“Martin and I love houses,” wrote actor
and author Richard Chamberlain in his memoir Shattered Love. “A wise friend and teacher of ours says we have
house karma. Over the years we’ve created several wonderful houses, always
remodeling existing structures. Our lifelong goal has been to design and build
our dream house.
“We love living in Hawaii, and for
20 years we’ve had our eyes on a particularly beautiful house site. About three
years ago the lot became available, and to our surprise and delight the owner
accepted our first offer. This all happened so easily that we assumed our
project was blessed.
“This home was to be our final stop
and guarantee our future happiness. We hired an architect and created a serene
and handsome design that took maximum advantage of the gorgeous setting. We
even engaged a top-notch interior designer from the mainland and started
thinking about furniture. We were on our way to a nirvana of sand, surf and
sunsets.
Richard Chamberlain in Hawaii in 2003 |
“We sold our big house in Honolulu,
put a lot of stuff in storage and crammed ourselves and the rest of our
possessions into our small beach house in the country to wait for building
permits and for construction to begin.
“Then, out of the blue, a series of
bureaucratic hassles big and small began an endless series of delays and costly
legal confrontations. I’ve lost track of how many times we all said with
relief, ‘Well, that’s finally over, now we can begin!’ only to be surprised and
dismayed by yet another, sometimes whimsical change in official policy.
Permissions granted, permissions withdrawn. Our guarantee of happiness was
turning into the prescription for a mix of smoldering rage and clinical
depression.
“Though we love the sweetness of
the people here, over the years we’ve found the State of Hawaii bureaucrats to
be self-important, arbitrary and downright unfriendly. Our frustration with
this latest lengthy fracas with officialdom led us to think seriously about
selling the lot and leaving the islands for good. We both felt worn down,
hugely disappointed and unaccountably victimized.
“So where is the Christ, where is
the Buddha in this mess of frustrated dreams?
“One recent afternoon, feeling
thoroughly bummed out by all this, I sat down in the living room of the beach
house we’ve owned for 26 years and took a long look at the absurdity of letting
the supposed source of our future bliss, our imagined tropical Shangri-la,
cause us so much unhappiness and angst.
“I got very quiet and just looked
at our situation as objectively as I could. Gazing out the windows, I noticed
the sunny perfection of the day and heard the rhythmic rumble of the waves. The
plumeria trees were blooming and scenting the breeze, the doves and mynah birds
were gabbing. A lamb stew was simmering in the kitchen. Our much-loved dog was
asleep at my feet. There wasn’t a hint of turmoil anywhere. If I was stressed out, the cause was nowhere in sight. The cause must be in my own head, in my
thinking.
“It was suddenly clear: I had
attached my well-being to an imagined dream house and its easy manifestation.
Ignoring past experience, I had staked my happiness on cooperative, concerned
officials and honest, thrifty, competent contractors (good luck!).
“And I wondered why it’s so easy
for me to forget that my sense of well-being is only now in the present. It
cannot be dragged in from the past, which is gone, dead and buried, nor can it
be found in the future, which doesn’t exist. Well-being is simply being well
right now, living with as much integrity, clear awareness and open-heartedness
as we can muster, with a willingness to examine whatever barriers we’re putting
in the way of our innate if sometimes elusive wisdom.
“When I remember to quiet down and
do this, the problems that pollute my thinking and vaporize my wa (inner harmony) become interesting
challenges rather than subversive attachments — I’m free to “be well” and at
the same time to vigorously deal with the difficulties at hand. I had been
victimized only by my own thinking. I was painfully disappointed not by the
officials who were just doing what they do for inscrutable reasons of their
own, but by my unrealistic expectations.