My Journey To The Hawaiian Islands

College was one of the hardest times of my life.  Not because the information was difficult (i actually found the classes to be quite easy).  But because of how empty it made me feel.  Endless weeks of sitting in a library, or in giant lecture halls, or alone in my room with my face in a textbook.  Only to go out and party with people that only really cared about drinking, and doing drugs.  It was a weird place that felt so far from reality, it was hard for me to wrap my head around it.  

The fact that everyone around me was having the time of their life, and I was miserable, only made it worse.  I felt so alone with these feelings of emptiness.  I'd grown up thinking that college was one of the best times of our life, being told by my teacher, parents, & society that it was the most important thing we do. 

Eventually it got to a point where my money for school was dwindling, and I would have to take out some loans to pay for my next quarter.  That's when i realized that it simply wasn’t worth it anymore to go into debt for something that i felt no passion towards.

Don't get me wrong, i think education is EXTREMELY valuable, but i also believe that we all have our own life path and for me, university wasn’t part of my own personal journey. 

With just a bit of money left in my bank account from working that past summer, I left school and bought a 150$ ticket to Hawaii, thinking that I would be so happy living in a place with abundant tropical fruit, and endless blue oceans.  

I got on that flight with virtually no plans, or idea of how I would possibly start my life there. There was so many emotions present within that six hour flight.  Is all this even worth it?  It would have been so much easier if i had just moved back home with my parents and got a job in Seattle.  Logically, what i was doing made absolutely no sense, but deep within me, i felt like i was following the right path.  Intuitively i could hear this voice telling me to simply just trust that everything would work out

I met a lady on the plane who was from there, she told me that a friend of hers owned a coffee plantation nearby.

I walked off that flight around 8pm, it was humid and dark.  I could hear the noises of the tropical night bugs humming all around.  I didn't even know where I would be sleeping that night.

I caught up with the lady standing outside the airport.  She called her friend with the plantation and asked if I could spend the night with the other workers.  To my surprise the lady said yes, and that she would come pick me up.

The anxiousness i felt on the plane, slowly started to fade, as i began to feel a little more calm knowing that i wouldn't be homeless for the night.

The lady drove me up this windy road deep into the jungle. There were parts of me that felt frightened by not knowing at all where I was going.  The drive took an hour or so, when we arrived, all I could hear was the deafening sounds of the nocturnal night animals.  The darkness was vast, she had a flashlight, and together we stumbled to what looked like an old shed.  Inside, I could hear the sounds of people sleeping.  It was a small space, she led me to a bunk and told me to find her in the morning, then she was gone.  I guessed there were probably 8 other people in the room.  I took my contacts out in the dark and  tried to calm down.   I felt really jumpy, unsure if I was in a safe area. Sitting in the darkness I felt a sense of eerie loneliness.  Then the rain came...  and let me tell you, when it rains in the jungle, it REALLY rains.  

The rain started to leak through the ceiling, it was dripping onto my sleeping bag.  I don't think i ended up sleeping even a minute that night.  The roosters woke up at 3 am and started to crow.  It was inside the shed and the sound was deafening. I didn't understand how the people around me were sleeping through all of this. 

At 5am I started to see early signs of dawn as the sun began to rise.  I packed up my sleeping bag, wrote a thank you note to the host, and got out of there as quickly as I could.  Walking down the long driveway I felt a sense of gratitude that I made it through that night alive and safe.  The cool crisp morning slowly faded into a hot and humid day.  

Walking along a vacant road with my entire life on my back in the heat of the sun wasn't exactly the most fun experience. I must have been walking for a couple of hours until I finally stumbled upon a highway.  There was a gas station not far where I figured I could buy some water, which felt very vital at that moment.

I started talking to a nice local lady who told me she was driving across the island, and offered me a ride. I graciously accepted and hopped in her old pickup truck.  She offered me some homegrown strawberries.  The ride was gorgeous.  Things started to feel like they were going in the right direction, I began to understand that all I could do was trust that things would work out. 

Two weeks into my time there  I had gotten a job at a local vegan cafe, and bought an old moldy van that I had been living in.  

Hawaii wasn't exactly the dreamy paradise that i had envisioned (that's a story for a different day). But through a series of what seemed like “random” events, i ended up on a flight to India to do my Yoga Teachers Training.   I know that if I had never gone to Hawaii, I definitely wouldn't have had the opportunity to go to India.  

So Here's the thing, once you begin to let go of the need to control life, life will bring you exactly  where you need to go.  The more I let go during my time in Hawaii, the more opportunities began to pop up that helped progress me to the next stage of life.  

So I challenge all of you to try to live in this place of the unknown, a place of presence, where we can access the truth of our inner being, and start to make decisions based on intuition.  Knowing that these intuitive decisions will lead you exactly where you need to go.