I must have been 7 or 8 growing up on Oahu when I first heard of it. The teacher told us about laundry detergent and how it ended up in rivers and streams soiling our water, killing our fish. A big topic for little kids and one that’s never left me. I grew up in the city where the parking lot was our playground. Tricycles splashed through the slick oiled floor. The sound of thumping clothes drying nearby. Sickeningly sweet hot potpourri piped from the vents mixed with car exhaust and a cloud of cigarette smoke.
For a few years, I went to Island Paradise Academy in the heart of Chinatown where the gymnasium was our playground. The extent of wildlife came from roaches that slept inside our gum filled desks. But all the while I dreamed of the sky.
I make my children touch the bark, feel the way the roots intertwine, hear the sound of the branches breaking underneath their tires. Smell the air, clean like it’s supposed to be. Treasure it. I tell them often it’s not a given. None of it is. It’s never meant to be our right. It’s our privilege.
The truth is while I love to write, writing is a tool. I don’t have fantasies about being a famous writer or even one that makes six figures.
Inside my heart has always felt the drum of another calling.
Writing is a way to expose the truth, shine mirrors, and make a change. It can do this through beautiful words, humorous prose, and confessional stories.
I feel the same way about my life.
Every experience is not mine. I want to use my experience and writing is the tool to transmute that.
Know these words are for you.
It’s to wake you from the reverie you’ve been sleeping through your entire life. It’s the part that’s been calling you and awaits you on the other side.
This precious life isn’t meant to be treasured from afar, to be decorated, to be admired. It’s to be used.
“While you’re reading this, the whole world waits for you to realize how important you are to its existence.”