Back to the island this new year after holidays with family between the Seattle area and Vancouver, I felt my senses come alive from the Northwest weather we experienced. The Christmas card outdoor scene was the opposite of the warmth
Back to the island this new year after holidays with family between the Seattle area and Vancouver, I felt my senses come alive from the Northwest weather we experienced. The Christmas card outdoor scene was the opposite of the warmth with loved ones. There was the chill of snow falling on cedars and hoarfrost coating the scene toward the Olympic Peninsula, plus cold mists swirling in pockets.
In the 24-hour period of settling back home, I took deep breaths of fragrant, flower- and greenery-infused air, and noted the familiar crow and cluck of our neighborhood “cheekens” (wild jungle fowl). I reveled in the feeling of warm sand between my toes, and sunshine and cooling breeze playing on my skin, enjoyed the chill shock of high waves “va-vooming” my ankles and calves during a beach walk to get earth-connected. I appreciated the help and friendliness of the check-out clerks while re-stocking the refrigerator. I let my eyes feast on the backdrop of inland views of Kauai, our mountains, standing out like promises of all the happiest high moments of our lives.
Here it is, a lucky 11 days into this new year of 2016 already, and I haven’t yet greeted all friends, associates and newer acquaintances — not to mention my readership — with an echo of what we raised a cup to on New Year’s Eve: health, happiness, economic stability, and enjoyment of the process of this journey of our individual lives, wherever we choose to have them take us. So, hau oli makahiki hou — be happy in this Makahiki season. That’s the wish, dear readers, and the challenge.
Choices. New Year’s resolutions. Setting a path, a goal, and working toward our choices, day by day, is what it takes to build a life of no regrets, with forgiveness about human errors that are bound to occur during the learning process of a lifetime. That conscious resolve, I realize now in this kupuna (grandparent) generation I’ve reached, is probably the best resolution any human being can make as a promise to the deeper self. Then everything seems to become easier. All the smaller, or peripheral decisions can be made without headaches and stress when the larger decision is firmly in place.
If you think about it, so many of the holiday cards and wishes people exchange over the holidays feature the word “happy” or a form of it. “Let all beings be happy” is a mantra that derives from blessings rooted in spiritual practices of the ages. That’s not just a wish for partying and general hilarity of the ha-ha-ha variety. It may be the basis for what may happen when each of us is courageous enough to embrace the wish to become conscious about our actions and life choices, and we take the risk of loving ourselves.
These thoughts I’m setting down for your consideration were things that surfaced during the quiet times of our holidays, the season when “Love came down at Christmas.” They came unbidden while showering, before dropping off to sleep, while watching the scenery roll by through the car windows, or after buckling up my airplane seatbelt and taking off into the atmosphere. There is certainly enough written and taught about loving one’s inner child and the adult she or he has become. The question is: Are we willing to go beyond understanding the words and making it a personal practice?
This practice of self love, it seems to me, might be thought of as an insurance policy for spreading love, or at least, respect and action above reproach. It’s not about getting stuck in the “I” and “me-me-me” stage most 2-year-olds play out as they learn they are not part of mommy and daddy and are acting out to establish their own power. This happens again to all of us during the teens, when we wish to launch out from the family solar system and be known as a separate little planet in orbit. It’s love that goes beyond being self-ish, in that loving the self spreads and connects a person to others, just as a bubbling well spring feeds into rivulets that run into streams, to rivers, and out to sea, which washes the shores of all lands.
I like to visualize the concept as a well that is ever-filling, quenching the thirst of not just one person, but any who arrive at the well or any of the tributaries into which it may flow, whether they are aware they are thirsting or not. In the Hawaiian traditional riddle chant, “He Mele No Kane” (with Kane standing for mankind, rather than just “man”), the final of the six separate answers to the question, “Where are the waters of Kane?” translated is,
“Deep in the ground, in the gushing spring,
In the ducts of Kane and Kanaloa
A wellspring of water, water to drink,
A water of magic power, the water of life!
Life. Long may it live!”
Following up the Jan. 6 Kauai Midweek poll, “What makes you happy?” Is it music? Food? Family? The sunset over Bali Hai (Makana Peak)? A sunny day on the beach? Comments are welcomed.
•••
Dawn Fraser Kawahara, author and poet, regularly instructs on the topics of history and, Hawaiian culture for visitors to Kauai through Hawaii Pacific University’s “Road Scholar” program through Pacific Islands Institute. She serves as vice-president of Ka Imi Naauao Institute and on Ka Imi’s Educational Project committee. Her second memoir, “Burma Banyan, A Quest for Roots,” is due to be published in 2016. She continues to work through DAWN Enterprises on her love for books and information, and for creating beautiful wedding, bonding and other ceremonies.
