Big Island, 7 Big Health Lessons

(<9 min) The Gumption Returneth...

Ahem…

is this thing on? *mic screech*

Hello! It has been two months since my last letter announcing that I shall Do Nothing.

What happened as a result was…Everything.

Everything within me snapped into place.

The silence, as it turns out, is a big part of the melody.

I’ve traveled to the Big Island of Hawaii.

There, I have experienced what health looks like when the land is fertile.

There was definitely a lot of this…

but there was even more of this…

The Volcano Goddess of the Big Island.

She that creates and destroys.

And she does both so magnificently. So Horrifically. So Bluntly.

The last eruption was in 2018. Whole villages, retreat centers, and rich lawyer villas were swept away by the lava.

Lush families of bushes, trees and shrubs sprout from the deep dark soot of the ashes. It is reminiscent of Chernobyl.

Shades of green painting new beginnings on burnt black rocks.

Driving on the highways, and seeing all that volcanic destruction, I noticed my brain play a neat little trick on me: It overlayed images of the the war and destruction I have been watching intently for the six months before that March on top of the volcanic ash.

Things go and they make space for the new. That is what I took away from my time there.

That, and a deep realization of what the health of humanity can look like.

I felt healthy on that land.

I ate from the ground I was living on, and it felt like I was eating the nectar of the Gods.

I ate countless rombutans, logans, icecream beans, and the dreaded noni. They were all delightfully juicy, except for the noni which is equally juicy but for the wrong reasons. Avoid it if you ever go.

Say No to noni.

Eating from the ground made me question things.

It made me wonder: How many hands does an apple pass through until it makes it to the fruit corner at Wholefoods?

and…If the fruit technically starts dying once it is picked, doesn’t that mean that the food we buy from groceries is senile and potentially sick?

also…We talk about food waste as a problem, but how much are we wasting from the food that we actually eat?

so…If we eat food to nourish our bodies with energy, then what if we start measuring the amount of energy contained in each food we eat?

I am not talking about calories or what they write on the food labels.

Not even Expiration dates. I am talking about the opposite of an Expiry Date.

I want to know the birth date of the fruit. The day the fruit was plucked. How many days has it been? How far away has it travelled?

And dare I even ask: What conditions did it grow up in?

Yes I am still talking about the apple, but hear me out!

Here’s my point: I felt enlivened on the land of the Big Island in Hawaii. The food was one reason, but I was also much more active on the island than I usually am in San Francisco.

By nature of the environment, I was moving, swimming, walking, picking up that fruit, digging garden beds, and dancing.

Digging the garden bed was especially memorable.

I held an axe and plowed away with three other guys until we weeded out a 12x12 ft plot of the land and the whole community of Kumakahi came to add soil and plant watermelon, tomatoes and cucumbers.

Compared to that, I could not help but think that going to the gym, getting on a stationary bike, or a HIIT class is just a wasted release of energy into a vacuum. But not here. No sir. We were exerting human effort, working out our bodies, and releasing that energy straight back into the Earth.

*Something snapped into place within me.*

This should not be as fascinating as it is to me. To you. To us, living in the modern isolated concrete world. Something about closing this circle in myself, my body, the food I eat, and the land it comes from felt like a returning home.

It was as though I had been living in a virtual reality and just woke up.

Snap.

Where does your food come from?

Snap.

What is your relationship to this land?

Snap.

How do you move your body?

Snap. Snap.

How does it really feel to be healthy?

Snapitty, snap.

This isn’t all though. Nothing can be said of how healthy I felt on the island without talking about sleep.

I arrived late at night at Hilo, and at first I found a vast silence. I am here.

That silence was immediately raped by sounds of debauchery that I can only describe as a toad rave.

A bunch of toads. Thousands. No, Millions! An infinite amount of toads having a jolly good all night banger.

And their sounds…are not just…croaking. There is that yes, but also, they are an orchestral melange of whistling, laughing, flirting, dancing, jumping, and crrroaaaking.

Had to ask AI to do it. Very accurate!

The sounds all meld into that toad rave.

And it goes on all night.

Every night.

I later understood that these are tiny little coqui frogs that have made their way from Puerto Rico. Chance had it that these little coqui frogs would have NO predators on the island. So they are destined to stay, proliferate uncontrollably and howl like coyotes into an otherwise still and tropical nights of the island.

The noise sounded horrible and as I settled in, I braced myself for nights of no sleep.

And yet, every night, I still slept like a hung over baby.

Somehow, the noisy beep-bops and wee-woos dissolved into a frequency that my sleepy brain waves resonated with, transmuted the rave into a lullaby.

I woke up quite fresh every morning.

The morning sun would shine just enough to invite me to rise. The cabin I slept in was a square wooden shed built on a platform deep on the land. The cabin had no walls, only mosquito silk screens, sheltering me from the victorious growth of cane grass all around it.

These screens seemed to be the only thing stopping the grass from devouring the whole structure. The tin roof kept both the sun and the rain out. It rained sometimes, and it was like being in the flow of the watery skies without getting wet, and from the comfort of my own duvet.

I slept well on the rainy nights too.

Maybe it was all the movement, or the good food. Perhaps it was the calming sounds of the rain, or frog rave lullaby. Oh wait, I know…maybe it was the weed.

For those of you following before the break, I had announced my celibacy from my long romantic loving-but-sometimes-toxic relationship with good ol Mary of Jane. Meditation helped me get through the past few months instead.

However.

The second day I was on the island, I decided to have a smoke.

The effect of cannabis was different.

Sure the sensation and experience were the same, but my relationship to it felt more natural and less burdensome as it had become.

I picked up smoking during medical school to help me break from a reality that I did not want to be in. But now, I was in a place where I wanted to be in. So the cannabis was no longer a numbing activity and instead one of enjoyment again. It had been so long since I had been able to enjoy it that much.

Back in my city life, smoking seems more related to my suffering than my enjoyment.

And lastly, relationships, which really ought to be the first thing.

Relationships - the most important thing we forget in our glorified silicon boxes.

We eat, we move, we sleep, we quit addictions, we meditate, but we do not commune. At least not in any real communal sense like our ancestors did.

The land had about 14 people or so living there and either working on the island, working remotely, or owners working for its demands everyday. Conversations and community dinners flowed through my friends’ kitchen. Their kitchen was outdoors, with two walls of their studio providing the plumbing, gas and electricity for kitchen operations, while the two non-existing open walls invited anyone to stop by.

And in case that is not enough, they hung bananas by the dozen from the side to lure people hungry for a snack - and everyone is always hungry on the island.

If you are still reading, then I hope it is ok if I end this dreamy utopia on a sour note.

It is just like the noni fruit I mentioned earlier: juicy but for the wrong reasons.

The thought I will end this essay on, is this: Who has to suffer for us to be healthy? Who has to plow, farm, pluck for us to lounge, dine and party?

I hit these hard questions after a few days in paradise.

I had a conversation with one of the American owners of the land about colonization. She explained the history of America with Hawaii, how the Polynesian people had lost their power to the US government, and how this creates ongoing tensions between the native Hawaiians and…us.

Yes us.

We are the invasive species.

We are the coqui toads partying hard because we have no predators.

I am just as implicated as her.

Even though I am a tourist, I am here enjoying the fruits of colonization. I can’t deny these fruits. I can’t deny that colonization has served me, and us, well. Us people of the world, who can afford to go on a vacation to Hawaii. Colonialism and globalization have helped us experience Hawaii through paved roads, airports and large resorts.

It offered me the chance to experience this notion of being healthy with the land and to come back and write to you about it.

But just like my questions about food….I started to question the land.

Snap

Who was on this land before I came here? Before they came here? Before we came here?

Snap

What is the birthdate of this land, and whose health was sacrificed, so that our health can be our birthright?

Snappity Snap SNAP!

Try to realize it's all within yourself
No one else can make you change
And to see you're really only very small
And life flows on within you and without you

The Beatles - Within You Without You

Now that I am back in SF, In Search of gumption will be back on the regular Sunday programming.

See you next week!

Omar Shaker