Going to California

And Why We Need Places of Possibility

Today, I am headed to California, to a land of possibility—the frontier of our forebears. Every time I do this, it is an adventure.

Once while traveling, I left the airport on a long layover and drove to the closest beach in Los Angeles, one that my local friend said was where all the tourists go. There are much better beaches, he told me, just a few miles down the coastline, cooler ones. But I didn’t care. All I wanted was the beach, and I didn’t need it to be cool.

Where I come from, there are no beaches you can walk at sunset, no freshly caught seafood that doesn’t spend the night before in someone’s trunk. Where I come from, there are endless fields of wheat and corn and soybeans, rolling hills if I am lucky, and maybe a lake or two. But there are no mountains to drive by, no sea to smell in the distance. There, everything is predictable. You can see for a hundred miles in any direction. Any surprise headed your way is always a long time coming.

That is the place we often call Here. It is what most of us will spend ourselves getting familiar with. But there is another place that exists in the distance, one beyond our ability to anticipate. This is the place that our ancestors dreamed of, out in the distance, in the direction of milk and honey and El Dorado. That is the call of California. Something else, something more beckons you, and you must go.

Every time I go, I understand why this territory was so attractive to our great-great grandparents, those early settlers of the western United States. I can see the need to escape and stay here for a while, to find another way of being than the ones we’ve grown accustomed to while crammed into cramped cities and alone in our Midwestern banalities. For all the criticisms I have heard of this place—the high taxes and soaring cost of living, the politics and so forth—every time I visit, each bite I take of a fresh strawberry or sip a crisp Chardonnay—I get it. What is not to love about Shangri-La?

We are all, in one way or another, where we come from. Our birth certificates become indications as to the directions in which our lives will flow, and it takes a lot of intention to alter the course. But it is possible. Our state of mind is influenced by the places we inhabit, which accompany us wherever we go, even when we leave. And as much as I am trying to learn to be present here and now, I still see the necessity in leaving. Getting acquainted, on occasion, with new places and new people broadens a person’s perspective, helps them see impossible things as possible. The world changes shape from flat to spherical, and we remember that maybe even we are not what we think.

Out there, on the edge of what we could be, there is endless possibility. In the land we have not seen, there may be giants; but there also might be angels, fairies, and sprites, and the strangest fruits you have ever tasted. There is no way to find these things but to leave, not to relocate but to remember. Uprooting ourselves even for a few days can remind you of what’s possible, that change is always coming, and that the gift of going somewhere is not just in what you find There but what you bring back Here.

Whenever I go to California, even if only passing through, I try to pause and imbibe a little of the land’s promise. Accompanying each trip is often a threshold I am about to cross, something frightening beyond the edge of what I know and can anticipate. Every time I do this, something stirs within. It feels as if life itself is nudging me along, luring me to the next precipice I am afraid to approach. The experience is something like the machine at an arcade where you drop quarters until all the coins eventually get pushed out by a long metal arm. You don’t know when the change is going to fall, but you know that eventually, if you keep showing up, it will.

So I come here when I can, when I am able to find a reason to go, when I am ready to see the change fall. When I arrive here, I do not see the smog or traffic. I do not notice the high gas prices and beautiful people. I see something else: the optimism that created the movie business, the pioneering sense of what could be, the allure of warmth and possibility, the ideal of change. This does not feel tired or cliche to me. It feels necessary. “Always have something to look forward to,” someone once shared as a piece of advice he’d heard before getting married. It’s great advice for a marriage and just as good advice for a life. We can’t forget the importance of novelty, the reality of some new eventuality, and that it’s coming sooner than we think.

That thought, or something close to it, was what got me out of the airport that afternoon during my three-hour layover at LAX a few years back. I had been visiting my girlfriend at the time in Canada and had intentionally chosen to take the “long way” home so that I could spend an afternoon in LA. The ideal of possibility set me on a course for the beach when I could have easily stayed in an airport lounge. Comfort always distracts us from the odyssey that could be.

Removing my shoes at Golden Hour and entering the surf of the February tide was something like flying that day, a feat so incredible it had to be embraced as a miracle. It was not something I understood but had to accept, nonetheless. It sounds silly to say about such a simple thing, but it didn’t feel that way. Only hours before, I had been surrounded by several feet of snow, and now I was here, in an unexpected and undeserved summer. There was no wintry toil or early spring planting that led me to such abundance. It was just here, as it always is in California.

I have never seen the northern lights, but watching the sun dip below the horizon that afternoon felt eerily similar. It was an aurora borealis on the beach, an otherworldly but still natural phenomenon that had me marveling amidst the locals who came and went as if something like a sunset was entirely common. But I knew better. As the red and orange hues enveloped everything, I vowed to never become a native anywhere, to always play the tourist—even and especially in my hometown—so that I could always have eyes to see what was right in front of me.

After forty five minutes of moving up and down the beach, wondering if I ought to be somewhere else and eventually surrendering to my place in things, I put my shoes on, called a car to come pick me up, and drove to the airport. I went through security, arrived at my gate, and awaited my next adventure.

P.S. Don’t forget to ask me anything.

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© 2024 Jeff Goins
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
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