In my family, October 10 marks the day that my grandparents started their life together. Some 61 years ago, on a little island seemingly in the middle of nowhere, a young man and woman made promises to love and support and care for each other, no matter what.
In the years that followed, they brought life into this world, raised children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They opened their home to family and friends. They laughed, they cried, they experienced joy and they experienced unimaginable pain.
Life happened.
But the one thing they never did was do it alone.
They raised children, who in-turn raised grandchildren to believe that this is the standard by which life is to be measured. Success, or however you want to call it, is to be measured in the moments we choose to hold each other up, to support each other, to take responsibility for our own actions, to unapologetically allow ourselves to experience the full spectrum of human emotion, and it is tested in the moments we choose solesolevaki over flying solo.
Naturally, when I was asked to reflect on Fiji at 50, my benchmark was pretty high. So, my dear reader, if you’re looking for a pretty story that focuses on the peaks and shies away from the valleys, I’m afraid this maybe isn’t the one for you, and I would advise that this is the point to do a full 180.
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