In 1993, the Chinese novelist Liang Xiaosheng wrote a novel called “The Floating City,” which depicted a major city sliding into the ocean due to supernatural forces.

A number of people in the doomed city reason that if other citizens think they can just simply leave, no one will have the incentive to work together to save the city, so they go around confiscating the means for anyone to escape.

Liang may have been writing a humorous, albeit deftly hidden narrative about how China could not succeed in the 21st century if its people did not recognize their collective responsibility to the nation and to one another. The allegory is as old as human civilization itself, where we are called to recognize that sometimes land, people and destiny cannot be separated. 

Here in Hawaiʻi, we face a similar crisis. We’ve all heard about how more and more locals are fleeing to the mainland, or how more Native Hawaiians live outside of Hawaiʻi than in Hawaiʻi. And who can blame them? The local think tank Grassroot Institute even has a collection of testimonies called “Why We Left Hawaiʻi,” which explores local frustration over costs of living, quality of life and lack of opportunities.

Every person who leaves is one less person who can vote or work to change those conditions. And if the population declines too steeply, revenues will collapse, along with the local government. A foreign takeover and privatization of Hawaiʻi will occur in which only the ultra-wealthy, served by AI, robotics and an ultra-poor will exist. That will benefit none of us.

But to all the young people of Hawaiʻi reading this, and especially our Native Hawaiian youth, I’d like to ask you to consider staying planted in the islands despite the challenges and the temptation of seeking a life elsewhere. You belong here, and the future of this state will depend on people who are willing to stay and fight for the reforms that need to happen. It may not feel like it now, but you have the potential to be the next leaders of Hawaiʻi.

Leaving Is No Guarantee of Success

I want to speak directly to the people who just graduated from high school or college, and I’m going to tell you what most of us don’t want to hear, and that’s the truth.

Hawaiʻi is a tough place to carve a piece of paradise for yourself, and we see that reflected in many indicators like income, home ownership and food insecurity. You know this, and it’s a source of frustration and grief for many. And while it may be tempting to look at social media and see how family and friends on the mainland are living their lives, there are national and global structural issues that make uprooting your life and planting outside of Hawaiʻi a roll of the dice.

You may think that you can leave Hawaiʻi, get a good job, buy a house for under $400,000 that you can sell later for a profit and live happily ever after, but, that’s not exactly accurate.

To begin, the employment, housing and cost-of-living crisis is everywhere. I have family members on the mainland who are in their early 20s who have competitive degrees in STEM fields from top colleges but are persistently under- and unemployed. Getting a degree or buying a home means taking on massive debt that could have been saved or invested in something that yields dividends or higher returns.

States like Texas, where homes can still be purchased under $400,000, have immense property tax burdens that all but undermine young, upwardly mobile professionals. The point is not to lose your savings to pay for “investments” like housing or education.

If you’re not already established, the risk you assume moving to the mainland is high. What happens if you get fired, or if your company goes belly up due to tariffs? No job is safe, anywhere. Everyone is potentially on the chopping block now.

America is problematic everywhere, and America is imperiled everywhere. You’re better off clinging to your birthright in Hawaiʻi, staying anchored for the long haul here, fighting for what belongs to you alongside your ancestors. To quote the late President Ronald Reagan, “If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.”

Allow me to offer you a counterproposal, with no sugar sweetener on it. Upfront truth: If you stay here, you may have to compete with 50 of your peers for one or two positions that you believe to genuinely be yours. You may have to live well below your means to stay afloat. 

Your friends may, at least for now, compare you to others luckier than you, and you may be forced to silently accept others mocking you for being behind. You may lose the person you adore most to someone who makes more money than you in the short term. You may cry yourself to sleep many nights.

But this is where your greatness will lie.

Hardship Begets Vision

Being agitated, angry and restless makes you alert to things other people miss. It makes you notice opportunities people pass over. It causes you to have a certain fury over injustice, and makes you persistent in proving your point.

It also causes you to become adept and articulate in knowing what works and what doesn’t. It makes you find other agitated, angry, restless people in the same boat as you, who join you as allies. It makes you a leader among leaders, because only someone who has been in the deepest valley can know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

In the short term, you should go for small victories. Instead of trying to get a big job, get whatever job you can and save whatever you can. Find a specialized trade that you can do, working on practical things that get you as much money as possible with minimal expense to yourself.

If you have to live in a multigenerational household for now, do it. If you can reduce your expenses and build your bank account or stack up investments, the earlier you do it the better. Let other people laugh at your clothes, your car and your seeming outward situation while you gain experience, save some money and keep pushing forward.

We may have done our earlier generations a disservice by suggesting that the path to glory is an elevator. It is not. It’s a boxing ring where every day someone tries to KO your desire for identity and respect. But in Hawaiʻi, we’re in trouble because too many of us have avoided the fight and left for a lower difficulty level. 

We need people who stay, who fight — even when tired, even when disappointed, even when your family and friends abandon you — and who say Hawaiʻi hasn’t seen the last of you. Know this: There are people, like me, who will hold open whatever doors of opportunity we can for you and won’t let you fall behind and will advocate for you, but we need you to stay.

In elections, you may not know it, but the battle waged by malicious special interests is not so much to increase their vote share but to depress your share and make you stay home or leave altogether. Bad elected officials stay entrenched because no one challenges them out of fear of losing. Unjust laws stay on the books because everyone thought to mind their own business and never demand they be repealed.

Young people, Hawaiʻi belongs to you. You could run off and try your stakes on the mainland, but you’re needed here. I wish I could tell you a story where you somehow get lucky, get famous and get rich before you’re even 30 years old. But that would be a lie. The path to victory means fighting until it’s firmly yours.

My father, who grew up in poverty after the death of his own father, used to tell me when I was young, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” That was his way of saying the bad guys don’t win unless you quit, and you make yourself a chosen one by choosing to stay in the fight.

Young people, and especially Native Hawaiians, stay in Hawaiʻi. You are the only ones who can save the future.