Gaining prospective while on vacation
Hey, what's up everybody? My name is Scottie Yang. I'm the owner and designer of Heights Apparel. And this is about my trip to Hawaii.
So I mean after months of planning waiting our vacation to Hawaii we finally came and we were all super excited about it. So we get to Kauai, we get settled in to our hotel and that sort of thing. We enjoy our first night in Kauai. Later that evening I think it was on Facebook or something like that and I started seeing a lot of posts from former teammates of mine, friends, you know talking how sad about a good friend of ours passed away unexpectedly. And I was like, what, what is going on? Like, what happened to Eric? And then as soon as I started to dig in, you know, we found out that, that one of my wife and I's really good friends, Eric committed suicide.
And that was the last thing that I thought would happen on our first night of vacation in Hawaii. It totally rocked our world. We had a hard time. We had a hard time processing that night. And so, you know, that first night in Hawaii was even throughout the trip really was a bit of a challenge. I didn't sleep really at all that night. I was contacting and texting some, some friends that had spoken to him recently. That evening just trying to get some more context of what the heck happened, that sort of thing. I didn't sleep. I was up at like two, maybe three in the morning and I knew I wasn't going to sleep and I couldn't sleep. And so I, you know, I got up, I grabbed my camera, I walked as close to the edge of the resort, but I couldn't get to the ocean.
And it was nice because it was a beautiful night outside. It was, there was just a little bit of clouds here and there. The moon was out. What really, what really I took notice of was how bright the stars were. And I had never really done a lot of night photography before. So I brought my camera and I was like, I'm going to try to shoot some, some nice shots and get a picture of these stars. And you know, it was a nice peaceful moment where I got got to just think about Eric, you know, talks. I basically talked to myself out there a little bit, you know and I was talking to Eric as, as if he was right there with me and just asking him why and just wishing him. I hope he, I hope his pain's gone. I hope he, he's at peace with himself.
And I snap some really good photos of that moment. And it was, it was through that tragedy that, you know, even though it was tough to deal with on the first night of our vacation that we were so hyped out, you know we had been looking forward to this for months. But what that did was that rattled my cage in the sense that we have so much in this world to revel in its beauty. We have to be more conscious to ourselves about living more in the moment, um, about enjoying each minute as it passes by. Knowing that the hecticness of our daily lives will always be there so that we need to take these moments when we have the opportunity to get away and to detach and you know go off the grid to really utilize those moments and relish in them and, and absorb them and live them, you know, minute by minute, day by day. Because you never know whether it's something that you have going on.
Like it just, it just, it's important to do that. And this is one of those things where you know, a good friend of mine and you know, this is happening to a lot of people out there that, that they, they broke underneath that and it's important to remind yourself why. And so even though it was a terrible news to get, that really did set the tone for my wife and I throughout the rest of that vacation that we, and we talked about this, we needed to be able to use this as an example of why we chose to come here, why we chose to get away, why we chose to go to Kauai, not a Honolulu, which is no different than a big city. We chose this Island, this place because of those remote, it was more, more nature focused. It was more secluded and that's what we wanted.
We wanted to be able to release and detach from our hectic daily lives and be able to absorb the beauty that is Hawaii. And that's what we did. There's a saying and there's a place in Hanalei Bay right next to the wishing well, it's attached to the Wishing Well, a Hawaiian shaved ice place and they sell this clothing and it's called Slow Yourself Down.
That's their moto. Slow yourself down. And that really resonates with me even after hearing the news and just living and being there for awhile. And I've, you know, I bought one of the tee shirts as a reminder myself, like I can, I have a really bad habit of just head down tunnel vision, go, go, go until I burn out. And this is a nice reminder for me to slow myself down. Take the time. There's no need to be in a rush. And to me, that's the epitome of what our vacation in Hawaii was all about.
-Scottie Yang [Heights Apparel]