Ok, ok I know everybody wants to see pics and videos of my amazing trip to the island of Kauai but I don't have any ready to upload at the moment so you're all gonna have to wait. Also, I can think of about 5 or 6 blog worthy events so I've decided to do instalments of my trip. With that being said, the title of this blog is perfect in the sense that this was the first real blog worthy thing that happened on the trip. But I should probably back up just a bit and tell you how I ended up in Hawaii to begin with. It started months ago, I was informed of the plan to gather some peeps and hit the island of Hawaii. I really wanted to be there and in my mind I was hoping the funds would come together, however, a series of unfortunate events landed me broke and in Phoenix, Arizona selling pest control and trying to make the most of an otherwise bad situation. So as time went by I had completely forgotten about the trip. Ironically, because I had forgotten about the trip and had started focussing all of my energy on making sales I earned plenty of money to afford the trip. Although I got to the island a couple of days after most, I still enjoyed 5 near perfect days with 20 of some of my best friends. Ok, so this brings me back to the title of the blog; you see my buddy Dale picked me up from the airport and we started talking about all the things the group had already done. He mentioned that there were some people who were all about the meticulously planned events, and others who were there to just chill at the beach. So instantly the Shaner brain starts developing a stance, nay, a philosophy about what he should or shouldn't do while in Kauai. An epiphony occured, and I thought of this: "well, since you have never been to this place and you have zero expectations....the answer to the question of: do you wanna go ________ should always be YES......" I mean why not, seriously, you are in Hawaii on an island you have never explored, basically everything you could possibly do would be absolutely fantastic and great, so why even bother your brain with making a decision.....just choose yes to the first thing presented. I'll give you an example: "Chris, do you wanna come with us to get pina coladas?" "Yes." "Shaner, are you down for some dinner?" "Yes." "Chris, do you wanna go play vollyball on the beach?" "Yes." Do you see how great this is! lol now the best part of that first day is that I actually accompanied three different groups to the same resteraunt three different times to get food/pina coladas. By the end of the night all of the servers in the resterant knew my name and exactly what I ordered. LOL awesome is what I say to that! However, If I had placed some random expectation that we were going to do something more "entertaining" that night maybe I would have felt like I had "wasted" my evening doing essentially the same exact thing three times. Do you get my flow? Having zero expectations and just taking the vacation as it came ended up making for good times. Anyway I guess the deepness of this philosophy lies in the subtleness of the fact that sometimes in life we make things more difficult and stressful because we place unfair or unnecessary expectations on something, rather than just relax, enjoy, feel, and truly be present in the moment that we are in. I can tell you that my trip to Kauai was absolutely the most soothing, calming, and enjoyable vactation I've ever had, and I attribute that, in part, to my mindset of "the answer is yes." Feel free to adopt any of this, however I must warn you not to verbally disclose your involvement with this philosophy wheras there seems to be a high correlation between back massage requests and the verbal disclosure of the "yes" practice.
