Midlife

Is this move to the woods my midlife crisis?

I was pondering this question on an early ice run from the Hara Store in Kurtistown. The ice run was a rookie mistake on our part. We woke up Sunday morning and the ice in the cooler had melted away and the contents were starting to get warm. Now we know for sure, four blocks of ice will last seven days in our cooler. As far as the midlife question, I wasn't feeling down about it as my mind worked over it. Rather, it was more of a pleasant day dream. Kim and I have been reading a book titled, "A Year Off" together. Whenever we have a spare moment, Kim has been reading aloud from this book. It's so much better than watching TV. The book is about a guy, who shortly after his 40th birthday decides to sell his business, house, cars, and most of his possessions and take his family(three kids and a wife) on an around the world trip for a year. It is an entertaining and inspiring read. One of the thoughts the writer contemplates is whether or not this trip is his midlife crisis.

So as I drove up the rugged road towards the land my mind wandered over this thought. The idea of a midlife crisis evokes a lot of negative connotations in our society. We get a picture of a man looking back on his past and regretting some of the decisions in his life, feeling the weight of his responsibilities, and looking ahead to a bleak tomorrow. In a spur of the moment decision he drops everything, buys the sports convertible, and runs off with someone 20 years younger. That's of course one scenario, but it doesn't have to be the only scenario. Perhaps, the midlife crisis needs to be reframed to being the midlife awakening. It's the realization that some things are not working and the opportunity to move in a different way.

I wonder if the the spiritual itch that inspired Siddhartha Gotama to seek enlightenment was actually a midlife crisis. He dropped everything, including his wife and child, to seek out something better for himself. Wow! What kind of guy would do that? No disrespect to Buddhists everywhere, but he took the easy way out. Try finding enlightenment with a toddler hanging around, that's the true test of how much calm and peace one can maintain. Point in case, Halloween. The process of finding a costume for a little one can be like being pulled through the stages of death and rebirth over and over again. First, Bodhi wanted to be a bus driver for Halloween. So we set out to find some kind of uniform to meet this desire. Bodhi is very specific about what a bus drive wears. "Daddy, a bus driver wears a blue coat, blue pants, white shirt, blue tie and a hat." We scour the thrift stores and the mall to find these items. No luck until we finally go to Macy's and find a little boy's suit. The only problem, the suit has pin stripes and of course in Bodhi's mind a bus driver doesn't wear a pin striped suit.

Kim and I come up with a plan to sell the idea of him being a train engineer instead. This would be easy we thought, he loves trains. How hard would it be to find overalls, a red bandana, and a conductors hat? First stumbling block with this one was that Bodhi wouldn't have any of it. He was firm that a bus driver was what he wanted to be. It took us about two weeks of marketing the idea for him to buy into it. He finally did. The hat was easy. We bought one for him on our trek to the train museum in Laupahoehoe. Overalls were another story. You would think with the amount of ag land on this island, children's overalls would be standard inventory at most clothing stores. None to be found until we finally went to Macy's again and found a pair that was sized for a 24 month old that actually fit Bodhi. After all of this effort, we were standing in Macy's, Bodhi has the overalls on and is looking awfully cute, he looks at me and says,"Daddy, I want to be a violin player, like in the symphony." Needless to say I wanted to scream. Kim came by just before my synapses were about to burst and did a 15 minute convincing session to reassure Bodhi that he wants to be a train engineer.

As I paid for the overalls, Bodhi says to me,"Okay daddy, I need a red kerchief." I ask the Macy's clerk for bandanas. None. I go to Sears, none. I go to five other stores, none. The last store I go to tells me to go to Hot Topic. Hot Topic is a Goth store in the mall. We go in and the store is filled with teenagers looking for costumes of the sexy or zombie variety. I ask the heavily powdered clerk all clad in black, including nails and lipstick, if she had red bandanas. She smiles and says sure. I am relieved, the search is over. She takes me to the back of the shop and points to a display of bandanas. My eyes immediately pinpoint red and I grab it off the rack. To my dismay, the black print on the bandana is of all things skulls. I debate for a second on whether or not to get it. Bodhi is getting heavy in my arms, the store is crowded, and he keeps repeating I need a red bandana. It clicks in pretty quickly in my mind that I don't want my son being the engineer on Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train", so I put the grimacing skulls back and commit to searching on.

It's interesting how when you are focused on something you become hyper aware of it. I remember when I was a Class Advisor at Kamehameha Schools I needed to get red material and red yarn for the class. When the yarn I ordered arrived I began to worry that the red material I ordered wouldn't match the yarn. I became obsessed with red. I began to be aware of it everywhere; stop signs, brake lights, stop lights, red cars, red doors, red print on signs all popped out at me. I was so aware of red that I gave myself a case of pink eye and my eyes actually turned red, I was literally seeing red. As I was leaving the mall, I was hyper aware of bandanas. I saw them everywhere on people's heads. I actually saw a woman walking into the mall with red bandana that looked perfect for Bodhi but as I got closer I saw that the print on the material was hundreds of tiny little marijuana leaves. The search went on.

When we got to the car, as if by magic, Kim's phone rang and it was Karen. We told her what we were up to and she tells us, "I have a red bandana." It was as if a chorus of angels sang out in my head, the search was over.

As life moves on we find ourselves with a tremendous amount of responsibilities. It's very tempting to think about leaving it all behind, jumping behind the wheel of a classy roadster, cranking up some Bossa Nova music on the stereo, and zooming down the highway. But we don't because we know all of these experiences bring us closer to the precipice of enlightenment, and the joy of the journey is so much fun. So instead of a midlife crisis, I will call this my midlife awakening.

As I made my way up the bumpy road from the ice run. A neighbor about my age was driving down toward me. His Jeep was loaded with with his family on this early morning. They looked like they were laughing with each other and having a good time. As we passed each other we greeted one another with the very local loose grip shaka sign and the short upward head flick. At that moment I felt like we were both medieval knights, recognizing each other and acknowledging our nobility with a salute as we journeyed on to slay the next dragon.