found in a Sales Report. If you look up and look within, you’ll find your compass there.