'Embrace your fears,' my friend Chris told me several years ago on the mainland. Easy for him to say. He had been *fired* from more jobs than most people have *had* in their lifetime. And he quit jobs he wasn't fired from. We were in his nice, tastefully decorated apartment. We had eaten well, visited, and played some music for a while on some of the instruments he had. Now, we were talking. Man to man.

I wasn't doing badly. On the other side of town were my rental house and my own home, the one with the 5'4'� baby grand in the living room. I had a newer car and nice things. But I worked my ass off for it all. I wasn't proud or arrogant; I just had a hard time figuring Chris out. He worked, sort of, when he had to. His dad owned a realty business in town and Chris sold real estate once in a while. I think.

But whether working hard or hardly working, Chris didn't seem to worry much about anything. Me? *I* was out of work for the first time after seventeen years of continuous employment. *I* had bills and expenses and *I* was running out of money.

Welcome to the real world where ' for the overwhelming majority of us ' the universal medium of exchange for products and services is *money.*

'Embrace you fears.'� Being broke was one of my fears. Just one. I feared the unthinkable. No, I guess that's not true, it's not unthinkable because I *did* think about it. Actually, I didn't just *think* about the so-called unthinkable; I focused, dwelled and *obsessed* on it.

'What if I lose my house? What if I lose my car? What if . . .'�

I wondered about those bedraggled women I saw with shopping bags that hung out near the park and that guy I saw from time to time in the dumpster behind the restaurant I used to wash dishes at while going to college.

Several years after hearing Chris calmly and matter-of-factly tell me I needed to 'embrace my fears,'� I still remember it like it was yesterday. Whether on a sandy beach under a Kona moon (with the sand crabs) or at the band shell in downtown Hilo (with the winos), I have often drifted to sleep thinking about those words.

When I find myself at the helm of a remote that controls someone's Dolby 5.1 entertainment system while house-sitting their beautiful home, or when I am at the wheel of someone's luxury vehicle while running an errand for them, I think about Chris' words.

I used to take a lot for granted. Now, when things look good or like they are getting better, I just smile. I enjoy it while I can. When things look bad, or like they are going to get worse, I curse the gods. I curse my life. I really do. At least sometimes.

Then I smile.

But not because I have finally embraced my fears. Ha! No, not at all, I haven't *embraced* my fears; I am *living* them.

I'm the homeless guy.

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