Leave Room for the Unexpected
Seven Lessons Hawaiʻi Can Teach Us About Living Like We're on Vacation — Part Four
Some of my favorite memories almost didn't happen. They weren't reservations we made six months in advance, and they weren't excursions listed in a travel guide. In fact, they usually began with someone saying, "Should we stop?"
A quick detour to watch surfers becomes two hours on the beach. One drink before dinner turns into an evening filled with laughter beneath tiki torches. Magically running into someone you haven’t seen for a while means you’ll now spend the afternoon together. A walk to catch the sunset somehow ends with new friends, live music, and stories that will be told years later.
What we think is unplanned, might not be unplanned at all.
The other day my husband's truck broke down. Strangely, my reaction when he called me to pick him up wasn’t negative, but the words flew out of my mouth without a thought, “Oh interesting, let’s see what happens with this.” My husband was frustrated when I got there, so I mentioned it to him. “Let’s see what happens.” He had a job to do, so we moved his things into my car and we began the trek up Mauka. That’s when he gets a call. I hear him say on the other end, “What? Really?” He turns around and looks behind us. “Follow us!” Our newly made friends, those that feel as if we’ve been friends for years, were driving behind us heading to the same place. Ben and I smiled at each other with a shake of our heads and agreed, this is why we never count out magic. What was supposed to be a day of work turned into a several hour conversation that lifted our spirits and brought us closer as friends.
In the movie, A Field Of Dreams, Kevin Costner’s character comes to a place in his life where everything feels inadequate. He’s worried that he’ll become his father and feel old by fifty. So when the voice asks him to build a baseball field, he’s scared enough of stagnation that it leaves him no choice but to do the unthinkable. He could have chosen to ignore the voice and continue safely on. Instead, he chose the unknown.
Somewhere along the way, we began believing that a successful day is a productive one. Our calendars are carefully color-coded, and our weekends are scheduled weeks in advance. Even our vacations often come with itineraries detailed down to the hour. We've become remarkably good at filling every empty space and less skilled at leaving room for surprise.
Hawaiʻi seems to resist this instinct. The islands have a way of gently interrupting your plans in the most beautiful ways. The day quietly becomes something entirely different from what you imagined, and somehow, it almost always becomes better.
"Everything went exactly according to plan." What a boring statement. The moments we treasure most often arrive disguised as interruptions.
This week, I'd like to invite you to try something that feels wonderfully unproductive. Protect two hours, and don't schedule them. Don't fill them with errands or decide ahead of time what they should become. Simply leave the space open. Take a drive with no destination. Walk a different street. Say yes to an invitation you might normally decline, or simply sit somewhere beautiful and wait to see what unfolds. Not every empty hour will become unforgettable, but none of them can if they never exist.
Perhaps that's another quiet lesson Hawaiʻi has been trying to teach us.
Magic requires our acceptance. Not because extraordinary things happen every day, but because they can only happen when we've left room for them.
Next week, we'll gather around the table for another lesson the islands have never forgotten: Gather More Often, and why hospitality may be one of life's greatest luxuries.
