With Love and Aloha - Day 18

I now have three other posts that I am working on. In the past four days my life has only continued to improve in ways that I never thought imaginable in such a short time. For the first time in as far back as I can remember clearly, life is good.

I recently told you about the energy here in Hawaii. That post was really only the tip of the iceberg that I’m experiencing. It is all so intensely overwhelming I’d be foolish to suggest I understand even a small portion of it. I will likely spend the rest of my life trying to fully understand the complete power of this place and the impacts it is having on my life at this point.

I am a social being at heart. I’ve probably said it before but the more dangerous person I can be with is myself and that is very true. I need other people in my life if I want to be healthy.

This is why when I came to Hawaii things got so much worse initially. I found the perfect way to hide my shame and embarrassment from the people that I care about, who care about me. Then when I needed them the most they weren’t there. No, that’s wrong, it was me that wasn’t there.

While I isolated myself from those closest to me, I still needed a connection with other people. I found the perfect solution in the internet and hook up app culture. I could remain relatively anonymous and it was almost better because when I had things I needed to say to someone I had no reason to censor myself. I unloaded my entire predicament on more than one unsuspecting tourist when all they asked was, “How’s it going?”

There comes a point in pretty much every conversation I have with people here in which I’m asked why I chose to come to Oahu. I always say the same thing, “I didn’t pick Hawaii, Hawaii called for me. I just happened to answer when it called. In fact, this is the last place on earth I wanted to come. I actually had never stepped foot on Oahu before I moved here.” This is usually met with a disbelief that is completely warranted.

At the end of my time in Seattle my life was so out of control I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I will never forget lying on a bed in a Seattle sex club just moments after my heart should have exploded. I spoken aloud to no one, “Why am I not dead? Why won’t you just let me die? What is it you want me to do?!”

I was angry and confused and hurting, I had overdosed. I just slammed nearly two grams of meth. I hadn’t considered that it might kill me until after I had done it, all I wanted was enough to stop myself from feeling. I wanted so badly to run away from my problems that I nearly lost my life and inflicted the ones who love me with an even greater pain. But I was still there.

That is when I continued my conversation with that which is greater than myself, “Fine. You don’t want to let me die for some reason, so be it. If you want me alive so badly than you make the decisions. I won’t fight you anymore. I forfeit my life, such as it is, to you.”

I then laid my head back on the mattress and fell asleep. Three days later I was told to go to Hawaii. It wasn’t a voice in my head or some giant neon sign with a dancing hula girl. I just focused all of my thoughts on filtering out the noise of my life and it became clear. I resented the decision, but how I felt was irrelevant.

Before just now I’ve only told that story to a handful of people. I was always shocked to find the genuine interest and concern I received from total strangers. These people could have just as easily hit the block button and gotten back to why they were really there. Instead they inquired further, tried to understand where I was really coming from and offer assistance in some way that might actually motivate positive change in my life.

Why would they do this? What drives a person to take in a self admitted homeless drug addict? Or give that same person a job? When you look at the situation objectively logic and self preservation demands that you distance yourself as much as possible. Why would we knowingly put ourselves at risk, when personally there is little to gain if anything at all?

It comes down to the very thing that separates us from animals, our humanity. This strange characteristic of mankind brings us ideals, such as charity, empathy and compassion, that are diametrically opposed to the natural order. But human nature itself stands contrary to the natural order. In fact what makes us human is the desire to stand in opposition to our predisposition for egocentrism.

For centuries Hawaiians have expressed this concept in a word that has since become synonymous with the islands themselves, Aloha. Many people believe that aloha is simply a greeting used to replace hello or goodbye. While it is used as such, it’s true meaning goes far deeper than what you see on the surface, much in the same way the true depths of Mauna Kea and Haleakala lie hidden beneath the waves of the Pacific.

Aloha was not always used as a form of salutation, that was largely incorporated by western civilization. Wikipedia defines it as “affection, peace, compassion and mercy.” It is with good reason that Hawaii is known as the Aloha State. More than anything it’s a way of life. You don’t say Aloha, you have it inside you. You live Aloha.

I learned all of this shortly after arriving in Honolulu, but it wasn’t until this morning that I actually understood what it meant. I wasn’t meditating on the concept or even thinking about it specifically. I was actually thinking about love.

My father posted a picture of his dog Katie, who unfortunately has passed on. Modern interpretations of the word love fail to express how my dad cares for his dog. The words Shakespeare gave us from Romeo and Juliette may not even be enough. But since the english language offers no such word to define this emotion I’ll use what we see most commonly. My dad loves Katie.

In a comment my step mother posted in response she said, “Loved my girl!” I knew exactly what she meant, but for some reason it didn’t sit right with me. It wasn't until after almost a mile of walking that I put my finger on it, it seemed so final.

I was reminded of the Arcade Fire song “Afterlife” in which we’re asked the question, “when love is gone, where does it go?” This is something that I struggled with a lot after my experience with the whale. He was the first person I had seriously considered as someone I could live the rest of my life with. Despite the unfortunate circumstances in which life afforded us, we seemed to have an instant connection that made any obstacles put before us seem irrelevant. That is until a combination of my rampant drinking and unchecked insecurities led to a nuclear dissolution of the relationship.

The ending came so abruptly in a way that I was unprepared for all the unresolved emotions. Most difficult of these was what to do with what used to be feelings of love. It took a lot of soul searching and time to understand that those feelings didn’t actually change and that I will carry them with me the rest of my life. Perhaps that’s the definition of true love. Or perhaps it’s a sign of mental illness. I’m not so sure there’s a difference.

thought for nearly an hour about all of these things and much more before I posted my reply:

“Love should never be bound to the mortal constraints of our physical existence. Maintaining it in the present tense gives us the power to transcend states of being we have yet to understand. Then we never have to lose the ones we love. In that spirit, much love and Aloha from across the Pacific:

And aloha? Where did that come from? Since I’ve been here I’ve never adopted the term into my vernacular. Yet there it was and even stranger to me it made sense. It was as if Laka had taken the pen from my hand and keyed it in, not just to what I was typing but wrote the word on my soul.

I have spent most of today thinking about the concept. The more I contemplated upon the idea the further away I seemed to get from it. Then it hit me, it’s true beauty comes in its simplicity. Aloha isn’t something that you can understand, it’s something you live.

I’ve been here for nearly four months now. I’ve had days where I felt like I owned the island itself and others where it was painfully apparent that I had only that which I carried with me. I don’t regret giving up the reigns of my life. The longer I’m here the more I realize I needed Hawaii in my life. I needed to understand what it means to live Aloha.