Maui '15 - Ideally Speaking

My thoughts on our first full day on Maui (October 26, 2015), a riff off of Cindy’s declaration that it had been an ideal day:

Ideally Speaking – An attempt at capturing the ideal day can be wrong from the outset for they exist in many forms and concoctions, not to mention that one person’s ideal day is another’s drudgery. It is, though, admirable to attempt to capture an ideal day in thought and word as fleeting as the experience can be. However, the attempt often times leads to exasperation as ideal days exist in a multidimensional universe and only the best of writer’s achieve excellence in putting together an ideal sentence let alone a paragraph, chapter, or the ideal complete story.

Ideals exist as archetypal ideas as an image of the mind, ephemeral and perhaps imagined or as a piece of our flight of fancy. Some would even say ideals lack practicality since the fallibility of man leads to falling short of the ideal. I think that the pursuit of the ideal is courageous and lends to the nobility of the pursuer.

Just a part of an ideal day
on the beautiful island

That being said, you know when you’ve spent an ideal day. You feel it in your bones, the depth of contentment slows time down and it’s easy to imagine yourself as a Manta Ray (Hāhālua) gliding through an alternate universe. The difficulty comes in the telling of it, they are hard to explain being furtive and passing in nature. They happen on levels that defy script or type, oration most often falls short. And yet when we falter in our retelling of the ideal day to a friend it only highlights the genuineness of the experience to the listener, should they be so fortunate as to have experienced their own beautiful day the story connects the teller and hearer at a depth beyond the words stumbling to build the tale.

There is no recipe for ideal days to follow, God makes them just as my Grandma Matt baked pies; just a pinch of this, a dab of that, the crust rolled out just so. Every pie was excellent, no two exactly alike, just as God’s handcrafted days are rolled out to us.

Ideal days have aromas, textures, varied hues from an infinite pallet, light and dark expressed in shades of gray, sounds woven together more intricate than any symphony, brushes of wind and water against the skin that excite and calm at the same moment. Their combinations are infinite and yet we experience them on a limited basis, merely on loan from the Creator himself. We borrow them and hold them fleetingly in our minds allowing our memories the opportunity to recognize the next one that comes our way.

We had such a day today. If I tell you that I heard her laugh and exclaim in wonder more today than at any other time in the last couple of years (with the possible exceptions of our 4 family weddings) you would be glad for our day and then let your mind conjure forth memories of a special day of your own. And since it was such a day for us, enjoy a cherished memory and raise a prayer of thanksgiving. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Keep the iron side up for no ideal ride can be had without doing that. Treasure the day.