It’s my final day in California. I’m sitting at a little cafe that is the closest thing to Europe I can find. It’s gray outside, no sun. 67 degrees. I’m told this is a little odd for Southern California this time of year, but I welcome it. The sun promises to come out this afternoon, but for now I am happy to be glum in paradise.
What is paradise, exactly, and how do you find it? How subjective is it anyway? There are so many options, so many ways of being, and I never know which one I should choose. I never know which one I want to choose. How can it be paradise here if paradise exists over there too?
“everything is wonderful where I am not, and that’s where I want to be—where it’s wonderful.”
Every choice in favor of one thing is a choice against another. No choice at all is choosing to remain in place.
I’m here in California thinking that I want to move here, and I woke up this morning wishing for nothing more than to buy a few heavy sweaters and disappear to the UK.
Fulfilling one dream only ever seems to highlight the ones I haven’t. Wanting one thing means I can’t have another. I want to have every experience, but there aren’t enough resources—time, money, or energy—for me to have it all. Nor would having it all actually bring me the satisfaction I believe it will. Though the knowledge of this does little to quell the desire.
Even within myself, paradise depends on the day.
An Idealist is “a person who is guided more by ideals than by practical considerations. A person who cherishes or pursues high or noble principles, purposes, goals, etc. A visionary or impractical person.”
“Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.” — Alain de Botton
I do believe, no matter how much I try not to, that ideals are attainable. I have high standards. I am impractical, and it gets me into trouble. It sends me into spirals of cynicism. What I see in my mind should be reflected by what I see in this reality, and it almost never is. Not in society at large, and not in my own life. There is always a gap.
So I set out in search of a kind of paradise. I still haven’t found it, even though I’m writing to you from such a place. My idealism compels me to keep looking. Because there must be somewhere we can go. There must be somewhere we can go to be set right.
Maybe simply choosing something, anything, is its own kind of paradise. Choosing is a step toward creating. Maybe the existentialists are right. Maybe meaning comes from us. We create it. We choose it. We’re responsible for it.
Do you know what paradise is?
It’s the smiles on my friends’ faces. It’s the monarch butterfly dancing circles around me on my morning walk. It’s a perfectly crafted sentence. It’s the breeze rustling the trees. It’s fresh strawberries. It’s a perfectly brewed cup of tea. It’s London. It’s the silence found in the forest, and the way the crashing waves settle your mind. It’s how excited dogs get when you walk into a room.
I think it’s probable we create paradise wherever we go.
After the cafe I walk ten minutes to the local bookstore. I keep my headphones in so no one talks to me. I am not exactly happy to be alone today, but it doesn’t hurt either. It is a day to embrace it.
On my walk back to the house I try to pay attention. I notice the palm trees swaying in the breeze, the flowers and plants that are abundant here but don’t exist where I live, the depth of the surrounding hills, the blue of the sky.
Paradise and purpose.
I’m interested in finding purpose. I don’t really know what I’m here for, or why. If it turns out there is no purpose, that’s fine, but I’d still like to fill my time well. How do I do that? How do I get comfortable with the inevitable, and sometimes immense, loneliness? Being alone sometimes makes me feel useless. What does it matter what I do if it doesn’t help someone in some way?
I guess I’m wondering if solitude is a purpose. To be at peace in our own presence, to experience ourselves, is this why we’re here? Or are we made for connection? Perhaps our purpose here is our collective humanity?
It is evening now, and I’m watching the birds dive into the sea as I wait for the sun to set. One final walk along the shore before I go home. Humans, dogs, and birds share the beach, as evidenced by the tracks we all leave in the sand. There is love being lived all around me. No one is here alone, apart from myself.
It’s my final day in California and I don’t know how to feel. But this, too, is a kind of paradise, to be sure.