Dare to dance, Leave Shame At Home

A’a I ka hula, waiho i ka make’u i ka hale. Dare to dance, leave shame at home. The ancient Hawaiians understood that in order to perpetuate a loving and caring community, one must must leave the shame, guilt, and any animosity at the door, The natives of Polynesia assimilated a sense of community within their culture, and has passed down the idea of community for generations. This ideology of aloha has embedded itself in the mind of every local with no bias to race or ethnicity. it truly is the perfect paradise.

I remember when I was younger my grandmother and I would catch the bus to my preschool in Kailua and we would stop to converse with the man whose house reflected the bus stop. we would always have the same “how are you boy” and “boy you’re getting so big!” conversation that would always make me smile. We wouldn’t stay long, my grandmother would chat with him for a few extra minutes about the weather or recent development going on in Kailua. With a proud shaka and a friendly “aloha boy you take care now” he would send us off on our way to my preschool with pride and pompous. I’d remember we’d always get slushies from the coffee shop in the safe way parking lot. They had two flavors, red, and blue. So refreshing. The day would end with us trekking back pass the man's house, hoping with every step that he would be out there someway somehow waiting to ask me how my day went. he would give all the neighbors and passerby’s the wisdom he could spare, and as a child this didn’t make much sense to me, but I was cool with it. Why is he just out on a hot Tuesday afternoon giving his aloha for free? This continued for the next three months of preschool until we moved out of Kailua and I never saw that man again. sometimes i catch myself reflecting on this one person who, when i was younger, had such an impact on my life even though I barely knew his name. As I got older I began to share my stories with other people, explaining how cool I was for talking to the folks in the neighborhood, from a stranger who would constantly ask my grandmother and I what we were up to. To delve deeper into the meaning of the aloha spirit, to dare to dance. That was almost 19 years ago, the house we lived in has been rebuilt and the people moved out.

Community.

In sharing my stories with my friends, family, and peers I realized that this wasn’t an uncommon thing at all. As a child, this thought captivated me, to try to understand deeper on why people were so giving, when they had close to nothing to give. Every kid in Hawaii will have the same if not similar story about their own talking, fruit bearing man in the area code they’re from. The aloha spirit travels within the roots of the soil we stand on, and is a disease that infects the community in such a way that it can take a person, from any corner of the globe, and make them feel loved, cherished, and at home. The talking man loved his community, the people in it and then some. this is a mere shimmer in the vast mirror of thousands of full hearted locals that wouldn’t think twice to give you a lift, fresh fruits, even throw you a shaka if your day isn’t going quite as planned.

A’a I ka hula, wwaiho i ka make’u i ka hale. Dare to dance, leave shame at home.