As I stood on our northernmost beach one late afternoon working through a list in my head that included taking food and supply inventory, making some repairs to our tiki hut, having Claire give me an update on her insulin supply, and checking on how much sunscreen and bug repellent we had left, I took a moment to gaze around me.
In the distance, I saw Claire and Jason at the water’s edge. Claire was bent at the waist, holding Jason’s hand as he poked at a shell with a stick. I saw Paul and Sarah swimming just off shore, wrestling playfully as they tried to dunk one another below the smooth, almost imperceptible waves. I saw Will and Sharron walking hand in hand along the shoreline, keeping an eye on their children but giving them the freedom to play on their own. I saw Dad and Emily sitting together on a palm that grew at an angle from where the coconut grove met with the beach. They were reading together and holding hands.
As I stood taking in this scene of tranquility, I tried to clear my head of my mental list to absorb it all. I thought back to Will’s words aboard the yacht on our way to the island about trying harder to living in the here and now. I realized that as much as I might work to plan and organize everything, I couldn’t. I’d never be able to control everything.
I continued to gaze around me at the island paradise where we’d settled. I looked at the shimmering ocean waves, the swaying tops of the palms, the family I loved gathered here with me, living together, loving one another; and I listened to the soothing sound of the surf gently shuffling shells along the shoreline.
That’s when it hit me.
I had it all and I hadn’t even realized it. We had plenty of supplies, many of which were sustainable here on the island. I had no pressures of a job or career. I didn’t have to deal with the harrowing commute in to work each day and sit in a cubicle toiling away at the daily grind. We’d survived not just the worst pandemic the world had ever seen, but the ensuing chaos it’d inflicted upon society and civilization.
Each day was now a gift to be enjoyed in full with the people I loved.
That was my job.
Will had been right; I needed to learn to live more in the moment.
Were things perfect? No, of course not. Would they ever be perfect…anywhere…in any situation? No.
I knew that we’d have to go back eventually. For as much as we loved it here, would it be the best long-term situation for the kids? Would we want to seclude them here without friends, without peers, without lives and loves of their own?
Sure, it was an island paradise now, but eventually, as they grew older, they’d want to meet friends, go on dates, and find spouses. This would then become a prison to them. A tropical prison, but a prison nonetheless.
But right now, it was time to do my best to live here, in the moment and for the moment, and focus purely on the things – the people – that were most important to me.
I walked over to where Claire and Jason stood. There, I kissed my lovely wife and knelt beside my son to inspect a shell as the luke-warm waters of the Caribbean washed up around our ankles.
One day we’d have to go back, but today was not that day.
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Be on the lookout for Aftermath, a follow-up to the Systemic series due out in winter 2016!
The Systemic Series - Box Set Page 100