When Leaving Hawaii Feels Like the Only Option

so some of my colleagues and family friends have decided to move back to the mainland this past month and it's gotten me thinking about leaving hawaii not us leaving hawaii but just the idea of leaving hawaii as someone who grew up here how that's really not an option for us well at least for now [Music] we all know living in hawaii is really expensive the costs are just higher than most other places there's housing and food and gas and electricity yet we all somehow manage at least we have for a while and as my wife and i were going over the budget this past month i think it's the first time i've ever thought to myself that wow yeah things are getting a little bit more expensive and maybe you've noticed this too the vendors are starting to raise their prices by a dollar here or 50 cents there and the auntie behind the counter is putting a little less rice than she used to plate's not looking as full and the costs are not noticeable in the day-to-day spending but i think if you look at it on a macro level you start to see this higher trend and when you get that feeling there's that little whisper in your ear that suggests maybe it's time to pack it up and leave hawaii talking about choosing to stay or to leave is pretty tough especially for someone who grew up here and i know a lot of people are talking about it amongst themselves on whether or not they should stay so it's a very personal conversation but i didn't want to share my thoughts on this topic and maybe it's something that others can relate to one of my former colleagues has been here for about seven years both of his kids were born here and it really looked like they were gonna try to make it but they just decided it was too much and so off they go to the east coast where things are gonna be a lot easier for them they aren't from here so it's a little bit easier for them to leave in a way because they're not leaving their home they're returning back to their home or they're returning back to somewhere that they're familiar with for someone from hawaii this is a really tough decision because you're leaving where you're from for somewhere completely new and i remember having to do this when i left for college but back then i knew it was just a temporary thing it wasn't going to be permanent it would be about four years and then i'd come back home but when you're thinking about the decision to move away you know that you're leaving all this stuff behind and really unless you've been on the mainland for a while you've lived there you have no idea what to expect and i think part of that fear and anxiety may just come from the culture shock right in hawaii if you're local it's pretty diverse you don't really stand out too much but when you go to the mainland it's not as diverse and so if you're local and you're like asian or native hawaiian you're gonna stand out a little bit more on the mainland than in hawaii it's something that you just have to get used to over time and not be so afraid what i think is going to take the longest is this disassociation of hawaii and yourself if you're local born you're really proud that you're from hawaii but when you go to the mainland that part of you that that i guess that tie into where you're from is kind of ripped away on the mainland it took me years to separate my identity from hawaii because when i first got there for college i was the hawaii guy i was from hawaii and that was so attached to my identity but eventually when i decided that i was going to stay there and work i had to disassociate myself with just being from hawaii and i had to figure out who i was as a person in colorado or oregon and not necessarily who i was back thousands of miles away i feel like i'm gonna be hit by a softball so should probably get moving and i think another difficult thing to think about when leaving hawaii for someone who's from here is the idea of family that's basically the reason why i moved back to hawaii from the mainland i had a pretty good thing going you know i was teaching at a university and i had established myself i was doing my own thing paying my own taxes living my own life but ultimately i felt this call to come back take care of my parents because i realized that you know thousands of miles away i'm not going to get to see them whenever i want i didn't want to just come back for christmas or the holidays i wanted to be there and just be available as they get a little bit older and i remember growing up i used to have my local cousins and i would have my mainland cousins we'd see them maybe once or twice a year but it's really hard to get to know people when you only see them that often versus my local cousins who i saw almost every weekend growing up and there's that closeness that you just don't get if you're so far away and i know that if we do decide to move away i would become that mainland cousin or uncle and my kids would become those mainland cousins they wouldn't be able to get to know my my family either of their grandparents to me that's just really hard and i know some people don't have a luxury to choose and sometimes they're forced to make that tough decision but for me that's part of what makes it worth it to stay because once they're gone you're never gonna get that back there's not really much to look at here i guess they don't show you these beaches too often in hawaii but i will say that there does come a breaking point for everyone where the grind of just trying to make it isn't worth it anymore and for us i don't think we've reached that breaking point yet but i know for a lot of families they've reached it and for even more families they're getting pretty close i mean there are days when it's really tempting to just trade our one-bedroom condo for a mansion out in the midwest somewhere i used to work with a woman who was an attorney and her husband was a doctor and they had been saving up and saving up to try and buy a place here in hawaii and then when they had their first kid and they saw what was available they just decided to pack it up the husband got another job somewhere else on the east coast they bought a farm or a ranch and she never has to work again and their quality of life i'm sure is amazing compared to here she's going to have those memories of living in hawaii but it's just not worth it for her and when you hear about stories like that or instances like that it's kind of hard not to shake your head and wonder and then get back to working really hard and grinding it out but i don't think we've reached that breaking point yet and a lot of that has to do with the fact that i have family here if i didn't it could be a different story now that we have two kids it does help to have aunties and uncles and of course my parents to help watch the kids because child care the cost of that is tremendous as we are slowly finding out but i am not blind to the fact that we fit the bill perfectly for a lot of people who are moving away there was a recent report from the department of business and economic development that talked about brain drain and they identified typically the people that are the domestic out migrant basically who leaves hawaii and as they described it it's typically someone who is young 18 to 34 and someone who is educated bachelor's degree or higher and that's us we have a bachelor's degree and we have a bachelor's degree and a master's degree we're relatively young and we have two kids sounds like us and yet we continue to stay by choice we continue to stay and i hope that the pushback on this video isn't well if things are too expensive just leave this isn't a rant video about all the horrible things and how bad hawaii is but merely just to talk about some of the things to consider if you are thinking about leaving hawaii especially if you were born and raised here it's different if you're not from here there's still some tough decisions you made a lot of friends but if you're from here you're leaving your home you're leaving the history and the connection that you have to all of this place all the places that you used to go to all the places that you're familiar with where your friends are where your family is where your family members are buried you're leaving it all behind and it's not as simple as just getting in the car and coming back here it's a big commitment and when you do come back you're only going to be able to be here for a little while you'll be like this hybrid visitor who used to live here and of course this place will still be home and still will be special but you know that you've kind of moved on you have a life elsewhere and that's okay and if you ask the nearly half a million people who were born and raised in hawaii and who have moved away at least numbers according to that report if you ask them how they feel about moving away i think you're probably going to get a similar response that of course they miss home they miss hawaii so much but that they're happy where they are as they should be and in a way i already experienced that when i thought i was gonna move away but then i decided to come back and now i have a family and it's a great decision despite all the challenges that we face and if we do decide to leave one day and it's no longer hello from hawaii but goodbye from hawaii i know that hawaii will always be my home it's where i grew up it's where i'm connected to but i also know that there's other homes out there and that we can put our roots down in other places just like many others have done before us so thanks for watching and aloha hello hello hello hello [Music]

Channel: Hello From Hawaii

Views: 56,995

Keywords: living in hawaii, Life in hawaii, what is it like in Hawaii, Moving to hawaii, hello from hawaii, hawaii, oahu, honolulu, hawaii life, life on hawaii, hawaiian life, leaving hawaii, not leaving hawaii, staying in hawaii

Id: sNKZFchk2Yo

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 26 2022