The Awakening

All my life, my mind was always working.... thinking of fun things to do, finding ways to help out others, absorbing life lessons, making memories, learning about myself, finding the joys in the simplest things to day dreaming of what my future life would be like. I was quiet but was always tinkering in stuff.

Then life happened. I was able to fulfill some of my dreams as I grew up and learned to be a pretty decent human being. But I got stuck in the mundane tasks of being an adult. The day dreams didn't stop but I did. I got stuck in the "just thinking" and "one day" phase but lost the drive to achieve my thoughts and dreams.

As 2019 came to a close, I told everyone that 2020 is going to be the year. 2020 just sounded so cool to me. I felt that 2020 was going to be a year of better things, a year full of blessings and new changes for my work and family life. Even with the first whispers of COVID-19 in China at the beginning of the year, I didn't see it coming.

Around March, it was getting closer to home and COVID-19 shook the lives of our island state. Hawaii is a special place and we usually don't get caught up in the craziness that happens around the world but we were not spared when it came to COVID-19. At first, I thought we would be devastated as Hawaii is an international travel hub, but the government did a pretty good job keeping our numbers of positive cases and death toll to a minimum with the stay at home order. The residents of Hawaii did a fantastic job at staying home, even if that meant no income. The essential workers braved the unknown as we were all exempt from the stay at home order. Regardless of our stats, COVID-19 shook our economy and the way we interact with people - our families, our coworkers and friends, in an unimaginable way. I feel like I'm a pretty positive person but for a moment, I did get caught up in the negativity, especially when whispers of paycuts and furloughs for State workers started to be a reality for me and my family. Add the Black Lives Matter movement to the mix and I started to join the bandwagon that 2020 will be the worst year in the history of mankind.

I started to panic. Never in my life, did I ever feel like I have NO control. Gloom started to set in. I was overwhelmed to the point that I didn't see it coming and at my breaking point, I felt broken. Broken in a way that I never felt before. For weeks, I couldn't figure it out and was blaming a situation rather than looking for clarity. I let the dark in. A friend told me,"be like bamboo, bend but do not break". I cried my heart out because I needed to let myself go to that place to have the strength to come back. I was numb, sad, mad, lost and unclear. For a moment, I forgot my purpose in life.

Then the calm came and my mind starting thinking. It was like riding a bike and the wheels just started going. It's a crappy situation that many of us are in, some worse than others, but then I remembered.... I still have control over my life because I am alive. I may not be 100% healthy but I am alive. I am able. I am awakened.

I always felt that I, solely, have the power to lead my life in a way that when I die, I would look back and be proud of the choices I've made for myself and my family, be proud of the person I have grown to be and to see my sacrifices as helping those that I love versus what I have lost. I truly believe when there is darkness, there is also light; when there is heartbreak, there is also love; good can triumph bad; life has choices and you could choose to find good in every bad moment or let that moment consume your soul until it becomes lost; and that sometimes you have to take 10 steps backwards to leap 100 steps forward. It's not easy and my life is far from perfect, but knowing that I have the power to choose happiness, to choose to do the right thing in a bad situation, to choose a path that I would proudly walk in, to find the good in every bad situation and to accept my mistakes and faults as learning lessons rather than regret. It's just a matter of if you want to live life happy or unhappy.

It's all about the mindset. It's exhilarating to feel alive, especially in a time with so much despair and pain, to be awakened in such a way that you see hope rather than doom. 2020 may not be the great year that I envisioned last year but it will definitely be a year full of blessings, a year full of change for all of us and a year that WE all are awakened.