Doppelgangers of Our Previous Selves

Life is a grand adventure. To share it with someone you love is truly a treasure. Along the way of living and learning and morphing, we become different people. The paths we choose change us internally, and sometimes that change blooms externally as well.
Many people in our lives are close to us situationaly - we were once in the same place at the same time and that gave us common ground for a friendship. Others match up on many levels beyond the here and now and are lifelong friends. And yet, we are all on different lines on the map, moving through our lives, making choices that change us. Sometimes the lines take us to the other side of the globe and we never come back to the same place, or when we do it’s a different place because we’ve changed.



One of the biggest and hardest lessons for me this year was that you can’t always take your friends with you. After all, the great constant in life is change. When you live a dynamic life, such as I do, you often change much more rapidly than others you are connected with. It’s not something you can stop. I’ve actually felt it before, thousands of miles from home, under a foreign sky, much closer to the sun on a high elevation trail in India, realizing that I was expanding. That the journey was shaping me, and I knew in that moment I would never be able to return home and fit into the same box again. Not that people are boxes, but relationships and friendships are in a way. Some are based only on the things you have in common at that point in time. As time moves on and you no longer have the day to day in common, when you meet again, you are just two people. Respect may still be there, but the bond has been erased, and the connection has no spark.

Returning to Bend, after living on so many different islands, after becoming a teacher, after having lives in my hands every day, after undergoing such sharp experiences that pierced my heart and it grew back in a different shape, I was grateful to see my friends again. Some were comfortable and sweet and immediately clicked as we laughed together, still finding the same things funny, still able to understand one another mutually. And yet, others lacked that spark. Nothing ignited and the connection starved for something to feed on. We were just two people with a mutual past, and the unconditional respect only shone on my side. Boy, that was hard. But I know, you can’t force it. If someone you love can no longer accept who you’ve morphed into and the choices you’ve made, that’s heartbreaking but it is also part of the journey. Just as I can’t stop expanding because I love someone, they can’t stop judging when who I am has changed.

Overall, it makes me so incredibly grateful that I have the lifelong friends I do, and that Tim and I continue to grow together rather than apart. When Tim and I started dating five years ago, we were very different versions of ourselves than we are now.

 

 



We even physically look different. He looks younger and more handsome, whereas I look increasingly like my Aunt Mildred. Just kidding. My hair is a couple feet longer, and we’ve both lost over 20 pounds. We have new hobbies. We have new priorities. We are doppelgangers of the people we were when we first met 15 years ago. I am no longer Hippie Sara, he is no longer Salesman Tim. I don’t like my eggs the same way any more. But he adapts to that and makes them the way I like them now, rather than trying to get me to eat them the same way I always have. I was a barista, he was a chef. Then he was a roast master and I was a Wholesale Manager. Then we were students together on an island in Indonesia and emerged as dive instructors!

 

 

 

 



While living in Borneo, it seemed that everything about our daily life was different. Instead of making people’s day better through a delicious latte and warm smile, I was giving people a life skill and shaping them into responsible, safe divers. Instead of parking on the side of Bond Street and walking through Drake Park at 1:00 in the afternoon to a coffeehouse, I was suddenly getting up at 6am and catching a boat off a dock in Borneo to commute into a tiny island. I no longer passed people walking their dogs by the river, I passed Muslim women covered from head to toe and men with baskets of fresh fish. My work attire changed from a black shirt and khaki skirt to a swim suit and fins. Life could not be more different than it was. But I was living that reality with my best friend, so while reality changed, important connections remained strong and unaltered.

My mother always used to say that true love was not in looking at each other, but looking forward in the same direction. I guess she was right. This grand dream we have built wouldn't work with just anyone. I have learned that if a relationship is to last, it's important to want the same things, to have the same dreams, the same future together. Our reality has completely shifted but our love has not. We have both grown so much and our priorities have changed but the relationship is still a priority. I’ve always had the unconditional love within me, but rarely been this fortunate to have it in a relationship too.

Tim and I have always communicated clearly so we understand where the other is at internally, and that way, growth never comes as a surprise. We’ve now gone from friends and surf partners to travel buddies.  We learned to Stand Up Paddleboard together on wobbly legs, and then mastered the sport and built and designed our own 10 foot boards. We've been paddle buddies, flying partners, dive buddies, fellow students, supportive co-instructors, business partners and life partners.

So while you can’t always take your friends with you, if you are really lucky, you can take your partner with you. Happy five years, baby.
 

 



2015 Lessons From Being Fully Alive

So. Are you just living or are you alive? This year of being truly alive, I have learned many things. The lessons are incorporated in, like freckles, I wear the lessons naturally and they blend in to who I am. But I find writing them down helps me reflect on where I’ve been and how I got to be who I am. For me, life is about experiences, about connections and about learning. The characters I admire most in movies and books are those that undergo internal growth and are different from who they were in the beginning of the story. Those are the dynamic ones, the memorable ones, different from the dreaming parts of the population who go through their days asleep, every day like the next, every year blending into another, not reaching out to life, no interaction with the world, no new freckles.

Here is my list, this year of being alive, of being 31, of living in Borneo, in Thailand, moving from the Kingdom of Cambodia to the Kingdom of Hawaii. (Life is an adventure, after all!)



I learned something big about being memorable. You have to interact to be remembered.

I learned how to read waves - and when not to go in. The ocean amazes me with how it can change so quickly. Hour to hour it is different, changed by wind, waves, current, rain, light. It can be pure and crystal clear one day, and the next you can see only a few feet in front of your face.  It can be glassy and calm in the morning and have four foot waves in the afternoon. I took these shots from my favorite tree in different conditions to illustrate. I'm learning what its colors mean, what its surface has to tell me. A dark line on the horizon is rain coming. My eyes can now tell which way the current is moving and how fast my divers will too. I can see without getting in, just how clear the water is and if its worth going out. The ocean is different every day and every hour.

 

I have learned that as The Guide I have to stand firmly in my own decisions about the ocean’s conditions. We don’t go if I say it’s no good, not safe, and if the water conditions don‘t match well with my divers abilities. I don’t give the guests the power to choose - as the most experienced in the group, I make the choice. I have learned to be okay with that.
How to read people more effectively. As a guide when I meet my new divers, I am assessing them. Watching closely to see who is comfortable, who is nervous, who I will need to be closest to underwater. I am watching to recognize an issue and resolve it before it becomes a problem. My new job as a different type of dive instructor - from PADI to SNUBA, is more about being safe and having fun. I tell people its just us going out to play in the sea. In order to have fun, you have to be comfortable. In many ways, I’m now in the business of keeping people comfortable in the big blue unknown, in the business of having fun, of doing handstands on the bottom of the ocean, of taking underwater photos, of making memories, of introducing people to how much fun the ocean can be if they just relax and see it through my eyes.

 

A very dear little five year old with freckles that match mine taught me that when I introduce a child to the ocean and it becomes a magical playground, there is a crossover - and the ocean and I become synonomous - they love one, they love them both.

I learned how to read kids - how to know when they need something to make the big picture not so big.  I have to catch it quickly. If they get to a place where the ocean is just too big, they will retreat internally and then they’re done. Time to go back in the beach, even if it has only been two minutes. When they’re done, they’re done. But if I can catch it quick enough and give them a piece of the little picture to draw them out of the ever expanding big picture, then the ocean is still at arm’s length, intractable. Not huge and scary. Sometimes this means handing the child my camera, or a fish ID card we can use to find the names of the fish we meet. Something they can hold. Because you can’t hold the sea, it holds you.  And some kids, if they focus on that too much can become wiped out by it. Life is that way, you have to stay present. Hold on to something that keeps you in the moment or the grandness of infinity and unknown could overwhelm you.

I have learned that everything worth doing is going to have some less than desirable days. It is not a reason to quit. It is a reason to learn and keep going.

It is okay to believe in mermaids. 8 year old Chloe believes I am one. She asked, “Does your tail disappear in the daylight and you swim in the ocean all night long?”

About public transportation - we went 1.5 years without a car - It was freeing not to have one, and strangely freeing to have one as well. Without one, you have to interact more with society, walking on roads, waiting at bus stops, asking acquaintances for a ride. With one, I was shocked at how it really only takes 30 minutes to go to the grocery store for something and not four hours (walking to, waiting for, catching, switching, waiting for, and walking from the bus).

Wholeness. My, how life is different when you can truly wrap your mind and heart around being whole. That who you are is enough. this year I really got that I no longer need some external missing part in order to be happy, to be successful, to be loved, to be accepted. By just being who you are, all that falls into place. Living completely whole is Huge, and yet hard to describe. Only those who have learned the lesson will understand you, the others will just hear you.

How to really excel at sales - and have it not be awkward: believe in what you do, be passionate about what you do and make a personal connection with people. I do that with everyone. Not everyone goes diving with me, but the ones that do go because they relate to me, they see how I am with their kids - never letting them out of my sight.

 



The fidgety kid not listening just needs to be included. Reeling them back in is as easy as saying,“Tommy, I need your help. Come stand up here by me while I lead the class. Come be my assistant. Hold my mask. Make sure everyone understands the points I am presenting, okay?”

A reoccurring lesson this year: You can’t always take your friends with you.

Hardest lesson of the year: Just because you accept someone 100 percent and love them unconditionally, doesn’t mean they will be able to accept you too. And, if someone accepted you before, that isn’t set in stone. People change. And when we grow, sometimes we grow apart.
Even people you love will judge you if you go against something they are passionate about. You can take that personally or just continue loving them. Even if they chose to take the whole thing publicly, on Facebook. hahaha

Some people stay in the same mindset and you grow out of that and no longer fit in.

Vending machines. Hippos. Falling coconuts. New Yorkers. What do these things have in common? Each of them kill more people each year than sharks do. Then why aren’t people wildly afraid of vending machines? Media. Simple as that. I personally stopped subscribing to media as truth years ago. Much to a couple of friends’ dismay. J It’s true, you are ten times more likely to be bitten by someone in New York City than you are a shark. As you can imagine, in my line of work, I meet many who are deathly afraid of sharks. I have learned different ways of talking them down from the ledge and 20 feet under the surface to do handstands with me.

Leaps are good things - even giant ones - if you can trust you will make the other side, you will be okay. As with any change, there's always the possibility that it will be better than it was, better than okay, it'll be awesome!

Less push, More flow. Tim and I started our own business this year working in the ocean as independent contractors. When coming up with a business name, I suggested we manifest. What did we want to draw to us through the business - how could be incorporate that in the name so it would be in writing? We made a great list that included things like “Eagle Rays and Sunny Days, LLC” and chose Living In The Flow, LLC. You know the feeling of being in the flow? When things just go well naturally, what you want just happens and comes together without too much effort, when life keeps telling you that you’re in the right place at the right time. The opposite would be struggle, pushing for things to happen, trying to get around roadblocks and setbacks, putting in a lot of effort and energy to make something happen that keeps falling apart. Are you swimming upstream or going with the flow? I am still trying to be present and aware enough to recognize when I am not on the flow and when I am. This is paying attention on a whole new level. Tim and I made a huge leap from Bangkok, Thailand to Maui, Hawaii with no guarantee that things would work out. But we had faith and it felt right. Upon arriving here, we made strong connections and things just lined up and turned out awesome. It was everything we wanted and more because we were going with the flow. And now we’re living in Maui, doing our dream job and being paid really well for it - living in the flow.

I got married again this year. Before you freak out, let me tell you, it was to the same man! But not necessarily. We change. We are not the same two who started dating five years ago after ten years of friendship.

We are not even the same two who kissed in Vietnam in a boat lit with candlelight last year. We change and evolve but no matter how we change, we can still be ourselves together. Our love grows with us. This is something epically good and I feel like the luckiest girl, still.

You can hide from life, avoid opportunity that is all around you, live in fear. People do this in odd ways. Like those that hide from the sun, cover up over every inch of their bodies, wear 110 sunscreen, and run from the car to the shade of the awning of the grocery store. Don’t get me wrong, Moms out there that are reading this. Yes, I am aware of what too much sun can do to you. I wear sunscreen and a rash guard, but I don’t hide inside from the warm kiss and glow. Freckles are a good thing. I have some from paddle boarding this year with humpback whales. I have some from the morning in the outrigger canoe when I got to swim with and sing to a baby humpback whale. I have some freckles from the sunset walks with my husband counting sea turtles, I have some from sitting on a dock out over the Celebes sea teaching a class of students from China, Spain and Ireland. I have freckles from cartwheels in a swimsuit on a tiny island a mile from the Philippines. I have some from fish I.D. class with two five year old twins. I’ve been through a lot of sun block this year, but I haven’t hid from fun in the sun. I have the sun kisses to prove it. Each is an experience, something I could have chose not to do, or could have let fear hold me back from, but that made my life more interesting, more dynamic. (This whole sun thing is a metaphor, in case you haven’t caught on to that yet.) The sun is opportunity, around us most of our lives, and yet the fears we collect hold us back from interacting with life and receiving opportunities.

 
We believe ourselves into things. You are not alone, unless you believe you are and in doing so alienate yourself. This goes back to my statement about wholeness. I have learned that I never really needed someone, or some thing, or some other circumstance to be successful or be loved or be whole. I just had to believe I was and therefore realize I was already.

This year, I feel found. While moving the rest of our household goods to Maui, I sorted through boxes and boxes of photos. I reflected on how I was a very sad teenager, a rather lost twenty-something. And how, now, more than ever, I feel found. I know myself, I know I am enough. I know what I want, I am where I want to be, living and designing the life I want to lead. I have roots and wings, and yes, freckles, lots of freckles.