Do You Listen Aloha?

By Virginia Beck

Photo by Barbara Bennett

Kaua‘i is an island where people are living as one. We make it together, or the island loses the creative force in each of us. The talents in even the seemingly disabled, broken, homeless, or the broken-hearted. Aloha is the reviving breath of life, which renews everyone and everything.

An island is an opportunity to see the world on the micro scale. Every action is magnified. Especially yours. Drive as though the other driver was your sister. Smile at the elderly, and you make them happy. Tip generously, and you are feeding local families.

When you live on a remote and isolated Pacific island, you are on a tiny life raft in the middle of the world’s largest ocean. We are a flyspeck on the globe, and our individual lives are even tinier, but together we create an amazingly resourceful community. Local resident or visitor, each one of us has unique talents and gifts.

Even that challenging person across from us.

Can we listen aloha, and listen for what is inspiring them, the hopes and fears they are expressing?

No matter how the words come out, that person is expressing their truth, and we can respect it even if we don’t agree. Aloha includes it all, with no one left out.

Out of 7.7 billion, a few humans have managed to find the island, inhabit it or visit it. We share it in helping each other, supporting each other and learning from each other. Locals have many life-nurturing and heart-healing cultural practices —- seek them out and learn from them.

Strangers bring other values, ideas and resources. Please share. Your few kind words may spark creative imaginations around you, enriching us all. Help us to build a better island.

What are we listening to? Listening for? Are we listening to the chatter of our own anxious minds, focused on old thoughts from the past? Or are we present to the scent of flowers, the beauty of the hills, surf, the warmth, the clean air, the friendly people?

Listen, and your world becomes larger, more generous, more friendly.

Tradewinds bring relief from endless sun, pushing vast acres of clouds sweeping overhead. They are our blessing, bringing us vast rivers of water vapor, evaporating from the ocean. This circular flow between heaven and earth is what allows life on the planet to prosper and continue.

Virginia Beck

Each rainbow reminds us that water is a gift. That the dance between the sky and the sea and the sun creates the magic of continuing life. And to be grateful for this.

This circle of life, passing from one form to another, is found in listening for the aloha in each other.

Speak aloha, listen for the aloha in the tiny gap between one breath and another. Listen to the peace between heartbeats, and hearts. Share the best you have to give.

Kaua‘i wakens people to the beauty of their own lives; complicated, awkward and as painful as it can be at times. Now, you are alive for one more day, and have a chance to invent a new possibility for all of us. Aloha makes us great!

• Virginia Beck, NP and Certified Trager® Practitioner, offers Wellness Consultation, Trager Psychophysical Integration and teaches Malama Birth Training classes. She can be reached at 635-5618.