Author: bondjanet

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” (Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr)

The above, oft-quoted phrase commonly translates to: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

I respectfully disagree.

This week several members of our family were reunited in Hawaïi after a long COVID hiatus. During this time I have had many months of separation from my family, while still leading a full life in Hawaïi, which has enabled me to see that I am not just the roles that once defined me. I am not just a wife and mother, nor a yoga aspirant and teacher. Those roles defined me in context with other people, whereas I’ve come to see who I am alone, with myself, “in the dark woods” as Dante would say. I’ve come to see that I’m a soul having a human experience, and currently that experience is a reunion with some of the people who give my life heart and meaning. And occasional “blood, sweat and tears”!

This morning, in an attempt to create a semblance of order amidst the clutter of pool toys, soggy swimsuits, rusting matchbox cars, various and assorted hats, UV shirts, mismatched socks and flip flops, I picked up a familiar pair of swim goggles that I thought I’d worn not long ago. Wondering why I’d relegated them to the “community property (or might-be-useful-junk) bin” I inspected them more closely and spotted multiple small scratches on the plastic eye-pieces. Marks made before I realized that the goggles I’d absent-mindedly handed to one of our ten grand-toddlers, had served as an effective, albiet expensive teething toy. Oy.

Something about this simple reminder of times past prompted me to reflect on how our family has grown in numbers and stages, and to ask myself, through all these changes, if I am the same person I have always been. Aside from physicality, how substantially have I changed as I aged? Who am I today, after the aforementioned COVID hiatus? Who, indeed, are you?

A few years ago I wrote a memoir that catalogued the turning points in my life, and particularly, how I came to be on what I consider a spiritual journey. The memoir, begun on the eve of my sixty-fifth birthday, marked a sort of rite of passage, in which I explored what had steered me to an in-depth, twenty-plus year study of Eastern philosophy, psychology and spirituality, and then to abruptly veer away from what was, by that time, very much a part of my identity. With the aid of a brilliant writing coach and personal historian I was able to distill what the Buddha describes as the first of his seven dharma (or wisdom-mind) tenets:

“Having a sense of oneself means knowing your strengths and weaknesses in terms of conviction, virtue, learning, generosity, discernment, and quick-wittedness. In other words, you know which qualities are important to focus on, and can assess objectively where you still have more work to do.” (Tricycle: The Buddhist Review)

This blog is part of the work I still have to do. Through it, I aim to articulate for myself what social commentator David Brooks, in his Moral Bucket List, deems a “settled philosophy about fundamental things.” His article helps me discern the essential elements of a life well-lived, a potential best-fulfilled. And, most importantly, to determine what sort of legacy I hope to leave.

An essential element of the legacy I hope to leave my family is a certain degree of self-confidence, or self-belief. Having spent much of my life deferring to what outside ’experts’ (parents, teachers, peers, the media) told me I should be or believe, it wasn’t until my mid-sixties that I realized there is no greater authority in-or-on my life than me. I am responsible for the choices I have made, and must bear the consequences of the actions I have taken. This requires some degree of self-belief. I have to trust that I have acted in good faith and am willing to grow and change, admit and learn from my mistakes. Hence I chose to focus this week on the Hawaiian term “hilina’i pono’i”, the trait or quality of self-belief. In the words of Hawaiian cultural specialist Luana Kawa’a:

“Literally, hilina’i translates as to believe, trust; to lean on, rely on; confidence. Sometimes in life we can feel defeated. Especially in these trying times, it can be hard to believe that things will get better. Even in the midst of challenges we must hilina’i — believe. Believe that things will improve. Believe that there is hope. Hilina’i also means to trust and lean on. It is so important to surround ourselves with people we can lean on and trust with complete confidence. Friends and family that can be the ko’o, support posts we need to lift us and at times, even carry us through.”

One of the (many) meanings of pono’i reads as follows: “In Hawaiian culture, if a person is living pono, it means that they have struck the right balance in their relationships with other things, places, and people in their lives. It also means that they are living with a continuous conscious decision to do right by themselves, by others, and by the world in general.” (Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel Hoyt Elbert’s Hawaiian Dictionary)

Google Translate offers “hilina’i pono’i” as the translation for “self-confidence”, so it follows that there will be times when one must be able to “believe, trust; lean on, rely on, have confidence in” ONESELF.

This is the greatest change or shift that I have made as I aged. To not only believe in myself, be my own authority, but to have created, through leading an examined life, a “settled philosophy” about what, for me, has heart and meaning. Though there are still times spent wandering in that figurative dark woods, I know what qualities to focus on, and how to see what still needs to change in order to become the best me that I can be.

Now to find a decent pair of swim goggles.

“As a man thinketh, so is he”. (Proverbs 23:7)

The other day an incident happened that left me struggling to restore my inner equanimity. I thought I would process it in a blog, but, having already written about equanimity a dozen or so blogs ago, I looked for an approach that would best restore my physical, mental and emotional well-being. Ultimately, I chose to process it through journaling, or what psychologist James W. Pennebaker calls “expressive writing”. More on that later.

The incident that triggered this disequilibrium happened the morning a large female monk seal hoisted herself up onto the local beach. Reports vary on how many monk seals (estimated at no more than 1,400) populate Hawaiian waters, but the words “rare” and “endangered” invariably crop up when the seal is discussed or, in this case, when she comes in to sleep on the patch of sand that is our usual water access. The spot where a stream of outrigger canoeists, paddle boarders, snorkelers, power boaters and swimmers enter and exit the ocean in increasing numbers now that summer has begun. Needless to say, it’s not an ideal situation. While conservation officers patrol, and signs and makeshift barriers are erected around the seal to keep people at bay, some beachgoer inevitably wanders too close and elicits a volley of sharp warning barks from this massive sea creature. (An adult female monk seal ranges in size from six to eight feet long and weighs four to six hundred pounds. Not one to be messed with.)

On the morning in question, I registered with horror that a two year old toddler was making a bee-line for the sleeping seal, while his mother was preoccupied with his baby sibling. Seeing what was unfolding like a bad dream, I vaulted out of my chair, dashed down the beach and grabbed the young lad just as he reached the tail end of “Mrs. Monk Seal”, as she is known to children around here. Thank goodness it wasn’t her head! This she reared up immediately, her throaty barks warning us off as I scrambled for a footing in the soft, wet sand. I now understand the expression: “time stood still”, as I pitched down onto my knees, calling frantically for someone to grab the little boy, whom I couldn’t lift up the bank, and out of range of the irritated seal. Within seconds the whole incident was over, the poor baffled child was returned his mother, where he hid from the maniac (me) who had so rudely interrupted his trajectory.

Meanwhile, I crumpled onto the nearest chair, gasping for air, heart racing, too stunned to move. Joan Didion’s “Life changes in a heartbeat” flashed through my mind. But, thinking I’d made enough of a spectacle of myself for one day, I tried to shove the incident out of my mind and spent the rest of the morning paddling in and around the water with a new-found, four-year-old friend who enjoyed pushing a boogie board between a mooring buoy and a couple of inflated rafts anchored just offshore. Child’s play, as they say.

Later, however, the event haunted me throughout a restless sleep. Visions of what could have happened flooded my chest with a kind of latent dread. The next day I had a roaring headache and was utterly zapped of energy. Nursing a pulled muscle in my leg that registered once the shock wore off, I simply couldn’t restore my balance and equanimity. I realized I had to pro-actively change the inner narrative of “coulda, shoulda, woulda” that only compounded the recovery from what my rational mind told me was a relatively minor incident.

Enter a New York Times Opinion article that I encountered early this morning which addressed what I was attempting to do — revise the story that was running overtime in my mind. What psychologists call my “narrative arc”. Writing about the human tendency to put the pandemic behind us without a backward glance, Author Emily Esfahani Smith urges her readers to pause for a beat before getting on with their post-COVID revelry. Advising the reader to reflect on the story they’re telling themselves (or denying) about the past sixteen plus months, Smith writes:

“…if we want to emerge from this crisis whole instead of broken, we need to process what we’ve lost. Rather than bulldoze past our grief straight into the delights of summer, we should take the time to work through it.”

She describes how one’s story-telling style, one’s way of framing events as positive or negative, can influence one’s wellness on multiple levels. And ultimately, set the course of one’s life. While therapists and spiritual counselors are also recommended, Smith advises the reader to try “expressive writing” as a means of processing the many changes and losses that the pandemic has wrought.

Citing Dr. Dan McAdams, a personality psychologist, Smith introduces the idea of narrative identity. “Most people, whether they realize it or not, carry an ongoing narrative in their minds about themselves — who they are, where they came from and where they are going. We consciously and unconsciously create this story by taking the disparate fragments of our lives and assembling them into a coherent whole.

 “Dr. McAdams encouraged people to divide their lives into chapters, recount major events, reflect on early memories and pull out the overarching themes in their narratives. After analyzing these stories, McAdams found that some people tell what he calls “redemptive” stories while others tell “contamination” stories.”

In layman’s terms, the redemptive story is one in which we frame our experience, although sad or difficult, in a way that offers some grace, some silver lining that enhances our wisdom and understanding. Depending on what we tell ourselves, even a ’bad’ experience can be put in a broader context that ’softens its edges’. By contrast, the contamination story is one in which we conclude that an event has no compensating features, and, to some degree or other, has irreversibly wasted or ruined some or all of one’s life.

Obviously, the monk seal incident is easier to put in context than my year plus of ’girl interrupted’ by COVID. But the same theory applies. As does Smith’s and McAdams’s advice. Expressive writing (aka regular and consistent journaling) is an invaluable tool for making sense of life’s events. Over the next couple of days I took time to un-pack — in writing — what was lodged in my memory as a “bad” day at the beach.

For one thing, I learned a lot about the little boy with whom I spent the rest of the morning. I learned that he was recovering from what his mother later explained were three cancer-related operations and a year of chemotherapy. During COVID.

Floating alone-together on a small raft in the Pacific Ocean, this brave little lad told me the story of his “big surgeries” and how he got a present when it “ended”. He must’ve been three when his cancer journey began. Who knows what impact that experience will have on his particular life narrative? I doubt it was the first, nor will it be the last time he tells his story, but relating these events to other people could be seen as the child’s attempt to process a bewildering, and no doubt painful time in his very young life. His version of expressive writing. Hearing him trying to pronounce words that are foreign to most four-year-olds, my heart filled with empathy for him and his family. Four people who were, only hours earlier, simply strangers at the beach, immediately became the newest members of my Aloha Ohana.

A redemptive story about the-monk-seal-that-interrupted-my-morning, if ever there was one.

“Do you believe in rock ‘n’ roll,
Can music save your mortal soul…?” (”American Pie”, by Don McLean)

I don’t know about music — though I suspect it can — but I do know that gardening helps save MY mortal soul. Today I pulled apart a big rectangular flower arrangement that a friend gave me from her daughter’s virtual bat mitzvah (the first of any kind of bat mitzvah that I’ve had the honour to attend) and layered them into my six-months-old composter. Separating the moss and leaves, wilted blooms and rusted tacks from the florist’s-foam-holder brought me back to the early days of my compost initiation.

Bought to recycle the detritus of my two big Christmas wreaths, the compost barrel that I installed in December has now had time to “forgive” my earlier error of adding pine needles to the mix, and, after countless infusions of vegetable matter, one compost compartment is almost ready to spread on the garden. How monumental is that! I’ve designated it for our new avocado and strawberry papaya trees (that I suspect might bear fruit in the next millennia). But hey, I’ve just harvested three out of five of our white pineapples, and that seemed highly unlikely a half-year ago (particularly because we were scheduled to go home in April, when they were still deeply green). Not to mention the scores of bananas and oranges, lemons and limes that have been harvested over time. And now, drum roll please, we can pick parsley, basil, dill, thyme, oregano, sage, rosemary, mint, radishes, green onions, arugula and, one day soon, plum tomatoes. Digging, watering, sowing seeds, waiting patiently, and of course harvesting produce an upswell of satisfaction that’s hard to duplicate. There’s really no word in the Hawaiian vocabulary that I’ve learned that describes that elated feeling of accomplishment, of being one step closer to self-sufficiency. So I settled on the expression ’Kou Ola Pono’.

In the Hawaiian language, ’kou’ translates as ’your’ and the word for health is ‘ola’ meaning ‘life’. The word ’pono’ has strong cultural and spiritual connotations of ’a state of harmony or balance’. In old Hawai‘i, the natives relied heavily on the ‘āina (the land) and their akua (gods) for their health and healing. Thus, ’kou ola pono’ defines good health as a balance between care of the land, including the human body, and the mana — energy or spirit of a person or place. Since pono stands for balance and integrity, it is believed that our actions must be infused with this quality in order to serve a worthy purpose. To be ’pono’ means to be in a state of harmony or balance with oneself, others, the land, work and life itself.

Reflecting on my training in transpersonal studies, kou ola pono echoes the Bhuddist tenet of right livelihood: “Our vocation can nourish our understanding and compassion, or erode them. We should be awake to the consequences, far and near, of the way we earn our living”, (Thich Nhat Hahn). The Christian teaching of the Golden Rule, or ’Do unto others as you would have done unto you’ also reflects the ideal of kou ola pono.

Imagine our world if more people embraced such humanitarian ideals.

While several islanders I know have or are building family compounds that include much more comprehensive gardens than mine, with coffee farms for revenue and even hunting and fishing practices to sustain their families, I wonder what living pono means for someone like me? Or for you, my mainland friends and city dwellers? Each week, as I learn new Hawaiian words and values, I ponder the ways these humanitarian ideals apply to my life, and manifest in the culture around me. According to Wikipedia, such ideals as I observe in Hawaïi are based on “an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans, in order to improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic and logical reasons.” I have seen this benevolent treatment take the form of magnanimous financial donations to local aid agencies. I see other friends supplying meals to a posse of homeless youth (who, thanks to COVID, are ubiquitous throughout the West) or assembling care packages for families living on the margins of society.

These examples inspire and motivate me to get out and join my friends in their community causes, but there is one small but significant thing I can do without leaving my living room. I can suspend judgment, even as I read news or watch tv, and instead, see other people as part of one big human family, the aloha ohana, sharing the strength and synergy that grow from a foundation of belonging and community. A foundation of living pono. Fostering a sense of global community that starts with cleaning up my own back yard.

Which reminds me, I seem to have veered off from the soul-saving properties of gardening with which I started this blog, so I’ll end with a note-to-self for other would-be “herbies*”: egg shells, avocado pits, and pistachio shells all take forever to decompose. Wishful thinking won’t alleviate this. Just. Say. No. to putting them in your compost. You’ll thank me later.

*herbies: short for the Martha Stewart wannabes of the grow-your-own-herbs community. Currently numbering me.

“Do something today that your future self will thank you for.” (Sean Patrick Flanery)

This morning was our last swim workout class with our coach, and now valued friend, who is moving off the island at month’s end. “Coach Harry” has taught all but two of our ten grandchildren (and countless others) to swim, and has trained me in swim-fitness and technique for close to a decade. Generations of families have Harry in their mental speed-dial when it comes to advice, encouragement, discipline and dedication to the sport that has been a mainstay throughout my life. Leader of the Friday morning ocean swim, an “institution” at our Hawaiian home, Harry has pointed out dolphins, rays, reef sharks, urchins, eels, countless fish and shelled creatures that had escaped our less-trained eyes. He has also shown, by his conduct in and out of the water, what it means to be a teacher and a leader. His leaving is a happy-sad occasion for sure. Happy that Coach Harry has new adventures and opportunities ahead; sad that this wonderful person and teacher may no longer introduce my grandchildren to the wonders of the water.

There’s much more that I could say about Harry, but the quality I wish to focus on as of this writing is “integrity” or “hō’ohanohano”: “to conduct yourself with distinction, honor, and integrity in all that you do”. Hawaiian Convention Center (HCC) blog. Harry is a living embodiment of that quality.

However, integrity was not always a priority for me. I recently saw an Instagram post from a fellow Edmontonian with whom I swam competitively as a teen. This in turn reminded me of the last time I spoke to Barb, in 2014, after not having seen her for several decades. Imagine my embarrassment when she gleefully shared her clearest memory of our teenage years spent training together. Assigned to do warm-up laps of various strokes, Barb recounted how I would swim part-way down a lane, check to see if the coach was distracted, and then quickly switch into the returning lane to cut off some of the assigned distance. No wonder I never really distinguished myself as a competitive swimmer!

Needless to say, my future self was not pleased to be remembered so ignomiously! As fate would have it, that encounter with Barb, a half dozen years ago, came at a time when I was doing a radical re-write of my life. I was just recovering from a severe case of pneumonia that had, among other things, effectively curtailed my tendency to plow through life without stopping to smell the roses. In the weeks and months that I spent recovering my stamina and equanimity, I reset my priorities to better reflect the qualities, like integrity, that I had previously understood theoretically, at best. Indeed, the experience with serious illness set my life on a trajectory that continues to this day, and which I have come to define as “leading an examined life”. I was motivated to never again get to such an unhealthy, unbalanced state.

It’s no surprise to me that Hawaïi, Land of Aloha, should exemplify so many of the qualities that I now strive to embody. I found inspiration in Rosa Say’s book, “Managing with Aloha”, which explores nineteen different Hawaiian values, (many of which I’ve explored in this blog) and asserts that: “If they are to prosper with honor and integrity, managers [and people] everywhere must proactively perpetuate this culture as a way of business [and everyday] life”…”In Aloha we are held accountable, and working true to our values, we ourselves become better”.

This sentiment is shared with the HCC, whose blogs have expanded on some of the Aloha Spirit’s core values for me. They seek to integrate the theoretical or intangible qualities attributed to Aloha with the Hawaiian cultural, social, educational and business spheres, much as I am trying to do here. Their blog dedicated to hō’ohanohano addresses the feelings I had about having cheated on my swim workout so long ago:

“Integrity is that unique ability to not only recognize that you have made a mistake or gone off-course, but also to accept full responsibility for it. There are two separate steps on the integrity ladder, and one cannot occur without the other. Ho`ohanohano then goes a step further and shows us that we not only need to accept responsibility, but to offer solutions, alternatives, and options to rectify the situation and make it better than it was before. This is the full meaning of living with personal integrity.”

These and other resources have had a profound influence on my understanding of Aloha in general, and of integrity in specific. The Aloha Spirit (more on that later) is not just a concept or theory, its very much a way of being. A way that promises better outcomes than my previous way had been. Armed with this new understanding, I aim to embody hō’ohanohano in such a way that satisfies my future self, if no one else.

No more swim short-cuts for me…

PS This is the thirtieth anniversary of my first Yogini at Large blog. Over half-way to my goal. And so much more to explore! From my freshly swabbed lanai, no less. Doesn’t get any better!

“No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good examples are followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.” ~ Amelia Earhart

There are two small, drab-colored birds perched on a branch of the lime tree across the lanai from me. Nestled among the bright green leaves sits the bulge of a very ambitious, woven-palm-frond nest, about the size of a small melon, which curiosity tempts me to peek inside for signs of baby-bird-life. I resist the temptation, and let my gaze linger on the fluttery activity of the mature birds. I never see them enter or leave the nest, but I know they are wary of me, the one who occasionally pulls a ripe lime from a branch near their labor-intensive aviary.

Historically, we have contracted our property managers to knock down nests from the nooks and crannies of our cottage eaves, where, left unaddressed, birds will leave a mess of droppings and debris. But I have no heart for destroying the judiciously constructed nest in the lime tree, and this streak of empathy could be the result of having just read about kindness in the Daily Om blog to which I subscribed at the beginning of COVID. (I highly recommend it.) Sparing the nest and the potential lives of the eggs inside is a very small thing, I know, but, as the saying goes, charity begins at home. Though scrubbing up bird droppings from the deck suggests that “no good deed goes unpunished”, it also seems a small price to pay for letting the birds nest in peace, as it were.

With “kindness” as this week’s theme, an internet search yielded the Hawaiian word lokomaika’i. The Hawaiian Convention Center (HCC) blog provided me with insight as to how this value translates into civic life. The mission of the HCC reads quite differently from its counterparts in Vancouver, Edmonton and other mainland convention centers that I surveyed briefly:

“From beginning…to end – from meeting you with lei and aloha, to coordinating with your team and providing the best solutions for your event while brightening your day with an island treat or experience, to our aloha and mahalo goodbyes – we unselfishly give and share what we have to offer, and extend our talents with friendship and warm-heartedness…

 “An essential element in helping us to accomplish this is lokomaika`i.  The translation for lokomaika`i is to always act with generosity and kindness toward others. Lokomaika`i is an extension of aloha and love.”

To me this is simply an example of Hawaiian culture and tradition translating into a business setting — a business serving other businesses while setting an example of kindness and generosity that they hope, as Earhart wrote, will have a domino effect. It is not the fault of other North American centers that they don’t speak the language of “aloha and love” that is peculiar to Hawaïi. Even here in the islands it is often more of an ideal than a practice, but it is only by putting them into practice, as the HCC is doing, that one can experience the true meaning and value of those ancient Hawaiian ideals.

Reflecting on the aforementioned ideals led to something of an epiphany this morning. (Now to see if I can put it into words). It dawned on me that kindness, like empathy, compassion, love and other lauded qualities, is a power that, like a river, flows through me as much as from me. If I offer a kind word or deed to somebody, if I am more generous and forgiving, I am channeling a certain energy that is a fundamental part of me. It’s not something external to me that I can acquire and then pass on to others like food or water. Or indeed, money. It’s more of an energy than emanates from a place deep within me, a place that connects me to the source of life itself. If I block it, if I decide not to say or do what my heart or conscience prompts me to do, the world will be none the wiser — but also that much poorer — for it. For some reason this minor epiphany struck me as incredibly meaningful.

Here I am with this capacity, this unlimited potential for kindness, love, empathy etc. that wells up from an infinite source within me, and yet, a part of me can so easily block that energy. Why would I do that? Why would I deem some people worthy of my benevolent attentions and deem others deserving of criticism, suspicion or enmity? Martha Beck, a noted life coach, explains that this pattern originates in our lizard brain, or limbic system, a primitive survival instinct that sees the world in terms of “lack-and-attack”, of scarcity and vulnerability. Like training wheels on a bike, the part of me that fears for my safety and survival, and which served an important purpose in more primitive times, can be seen for the evolutionary throwback that it is, when I lead an examined life. When I step away from my knee-jerk reactions and just observe what’s happening, I reclaim my power of choice. With that power I can choose to get out of my own way, and open the flow of love and aloha that is everyone’s birthright. Like the mission statement of the HCC, may the impact of my life be to spread the roots of lokomaika’i, kindness and generosity to the people (and birds) around me.

Now to go swab the lanai off.

After a busy Memorial Day weekend, I was very much at a loss for a topic for this week’s blog. Putting it off until the eleventh hour was only increasing my anxiety. So, after a brief interlude in which I consumed the free world’s supply of pistachios, I came up with a way out of this “death by pistachio-procrastination”. In the words of the great Nike ad campaign:

Just. Do. It.

Or, to put it more poetically, Nānā i ke kumu. Look to your source.

My source is the well of daily experiences from which I draw inspiration and insight, combined with the spiritual practices through which I expand my self-awareness and increase my sense of personal agency. This is similar to what author and educator Mary Kawena Pukui intended when she authored a three volume series dedicated to Hawaiian families and children. The books were written to compensate for foreign influences that have compromised the ancient cultural practices, concepts and beliefs of this once-isolated island people. The results of these influences have been a plethora of problems running from unemployment to domestic violence, to a loss of cultural identity, and the attendant decline in physical and mental well-being. Pukui believed that these and other related problems might best be addressed by a return to the wisdom and dignity of their Hawaiian cultural roots. In volume 1 of Nānā I Ke Kumu (1978) the theme is explained thus:

“This is the value of personal well-being. Literally translated, Nānā i ke kumu means “look to your source.” Seek authenticity, and be true to who you are. Get grounded within your sense of self. Keep your Aloha at the surface of what you do daily, and celebrate those things that define your personal truths. To value Nānā i ke kumu is to practice Mahalo for your sense of self: Do you really know how extraordinary and naturally wise you are? Find out. Become more self-aware.”

Last Saturday I participated in an initiative that illustrates the value of Hawaiians returning to their cultural roots, as pertains to growing and sharing their food. When COVID forced restaurants and hotels to close over a year ago, it virtually froze the market for locally grown fruits and vegetables, along with the small-scale fish, poultry, pork and beef industry on the Big Island. As their customer accounts dried up, farmers, fishermen and ranchers had no way to make a living, and were left to feed their harvests to their livestock. In response to this problem, Mike Hodson, proprietor of WOW Tomato Farms and president of the Waimea-based Hawaiian Homesteaders’ Association, sprang into action. He created a grassroots program of food distribution connecting producers directly to consumers.

Years earlier, Mike and his wife, Tricia, had a vision of bringing farming back to the community. But they wanted to teach it in a way their people best learned: Not from a manual, but through hands-on practice, on their own soil. Told by agriculture experts that it was impossible to grow organic tomatoes in Waimea, Mike set out, in 2007, to prove them wrong. And he did just that. Spectacularly.

When his own greenhouse-grown, organic tomato business proved wildly successful (hence the name WOW Farms) he started a program called Farming for the Working Class, where other Hawaiian families could learn to farm again.

With funding from First Nations Development Institute, “the project was up and running, and true to Hodson’s vision, the impact on the Hawaiian people has been three-fold…benefiting farming, families and the future.

“Through the project, families grow food to feed their families. They generate extra income, and they trade food with other families, thus reducing their own expenses. In addition, Hawaii gets a source of locally grown food, which has become rare in the state, as 90% of food is shipped in from the mainland or Japan.

As for the future:

“By 2016 the project had increased the amount of farmed land by 50% [from 2 to 45 out of 115 lots] with hopes to increase it to 75% [in years to come]. Families are generating additional revenue. Income levels are rising, and Hawaii is able to reap locally grown food. Kids growing up in Hawaii have options for staying on the island and building a life. People are returning to their culture of self-sufficiency and self-determination. Families are seeing the therapeutic effect of farming, reconnecting with the earth and working with the soil. And the concept of community – extended beyond the family environment – is being embraced.” (Posted on the First Nations’ Indian Giver website, March 18, 2016. Tag Archives: Mike Hodson).

All of this was at risk of shutting down when COVID came to town. Enter Mike and his food distribution initiative. All of the families whom he had introduced to farming (and more) were recruited to sell their products, at fair market value, direct to consumers. The latter, who paid a nominal fee to receive a bag of locally-grown produce and proteins once a week, became what Mike called “micro-donors”, making them part of a collaborative solution to the supply and demand problems that COVID caused. Along with grants and donations from government agencies or others philanthropies, the initiative distributes about five thousand pounds of food, at a cost of around ten thousand dollars a week to approximately three hundred and seventy-five families. As of this past Saturday the program has been running for fifty-eight weeks, and will continue as long as there is a need.

Though Hodson was speaking of “Farmers for the Working Class” when he made the following comment, I can’t think of a better way to sum up what he, his wife and family, and other volunteers have done since the pandemic began:

“It’s bringing us back full circle,” said Hodson. “Being a whole community is in our DNA. It’s the way our culture is supposed to be.”

Isn’t that the also case for you and me?

“When you come to the edge of all the light that you know, and it’s time to take a step into the darkness of the unknown, you must remember one of two things. Either you will be given some solid ground on which to stand, or you will be taught to fly.” (Patrick Overton)

The other day I watched a tiny green gecko, perhaps only hours old, as it inched its way along the back of the deck chair across from me. Arriving at the edge of the chair, it craned its neck from side to side, up and down, taking in the enormity of its surroundings and calculating its next move. Then with a sudden burst of energy it leapt across a “chasm” almost three times its length to land silently on the arm of the next chair. Maybe its first leap since leaving the confines of its egg, the lanai, and the chair leg. What compels it to go or do wherever it goes or does? Geckos are thick on the ground in this part of the island. No doubt most — or all — are focused on survival, and I sometimes watch their lizardly antics with amusement and curiosity. But the message that this smallest of geckos suggested to me was about the courage one needs to take a leap of faith. And of course, the strength and determination one needs to complete it.

So it was that koa — bravery, and ikaika — strength, became my Hawaiian words of the week. Every new venture requires not only inspiration, resourcefulness and preparation, but also the grit and determination to see it through. It can be as small as learning how to host a zoom chat (me), or as large as learning how to free dive in the great blue deep (my hubby). As with my tiny gecko, momentum is needed to break out of my comfort zone and take the next leap into the unknown.

What I like about researching these Hawaiian words for strength and courage is learning the history and context that make their meanings more accessible to me. Today, a brief history of the Acacia koa tree opened up new insights into ancient Hawaiian life. I read that koa wood got its name from the warriors whom King Kamehameha employed to unite the Hawaiian islands. These warriors created beautiful and durable canoes and weapons from the wood that is still plentiful on the Big Island. This wood then became synonymous with the warriors themselves, and it became known as koa. Brave. Bold. Valiant. Fearless.

A search for associations with ikaika yielded: “To strive, make a great effort, work hard, encourage, animate, strengthen, fortify, try, strive, strain.” I could see some of these qualities in the formidable efforts of my tiny gecko, and why Hawaiians would give the name Ikaika to inspire such qualities in their young offspring.

Where in my life do I need ikaika and koa? Biking on the Queen K highway? Check. Swimming in choppy ocean waves? Check. As a spiritual warrior, facing the mirror that life holds up to me in the people and situations I meet? Check mate.

My spiritual studies have shown me unequivocally what kind of courage and strength of character it takes to go toe to toe with my own ego. Strength to resist going down the rabbit hole of triggered — but misguided — emotions. Courage to let go of ideas about who and what I think I am, or need to be, in order to survive in the eyes of other people. Or in my own self-image. And conversely, to let go of how others need to be in order to be acceptable to me. Courage to own the consequences of past actions and strength to set new trajectories based on the lessons of my personal history. To quote Padmasambhava:

“If you want to know your past life, look at your present condition.
If you want to know your future life, look at your present actions.”

What choices am I willing to make, what actions am I able to take in response to these inner and outer “growth opportunities”?

More than any gecko, today’s writing is inspired by my friend and rad stand-up paddler (SUP), Jenny Kalmbach, who is featured in Garmin’s newly released children’s book called “Women of Adventure: Being Brave in a Big World”. It features six women who have defied stereotypes, surmounted obstacles and excelled in their chosen pursuits. Koa warriors all, their accounts spark dialogue between parents and children, both inspiring young readers to pursue their own goals and dreams, and increasing awareness, in simple terms, of global and local issues. In Jenny’s case, the issue was the vast amount of plastic she encountered floating in the ocean while she was SUP training and competing around the globe. To help address this situation, she and a fellow female paddler collaborated on a documentary based on their 300 mile SUP odyssey traversing the Hawaiian island chain, raising awareness of plastic pollution during various stops along the way.

With their sponsor Garmin, Jenny and each of the women featured in “Being Brave…” have chosen charities that are meaningful to them, and among which all of the proceeds from the book sales will be divided equally. Each in their own unique way these brave young women are “being the change” they wish to see in the world today. That’s as hopeful as sign that the future is in good hands as I can find.

Now for a bit of levity, how much koa could Ikaika cut if Ikaika could cut koa?

“A ’ohe hana nui ke alu ’ia” (No work is too big when shared by all.)

There’s a lot of give-and-take on the Big Island. Often I’ll arrive at the beach to see a big bunch of bananas suspended on a peg for all to help themselves. No note. No “honesty pot” to leave money in exchange for what we take. Depending on the season, one may find a bowl of tangerines, lemons, limes, papayas or pineapples, and even coconuts on offer to all who walk by. Yesterday I came home to a small clump of avocados placed in the middle of our walkway, just inside the gate. I suspect they were put there by a Hawaiian friend, an artist, known for his iconic paintings of island life, and who knows that I can always use and share avocados, a favorite fruit. Such as in this morning’s smoothie. So my first idea for this week’s theme was to find a Hawaiian word for this system of sharing whatever surplus one has, no strings attached. But rather, as internet surfing is wont to produce, the word that came up in my web search was “Laulima”. With a slightly different meaning than the Hawaiian verb for sharing that I had intended to focus on, Laulima nonetheless presented itself as a worthy topic. According to the Hawaiian Convention Center Blog (HCC), whose motto is “Where Business and Aloha Meet”, “Laulima is a pillar principle within the Hawaiian community”:

“In order to achieve our goals, working together is imperative. Teamwork is stressed. Individual achievement is encouraged, but success is found in the contributions of many hands working together. ’Laulima’ embodies the essence of what it means to live aloha.

 “As it applies today, regardless of what your job entails, we are all a vital part of our collective success...’Laulima’ transcends into our work, family, social and economic behaviors. Placing emphasis on ’Laulima’ in any situation will yield great benefits.”  

In the English language I believe this translates to “many hands make light work”.

Since living aloha is my goal, laulima seemed a natural focus for this week. It felt good to pay forward my friend’s generosity by offering avocados to the people around me. And this in turn reminded me of a principle I learned in life coaching called “living your legacy”. The principle explains that, wittingly or otherwise, I live — and therefore leave — a legacy with every choice I make, every action I take. I may never learn to converse in the Hawaiian language, with its monosyllabic strings of vowels and apostrophes, but I can learn to live it.

Living the principle of ohana, for instance, means seeing the people around me as nieces or nephews, uncles or aunties. As extended family. In so doing, I am more apt to lend a hand when I perceive a need, however peripherally. Practicing kuleana, I take responsibility for the environment, the communal “back yard” of our planet, and that means participating in community initiatives like reducing the amount of single use plastic waste we create. My friend at Upcycle Hawaïi recently posted the statistic that they’d diverted over 30,000 square feet and just under 500 pounds of plastic out of the landfill sine January 2018. Again, this is a team effort between mostly volunteers who work together for the benefit of the entire island. (I’m still looking into ways to recycle paper, and of course, keeping my compostables out of the landfill). Hō’ihi also echoes the need to respect others’ space and dignity, helping them live their best lives, as my friend is doing with her ’Tiny House’ initiatives that recruit students and even potential homeowners to help rebuild the community devastated by Kilauea.

Laulima asks me to recognize, respect and respond in some hands-on way to the needs of the greater community, wherever I happen to be. Indeed, such a principle is alive and well in other Indigenous cultures. In South Africa, “Shosholoza”, originally a call-and-response work song introduced by Zimbabwean gold and diamond miners, speaks of the solidarity and teamwork needed to transcend adversity. Loosely translated as “going forward together”, Nelson Mandela once described Shosholoza as “a song that compares the apartheid struggle to the motion of an oncoming train”. It is now considered by many to be the unofficial anthem of South Africa, and is frequently chanted during sporting events and public actions. What we can learn from this in today’s Western cultures is that we cannot go forward without lending a hand to those among us who are struggling to keep up, those less fortunate in their access to education, careers, health care, or housing. Quite often they are the people and cultures that can show us a better way. I’ll buy a ticket on that train.

P.S. This is my 26th blog post, meaning I am half way to my goal. Yay me. Mahalo nui loa for coming along for this particular ride.

I’m full of ideas for this blog post, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Several themes have come to mind this week, starting with an exploration of “mana”, (more on that later, maybe), followed by “hō’ihi” (respect, reverence) closely related to “gratitude” (which undoubtedly has a Hawaiian word for it, too). Oh. That was easier than I thought: “mahalo” is the Hawaiian word for gratitude. Mahalo ke Akua. Or “Thanks be to God”. Wow. I’m learning all kinds of new stuff. Also the term for procrastinating, or “hō’opane’e a’e i ko”. Which I’m getting rather good at.

The chief reason for my hō’opane’e a’e i ko is that I’m concerned I won’t be able to do justice to any of the Hawaiian terms I am learning. And it means a great deal to me that I learn the terms that make Hawaiian culture so compelling to me, and understand how to make these qualities my “way in the world” when I leave the Big Island. Which is why “hō’ihi” (respect) comes out on top for this week’s blog.

Luana Kawa’a, a radio personality and specialist in Hawaiian culture explains hō’ihi as follows:

“One of the protocols we observe in our culture is hō’ihi, respect, especially for our elders. When we look a little deeper we realize that the word hō’ihi comes from the root word, ‘ihi, which means sacred, holy, majestic, dignified; treated with reverence.

 “Hō'ihi is an important Hawaiian value. It is exemplified in our interactions with each other. We teach our keiki to hō'ihi their elders, to be respectful of adults, teachers and leaders in our community. We teach them to show hō'ihi for each other in school, on the playground, at home. We make sure they understand the importance of showing hō'ihi to their kūpuna [elders].”

Recent events on the world stage, and in my small corner of it, have brought the values of respect and reverence, which to me are closely aligned with gratitude, to the forefront of my mind. With Mother’s Day just behind us (or at least it will be, by the time you read this), it’s a good time to express respect for the mothers in our lives, biological and otherwise. To recognize their efforts to nourish, teach, inspire and lead. And to do this in some tangible way. Hence this blog about respecting my elders, in every sense of the word.

My own mother was raised in her family’s hotel while her mother, a relatively young widow, was preoccupied with keeping the family’s business interests alive. On the Canadian prairies. During the Dust Bowl ’30s. No small feat. For lack of her mother’s attention, Mom had to depend on the examples of her friends’ families re: how to keep a house and raise a family. I stand on her shoulders just as my children stand on mine. For better or worse. As Paramahansa Yogananda would say, “I will take only the good from [my childhood] experiences, and preserve only the good in my memory.” These memories are precious to me, as was my mother.

Throughout my life there have also been teachers, role models and mentors who fit the description of mother in one way or another. In particular, Swami Radhananda, the late president of Yasodhara Ashram where I studied and trained as a teacher for many years, has had a profound influence on who I became as a wife and mother. Although we ultimately chose different paths, she was — first and foremost — a spiritual guide and mother to me. As they teach in Hawaïi, I have utmost respect and reverence for elders such as her, who took on the responsibility of preserving the quality, essence and integrity of their respective wisdom traditions.

A young Hawaiian friend, named Ihilani, has recently taken on the task of teaching me more about the “old Hawaïi”. She has explained how Hawaiian names, like certain Hawaiian terms, are freighted with deeper meaning. Her own name is an abbreviated combination of three terms that express the mission her elders gave her at birth: “Hō” is used to convert Hawaiian based nouns like “Ihi” (respect) into verbs meaning respecting, revering. “Lani” means “heavenly splendour”, “God”, “creation”, or other words connoting divinity. Thus her duty, since birth, has been to bridge the temporal with the spiritual, the secular with the sublime. To embody the highest and best qualities she can offer herself and others. And our planet.

Respecting, and revering, or “showing gratitude towards” are ideally practiced whenever Hawaiians enter the different domains of nature, the rivers, forests and oceans where our fellow creatures make their homes. A traditional chant, “E hō mai”, introduced by kūpuna Edith K. Kanakā’ole, is something done before entering the ocean or hiking the trails of the Big Island. The kūpuna sing this chant to ask permission to enter the ocean, and ask that all be granted safe returns.

Such rituals or traditions may seem superstitious — or even superfluous — to our modern sensibilities, but to perform them makes me stop and think, however briefly, about what I’m doing. The kūpuna make us more conscious of the many ways we humans impact our planet. Wherever we reside, we are an intricate part of, and responsible for respecting the ecosystems that we share with plants and animals. The kūpuna show us how the sunscreens we use can drastically effect the coral reefs. How the mud we track out of the forests can affect agriculture as far away as the mainland. Ultimately, we learn that we will reap what we sow. From that perspective, hō’ihi seems like the right way to go.

E hö mai chant: (Edith K. Kanakā’ole)

E hō mai ka ʻike mai luna mai e
(Grant us the knowledge from above)
0 nā mea huna noʻeau no nā mele e
(Concerning the hidden wisdom of the songs)
E hō mai
(Grant us)
E hō mai
(Grant us)
E hō mai e.
(Grant us these things.)

“Pass the puck, not the buck.” (said no one, but it bears considering)

The other day I was talking with our adult daughter (via Bluetooth, of course) as she drove her son to hockey practice, back home in B.C. COVID rules dictate that our grandson change into his gear in the car (thankfully it was a cool but dry PNW day) and this reminded me, yet again, of how much our lives have changed in the past twelve plus months. Though so much has been circumscribed by the dreadful COVID virus, the coaches and parents have gone to great lengths to sustain Canada’s national winter game for its keen young players.

In turn, thoughts of hockey reminded me of my passion for the Edmonton Oilers hockey club during their dynasty in the 1980s, when history-making Wayne Gretzky led the team. What stood out about the “Great Gretzky” was his ability to anticipate where the puck was going, particularly in a face-off, and his uncanny accuracy in shooting and passing. He is quoted as saying, “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.” And he did just that. It was a pleasure to watch him streak down the ice, position himself where the puck was going to be, and, often as not, pass it to another player to give them the glory of scoring. This strategy of passing the puck struck me as the antithesis of an all-too-common practice of passing the buck, not taking responsibility for one’s mistakes or misdeeds, and/or making the consequences someone else’s problem.

When I first started blogging I had two objectives. One was to promote the idea of leading an examined life, consistently reflecting in one’s journal and being accountable for one’s impact on the planet. Without the latter, without a practice of tracking my footprints, I can’t possibly achieve my second objective which is to set out my personal “rules to live by”, my values and beliefs that stand up to the scrutiny the Buddha taught via his instruction to “…deliberate and analyze, and if it agrees with reason and conduces to the good of one and all, then believe it and live up to it.”

One of these beliefs is that of taking responsibility for my thoughts and feelings, words and deeds, and for the effects of these on the people and environment around me. In Hawaiian culture, the word for this practice is “kuleana”:

“Kuleana is the Hawaiian word meaning ‘responsibility’. Kuleana encourages us to be accountable for all that we do. It is the ’ability to respond’ to whatever is happening. Those who live the value of kuleana know that their happiness is dependent on what happens inside of them, not outside. They choose how they react to circumstances, not let the circumstances determine how they feel. When we live with kuleana, we do our part to take care of ourselves, our communities, and the environment.” (”Naturally Hawaïi” website)

To modify Gretzky’s comment, it could be said that good kuleana is about cleaning up my own back yard. And great kuleana is about helping my neighbours clean up theirs. And so on down the street, until everybody’s yard is clean. Granted, this sounds like a pipe dream, so I asked myself how this could apply to me, in “real time”. In what way could I use my skills and resources to the advantage of the people around me?

I look to other people’s examples for ideas. One friend is building a house on wheels, a “Tiny House”, as it is called, for Habitat for Humanity, to house families displaced by the December 2020 eruption of Kilauea. Another friend has created a plastics recycling business called “Upcycle Hawaii”, that, among other initiatives, regularly volunteers to clean up plastic debris from Kamilo Bay on the south shore of the island, which is dubbed one of the dirtiest beaches in the world. And yet another friend has helped create a sustainable rum ‘agricole’ business (aptly named ‘Kuleana’) that has revived the almost-obsolete Hawaiian tradition of extracting fresh sugarcane juice to distill into their rum products. Only 3% of the world’s rum is made in this ‘artisanal’ way, which both provides jobs and preserves a colorful piece of Hawaïian history.

An idea that has been percolating around in my own mind is to get more involved in paper “repurposing”. Since the Big Island does not recycle the reams of copier papers etc. that end up in the trash heap, I’m wondering how best to address this recycling deficit. Having been to Egypt in the past half-decade I am painfully aware of what happens when garbage takes on a life of its own. A case in point, there is an actual “Garbage City”, formally known as Manshiyat Naser, in Cairo. You can google it. It is a place where the pooorest-of-the-poor inhabitants are trying to create an economy out of the things that other people throw away. That’s what I’d like to do with paper.

Whether it’s by something as small as lending a shoulder to a person burdened with worry, or aiming for something more tangible, like housing for displaced families, one can practice kuleana wherever one happens to be. As Walt Disney once said: “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”

Or, as my mother used to say: “Do something, even if it’s wrong.” I have a wealth of experience with the latter. Witness my pine needle faux pas with the compost. Which is when the Kuleana rum comes in handy…