Bakersfield is my paradise

Irecently started a job requiring extensive international travel to Fiji, a place most would consider a paradise on Earth. My time in this idyllic tropical corner of the South Pacific has been incredibly rewarding professionally, but it has also given me space and time to reflect on the home I will return to, Bakersfield, and what the true definition of paradise is.

The contrast between the typical reactions I get when I say I temporarily live in Fiji and when I tell people Bakersfield is home is striking. “Fiji — that must be amazing!” as if I was living the never-ending vacation, compared with “Bakersfield? I bet you couldn’t wait to get out of there,” as if no one would voluntarily live in Bakersfield. Both places have stereotypes and neither stereotype provides a complete picture of what life there is like.

Sitting writing this piece in most people’s version of paradise, my heart longs for the community I love and have left behind in the Central Valley, causing the words of Peter Kageyama, author of “Love Where You Live” and celebrated urbanist, to come to mind:

“To thrive, communities require a healthy mix of people and places teeming with remarkable talent, innovation, diversity, [and] environment. But love will prove to be the difference between good enough and great, between functional and engaging, between leaving and ‘I think I’ll stay.’”

It was this love that my husband and I found by accident in Bakersfield when we “chose to stay” in 2017. In Bakersfield, we discovered a city still bursting with the potential that allowed Buck Owens and Merle Haggard to make their marks and influence an entire music genre. There was diversity, talent, incredible natural beauty at its doorstep, and grit. Bakersfield has all the ingredients for innovators willing to run against the grain, carving out their space in the world and impacting their community. As my husband and I fell more in love with this place we began to affectionately refer to Bakersfield as Bakerdise, a play on words between Bakersfield and paradise. This was exactly the place we wanted to have our life adventure.

I knew from extensive travel and work in more than 40 countries that paradise was not a destination. All these places, and many more, have an allure of an idyllic experience that magnetizes people to them. This allure is reinforced by narratives and photos people retell to friends and family and now followers around the world. This narrative is often an intentional reflection on the Instagram-able portions of these spaces that leave out the less “sexy” details that also define what it means to experience these ideas of “paradise.” It is the intertwining of it all, the sexy and not-so-sexy pieces of a place that have taught me that paradise is a state of mind and can be found anywhere.

With the term Bakerdise, I want to challenge the belief that outsiders, and even insiders, have about our city, as well as how we define what a paradise is. It is easy to consider a place a paradise where we get to simply consume what it has to offer with little to no effort other than showing up at our desired beach or restaurant and then leaving when it no longer suits us or our bank accounts. The greater challenge is cultivating a sense of paradise right where we are.

Bakersfield doesn’t have to be your paradise, but I challenge you to reflect on what the term stirs up in you, and to find that curious and intentional state of mind that can make you love where you live, even if you are currently not sitting on a white sandy beach with a drink in your hand next to me — dammit! I just spilled my piña colada defending myself from the mosquitoes.