A romantic throw at the notion that thinking about someone interesting gets you stressed too. 

But Valentine’s Day is once a year so what do we do with the rest of the three hundred and sixty some days. Sing and dance? 

Did someone mention the leafy skirt again? 

Here on paradise island, where we are far from the families sending money and cars to their loved ones, and they who are calling in from time to time, to judge us because they have done a lot to make a better life for our paradise. 

Well, to be fair, we may actually be living the life of paradise too much. I mean, we enjoy cheap vodka and sway around hoping for a bit of smooth road relief, in the mornings so the oversized wooden buses ahead of the queue of cars do not block the road by being the road. 

We also get tempted to call the police on a rainy day to say, “Sir, it’s raining, so a good day for skinny dipping for the guns?” 

Meanwhile we can see with poor lenses that the few fire trucks are grinning from ear to ear, out in the rain too. There is also the tourism advanced sites which struggle with a cheap entry fee. But you brave to enter them, as some foreign guests of paradise did, and reported that it was like going into the future after the big bang. There were a few survivors selling food from a food stall without food. And when another snorkeling site was visited by large Aussie men, they returned to say politely, that it was mostly a display of ugly behinds. I gather they were talking about their own because it was indeed not King tides that day.

Simple problems in paradise are funny to deal with, because when poor, we do not care who owes us money, as there is no way of chasing them up unless a lawyerly person has the guts to work for free. 

So we work around each other, in the hope, that one of us will get rich with green money, to help the other. Have you ever giggled at the traffic police trying to stop car racers without a car to chase them with? Well, the car racers enjoy this loop hole if you count the electric posts they kiss from gory time to gory time. 

But paradise is here for a reason, other than a place for the sun to rest its tired head or the rain to pour buckets of water into our pot holes. Paradise is also here to remind the ones who came from it, but no longer dwell here mostly, that they are not alone ever. It is also here to tell them that while they are buried in stress driving on their borrowed foreign lands, at legal speeds usually, but with their climbing water bills and rent, that this paradise is home, and they can always come back to work it. 

But in returning, do not be fooled, the paradise inhabitant is quite tactical and savvy despite the rough looks at times, due to the collecting dust after the rain, and the mud in our sandaled feet. 

We are also known as members of the flip flop organization, you know. Have you not pictured our leaders sitting around, forlorn, bored at times, with their flip flops tapping on the floors, as we lobby for seats made of logs and plenty splinters to get things a little more upbeat and exciting? 

But the gist of this article is not to make a point. It is to stroke your ego, pointless. That is what social media has become in this country. Just like any deaf, and far-away government, the social media fads only adds distance to emotion, to real gut, to the gutted, to the downhearted. 

For the sake of social intelligence, I would suggest that we all lay low a little. Have a heart. Be silent, so that we can each enjoy the sun and rain, the king tides and earthquakes, the poverty even, without all the noise and racket drowning the sound of things we need to focus on to get by.

Before I go, I want to explain more the title of this rag. I get a little bit stressed relates to someone who cares about something enough so that his adrenaline feels like life is an uphill run, as his heart is also beating faster than normal. Romantic, you may say? 

But that is our common ground. You know as much as I do that we are born under the sun, and we have a lot of stress for each other. Perhaps it is time to recognize that, on social media, we each have a heart beat and a home door to open or if an open fale then to step into it without our sandals. 

To meet you there eye to eye, I hope you will giggle as I awkwardly fall over the mat that we both forgot our ancestors wove to soften the ground of stones our feet land on. “Tulou”, is a simple word you and I should both own, and own again. That way, all our children’s inheritance will be a lot better than what we have to offer them today. God speed!