subject: Sanibel Island, Where the Real Is Ideal [print this page] Sanibel Island, Where the Real Is Ideal Sanibel Island, Where the Real Is Ideal
Every night when we drove past the movie theater --the only movie theater on Sanibel Island, Florida -- I found myself wondering why there were so few cars in the parking lot. The movies were current, they changed often, and there was very little else in the way of night-life on the island.
When I asked a saleswoman in a local gift shop why the theater drew such a small (and sometimes non-existent) crowd, she said, "It's because people come here to get away from reality, and the movies today are filled with too much reality.
I had never really thought about a vacation in quite that way, having considered it more of a physical than a mental rest: no dishes, no laundry, no car pools, etc. But, of course, she was right. During the two weeks I spent on Sanibel, I didn't pick up a newspaper; the only time I turned on the radio was to catch a weather report for the following day; and if I happened to hear the news on TV, I somehow had the feeling that the problems the news commentator was talking about had absolutely nothing to do with me. I was 1200 miles away from home, and I felt as though I were on the other side of the world.
When I told a friend where I was planning to spend my vacation, she remarked, "I don't know why anyone would want to go to Sanibel Island. That place is only for the newly-wed or the nearly dead; there's nothing to do there."
And, there really isn't much to do on that island, unless like me, you happen to enjoy walking along miles and miles of clean, white sand, stopping every so often to look at or pick up an unusual sea shell. (Sanibel Island, by the way, is known as "The shell capital of the world").
Or, unless like me, you enjoy sitting on the beach, undisturbed, with a book in your hand that you never even open because your attention is caught by the sea gulls congregating like a group of socialites at a garden party, or the pelicans gracefully swooping onto the water to catch their dinner.
Or unless, like me, you enjoy going out on a boat and trying to catch a fish or two of your own, always keeping your video camera close at hand to capture the playful porpoises or the unbelievably beautiful scenery.
Or, unless like me, you enjoy a leisurely round of golf in a tropical setting, where you need to make sure that the log sitting at the side of the fairway is really a log (and not the resident alligator).
During the flight back home, I kept thinking about what the saleswoman in the gift shop had said: "People come here to get away from reality."
But, I asked myself, what is so unreal about living where the sun always shines; where the sunsets are so spectacular over the water that the thing you want most in the world is to be an artist so you can at least try to paint that unforgettable sight?
What's so unreal about living some place where the crime rate is almost zero, and where pollution is just a word in the dictionary? And, what is so unreal about living where the local merchants think nothing of closing shop a little (or a lot) early or opening a little late, because they feel like going fishing or shelling or whatever?
As the plane moved farther and farther away from the warmth of the sun and closer and closer to the cold, bleak Midwest winter, I realized that I could easily spend the rest of my life on that tiny little island, where the real is ideal, and the ideal is real.
Bio
Arlene Uslander is the author of 16 non-fiction books, hundreds of articles, and is an award winning journalist. Her most recent book is an anthology of true, inspirational stories about fate: "The Mystery of Fate: Common Coincidence or Divine Intervention?" www.thefatesite.com
