Define Paradise as you will, but my quarter century spent traipsing across this planet leads me to define it in one word: Hawaii.  Let us expand this word into several.  Paradise is not Elysium, for its inhabitants must live.  Paradise is not unbound bliss, for on it crawl human beings stained as the rest of their ilk, to strive – physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually – for meaningful lives.  Once a person steps into Paradise, he or she does not relinquish the vital impulse to grow, improve, and climb toward states of “more and more”.

 While growing, improving and climbing, though, we all follow a universal flux along the course of least resistance.  Elegance has for all time equated to ultimate simplicity and efficiency; from the clean lines of an Armani jacket to the sleek case of a MacBook Pro, we value what emits greatest effect with least waste.  Paradise, as a lifestyle, becomes the course of least resistance itself: the ultimate destination, accessible and tested, where fewer obstacles impede one’s course than anywhere else.  When we define a Paradise, we admit it to be the most elegant (lacking impediments) of all places yet known.  Nevertheless, to lack impediments along one’s course requires one to have a course, and that requires movement.  And…ah, there’s the rub!  For, once we proclaim a Paradise, we admit to knowing no other course of lesser resistance; and thus no track to which we might aim our trajectories from those current.  Understanding a place to be Paradise itself stunts the flux fundamental to carving Paradise in the first place.

Without movement along a course, the lack of obstacles on that course means nothing.

I wrote the above paragraphs last night; being now New Year’s Eve I must slap some more personal spin onto this little essay before the 2012 ball falls in Honolulu – I long ago promised myself at least that much.  An essay might have missed its day, its week and its month; but it will not miss its year.  

We must not blame another person, not to mention 1.2 million others, for our own shortfalls.  It might not be fair to diagnose my motivational deficiencies wholly as symptoms of Paradise.  That said the climate does factor in to a degree.

Hawaii is nothing if not comfortable.  The temperate climate allows locals to wear as little clothing as physique – or modesty – allows.  Few frown upon mall-goers in beachwear or businessmen occasionally in shorts.  One can pass years without a shopping spree, and many thousands opt out of paying rent to live on the beach or in parks.  In Paradise, the path of least resistance does not force residents to unite in an orchestrated quest to satisfy basic human needs.  No seasonal extremes, beyond February rains, interrupt year-round trade winds and sun.  No communal burst of relief arrives with April buds, and “chestnuts roasting on the open fire” remains a children’s song in December.  Elsewhere in the world, the cycle from relief to endurance brings families, neighbors and classmates together in a common cultural rhythm; not so much in Hawaii.  Paradise allows us to sidestep the elemental, immediate level of empathy we might feel for one another elsewhere, as common beings battling the forces of nature with the same basic equipment.

I do not miss the sting of New York winds, or the weight of a Florida heat wave on my neck.  What I do miss is the culture that common experience – more accurately, a piercing awareness of that experience – forces on us.

Hawaii celebrates its multicultural amalgam as a “melting pot,” but I echo many others in finding it more a plate lunch.  During my thirteen years at Punahou School, I never struggled to guess which cliques certain “new kids” would fall into, or spurn, as they arrived over the years.  Early in high school, a Polynesian girl from Waianae entered our class on an athletic scholarship, and my mom befriended hers at some Parent Faculty Association gatherings.  Mere weeks passed before the two of them were petitioning the school President after some members of a “Barbie” clique had ridiculed the basic shorts and t-shirts she would wear to school everyday.  Those jibes, in only weeks, nudged this stellar student-athlete ready to abandon the generous scholarships of a world-class institution, and return to a school where drug dealers and bullies ran each other into prison.

Such experiences of inter-class, inter-racial hostility do not operate along a single axis.  My own experience may be less overt, thought equally poignant.  Throughout elementary school, my “best friends” were all at least half-Japanese or half-Chinese.  Most did not flaunt their cultures too exclusively, but parents had indoctrinated them all at least until it would have taken a Martian not to interpret “what are you?” as a racial dig.  Once the reverberations of racial boasting piled upon each other, the effect was that I came to regard myself an inferior creature for not being able to openly boast “White” as brazenly as my Chinese friends could boast “Asian”.  I’d see my reflection in the cafeteria windows standing in line, and literally avert my eyes with a shudder to avoid the tall freak with pink skin and folded eyes in the mirror.  Eventually I took to arguing I was part-Japanese: a campaign which lasted only as long as it took my young Caucasian teacher to notice, and call a special parent-teacher meeting to address the issue.  It was not until my hair had darkened with adolescence that I ever deemed platinum blonde beautiful.  

I could continue with numerous examples of children and adults feeling marginalized in Paradise, as certain cultures and races get more airtime than others in singing their anthems.  The essence of all such stories, however, is one and the same.  The temperate climate, and logistical convenience of island life allows clans to side-step larger networks in creating an environment agreeable to all.  While we all might live on one large island, we nonetheless create smaller islands within ourselves.  The repercussions of such marginalization and exclusion may not be immediate, just as few hear that their gossip has travelled full-circle along the “Coconut Wireless” until it’s too late.  Perhaps those “Barbie” girls will eat their mocks when they’re interviewing with the Waianae athlete for a job in ten years; perhaps it will take two generations before their grandchildren ask her son for a recommendation.  Perhaps I’ll never say the word “Japanese” quite the same as I might have, were it not for that campaign to convince the class – and myself – that I too had roots.

Basic psychology courses teach students that the happiest populations, and those subject to the lowest suicide rates, often endure squalor.  Hardship forces people to rely upon each other for their basic needs, stringing webs of camaraderie so intimate those without the visceral experience cannot comprehend.  Were Paradise only to inject some squalor and inconvenience into its bloodstream, we might all lead happier, more fulfilled lives.