Here’s what I should’ve done instead.
There are moments in life when one must face a difficult choice. The options diverge like two paths: the right course of action (what is good for the world) and the easy course (what is good for me). At the tail end of a visit to the lovely island nation of Fiji last fall, I faced one such dilemma.
The airport terminal where I stood hummed with the energy of a crowd. Passengers gathered in snaking lines to board our plane. In that moment, as I waited with my group to begin our 11-hour flight, I did not rise to a higher moral plane and sacrifice my own comfort in service of others, as I might’ve hoped I would before the onset of my food poisoning symptoms. Instead, I revealed the deficits of my character. When the attendant gestured me forward to the jet bridge, I followed her directions, hiding the barf bag I clutched in my fist, and I boarded that plane.
My arrival in Fiji 10 days earlier had a much different, more pleasant tone, and thorny moral questions were not on my mind. For the first week of my trip, I taught two yoga classes a day as a guest instructor at a resort on the man-made Demarau Island. In between classes, my friend, who came as my guest, and I would catch a shuttle bus into the marina for $20 full-body massages and buy ice pops from a stand to eat on the “Bula Bus” ride back. Otherwise, we would lounge on beach chairs beside the pool, drinking from coconuts and snacking on fries.
In the logic of post-food poisoning accounting, I would later dissect each meal for signs of contamination. Was it the six halves of passion fruit I couldn’t stop myself from eating with breakfast each day? The pina coladas? Or even the date bars I’d brought from home? Food poisoning symptoms can begin days after exposure, so anything was a potential threat.
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At the end of my teaching week, my friend departed back to the U.S., and, still blissfully unaware of the illness ahead, I decided to treat myself to a few nights’ stay at another hotel. An AMEX card offer awarded me a very favorable deal for a 5-star resort nestled in a balmy bay on the southern coast of Viti Levu, Fiji’s main island. The experience of my secluded suite, complete with a plunge pool and private garden path to the beach, felt like stepping onto a White Lotus set–complete with a traditional Fijian welcome ceremony and opportunities to eavesdrop on other travelers. There was a demanding mom who kept sending back her entree of steamed spinach, honeymooning lawyers arguing over money, and other strange looks into the private lives on display.
I borrowed a paddleboard to explore the bay, and a massive sea turtle crested beside me. I never want to go home, I thought, struck by a childlike awe at the sight of the creature. The narrator of the Miranda July novel All Fours mocks this kind of tourist, saying: “Maybe I was like a person on vacation in Hawaii who gets the dumb idea that they should move to Hawaii so they can feel like they’re on vacation all the time.” I am especially prone to the false belief that moving solves problems, but even I can recognize that if you must be sick somewhere, it’s better to be sick at home.
I ate one last delightful vacation meal, a neatly plated burrito with a side of salsa, before beginning the two-hour taxi ride to the airport. I made a call and had to end it when I started getting car sick. On one side of the car, the low brush of the Fijian countryside stretched out in a green expanse. To the other was the ocean, gentle and warm. Car-sick? The road was straight and flat. So, I made my first mistake: denial. Twenty minutes later, I had my driver pull over, so the first exorcism of my stomach could happen in the grass instead of on the backseat, and a parade of cars could bear witness to my puking. By the third time we repeated this routine, I should’ve asked the driver to turn back.
The fourth time this happened, we were within sight of the airport. I considered booking an airport hotel, but I couldn’t fight the inertia of my homeward journey. A brief Google search confirmed that pilots don’t divert for illness or even death. When the driver deposited me on the curb before the check-in gates, I decided some Pepto-Bismol might help. It did help, in the sense that swallowing it immediately caused me to vomit again. At this point, I figured there could not possibly be anything left in my stomach. The gate agent handed me a boarding pass, and I made my way to the lounge.
Do unto others, I might’ve thought, had the effects of food poisoning not acted on my clarity of mind as much as my gut. All I could think about was getting home. I did not think about my fellow travelers and how they would like to spend their half-day flight, although, in retrospect, I would assume not next to an adult woman moaning. Forgive me, vacationers, for I am weak.
The right thing to do would’ve been to check into the nearest hotel and ride out the worst of my illness. Instead, I spent the flight alternating between assuming the fetal position in my seat and coughing up bile in the nearest bathroom. I tried to visualize soothing scenes of nature, though each would decompose into visions of everything I’d eaten in the last week and the many questionable meals I’ve eaten on all my travels throughout the years: streetside pani puri in Thimphu, sticks of grilled lamb in Beijing, cocktail after cocktail with ice in CDMX, and never so much as a stomach cramp.
I considered everything I’d eaten on the trip, and one particular dish lit up my neurons with the signal flares of Never Again: the salsa with my last luxury burrito. When we finally landed in L.A., my illness had passed, and a permanent aversion to salsa at luxury resorts solidified.
When I am well, I long to be out in the world, seeing new sights, meeting new people. When I am sick, I revert to a one-track mind like a homing pigeon: get back to your coop. Probably a lot of bad decisions on earth begin that way. The suffering lash out to stake their ground. Even the docile sea turtle might bite. It was wrong for me to board Fiji Airways flight 810, although landing back home felt right. What is good might lie beyond our own perspective. Or maybe my moral compass needs a new north.
