Our island is a tiny canoe on a huge ocean planet, where currents and winds change very quickly. A third culture child, raised for a global culture, with no aina except the planet itself, I came home to Kauai in
Our island is a tiny canoe on a huge ocean planet, where currents and winds change very quickly. A third culture child, raised for a global culture, with no aina except the planet itself, I came home to Kauai in 1971.
Thirteen different cultures gave me many teachers and ways of learning. Each had valuable lessons and gifts. The best: “There are many different fruit on the same tree of wisdom.” We all listen and look through different cultures, yet each has value.
Come on a journey to visit other ways of understanding our future. New ideas, new resources and new people showing up to kokua. Learning together, exploring new ways to think about our problems, our resources and our future. Like hooponopono, we can take each idea into our hearts and minds, with respect for its value, and see how it can help to build Kauai’s future … safer and more sustainable.
To explore community wisdom, talents and teachers, we need new ways of listening and talking. There are big challenges our parents never knew. And unknown ones, for our children. We have the resources we need, in common, if only we will listen and share.
The world is changing faster than ever. Faster than we are. Decision-making far away, beyond our reach, has huge impacts on us, here at home. We, and our leaders, have the hard job of reinventing the way we do business and the way think.
Changing our habits of thinking is even harder than changing the way we eat, exercise or manage our money. The way we have done things in the past may not be good enough to produce the results we need. Fortunately, asking new questions may lead to better answers.
At Governor Ariyoshi’s conference, held to discuss the year 2000, I was 22.
In the blink of time, it is 50 years ago. Jim Dator, a professor of futuristics at UH, said, “ Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous.” Wrap your mind around that.
We never imagined Facebook, Google, WiFi or Bluetooth in 1971.
This island planet belongs to the future, to our children and future generations. As we use the resources needed to sustain us and future generations, it is will be necessary to hui together to create new ways of providing for all generations.
Share your wisdom. A hui hou.
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Virginia Beck has lived on Kauai since 1971. One of KCC’s first RN graduates, she was a nurse practitioner here, and in the Stanford community, a Certified Trager® Practitioner, and a childbirth educator. A rich educational experience in European countries, Pakistan and the Mainland were good preparation for our multicultural chop suey Kauai life. A wellness coach and writer, at Healthy by Design Hawaii, she helps her clients erase stress and design “Lives they Love.” Info: (808) 635-5618.
