The “Perfect” Life: I was destined to marry a boy from my hometown, have 2.5 children, a station wagon, a ranch-style house with a white 4-plank fence around it and be a school teacher or a nurse. This was defined as “happily ever after”.
When I was 18 years old, I had only two aspirations. The first was to be what is now termed, a “flight attendant”. Back then it was “stewardess”. The only class I truly loved was geography and my only fantasy was traveling to all those places I had read about. So many years later, I still have that grade school geography book on my bookshelves, even though the countries have changed names, politics and leaders more times than I could ever have imagined. I came from a farm near a little town in Kentucky where not a one of my immediate family, during my childhood, had ventured further than Lexington, Louisville, Frankfort or eastern Kentucky. My mother was a well-read individual with many books on her shelves. But no one ever left my hometown unless they had to and then they hurried back to it as quickly as they could.
I was a mystery to all the family, and even my school friends, since all I could talk about was going someplace, anyplace…as long as it was away from there. My parents were appalled that I would consider getting into one of those contraptions called an airplane. How could I consider going to foreign places where heathens lived? They called a school and had a representative come to our home to discuss this with me. They must have clued him into their wishes because he discouraged me from applying, to the point of telling me I would fail miserably to take such a step. This person was not what I would call a profit-center for the school!
I had a choice as I graduated from high school: go to college or go to work in the factory “on the line”. “On the line” translated to Corning Glass Works, standing on my feet a minimum of eight hours a day, watching small pieces of glass that were to be made into eyeglasses go by me on a belt and removing flawed pieces and tossing them into a box behind me. Not the way I wanted to spend my life or career!
I opted for the college scene because I did not feel I had a choice. Not even eighteen, I was young for my grade level and could not yet “run away from home”. I needed the legitimate excuse and that excuse was called “college”. It was at least a one-hour drive to my college, which was the same college my sister had attended…a teachers’ college. There I could learn a skill and hopefully “catch a man”. Then I could come back to my hometown and settle down to that “Perfect Life”. It sent shudders down my spine and still does!
I had also had the other underlying obsession for nigh onto 14 years….I wanted to live in Hawaii. Talk about a foreign concept! My mother feared I would try to run away to Hawaii but kept me close at hand through her own special brand of travel agency…guilt trips regularly and with regularity! I studied at the knee of the master of Guilt Trips!
At nineteen, with nearly two years of college under my belt, I bolted. No one could tell me any different. I went to Honolulu. I was going to live my dream! I might not be a stewardess, but by golly I was going to live in the land of sunshine, lollipops and rainbows! Actually palm trees, sunshine and ocean…but the song ran through my head a lot! There was the hula; aloha shirts and mumus; flowers strung in “leis” sold on every street corner; appetizers were called “pupus”; a hole was called a “puka”; and to say thank you was “Mahalo”. Snacks were “manapua”, papaya, and malasadas. I often ate a lunch of “2 scoop rice, 1 scoop macaroni-potato salad with teriyaki steak” from a “roach coach”. The hardest word to pronounce was the street name, ”Kalanianiole”. Merry Christmas was Mele Kalikimaka and Happy New Year was “Haouli Makahiki Hou”. All of which, of course, sounded terribly foreign and wonderfully romantic.
In actuality, though, it is not really different than any other town of its size and stature. The cost of living was always just above whatever my income was, the cost of land and housing was always twice what it was anywhere else, food was 30% more than any other state. Twenty cents per kilowatt hour of electricity was acceptable and gasoline was just plain expensive! And that was nearly 60 years ago!
But it was Hawaii.
I could walk to work and feel the sun on my head, feel the trade winds blow my hair, and I seemed to smile a lot there. I lived in Honolulu when there were lei stands at the edge of the sidewalk all day long, pungent with the sweet smell of plumeria and pikaki leis. The strumming of the ukulele could be heard wafting out the bungalow windows in Waikiki, blending with island drum beats, “thump, thump, thump”, and the steel guitar plaintively wailing out the notes … the cacophony of sounds blended with the bells of the white robed Hari Krishna as they barefooted winding through the streets and alleys … the sticky sweet smell of the maryjane mixing with the odor of garlic, ginger and soy sauce cooking in the wok … the sweet-sour bite of fresh pineapple sticks mixing with the rum-flavored punch of the Mai Tai at sunset overlooking the beach …. surfers and swimmers sauntering down the beach without stumbling over people lying head to toe, trying to catch a ray of sun … the cockroaches approaching the size of today’s computer mouse…(we kidded a lot that we could put leashes on them and take them for walks at sunset) … and “cane spiders” than jumped sideways when they moved because they were as big as your fist and as blind as a bat!
It was the perfect life…….young, alive and living in Hawaii……..
RIGHT NOW, if there were no restrictions, no objections, no obstacles to experiencing your “Perfect Life”, what would your life look like? Can you answer this without hesitation? Or do you need to think about your answer, ponder your choices, change your description several times?
Have you ever thought about what your answer would be if you had to describe what your perfect life looked like if you were 19 years old? Imagine your life was a blank board upon which you could write the description and it would promptly happen…just the way you wrote it. What would you say? Can you imagine a life to be lived without restriction, without twists and turns, without any problem you haven’t consciously designed into it? Can you tell me right now, without a lot of thought or effort, what that life would look like?
I’ve described my perfect 25 year-old’s life. I lived it. What can you do to live your perfect life right here, right now? How do we go about deciding what is a perfect life? I have no answers for myself or for anyone else. Do you?