Trading happiness for happiness: Where did all the aloha go?

Part 2

To many people, Hawaii is that magical land where clothing is optional, the sun always shines and the most difficult part of your day is deciding on which beach to visit. The trees are thick with all sorts of fresh, exotic fruit, the sea teems with every type of delicious fish imaginable. The people who live there have nothing to do but weave hats from pandanus leaves and sip drinks from coconuts with a straw. Everyone is tanned and healthy, there is rarely any crime and shoes are those things that horses wear. Well, that may have been true 40 years ago, but things have since changed.

Back then, aloha was something that just happened. It was there when you went to the local bakery for a dougnut and they gave you a half dozen malasadas to take home to your grandmother because they accidentally made extra and were her favorite. Or, when your neighbor gave you a few bags of smoked meat or opihi because they knew that you liked to serve delicious pupus during Monday Night Football. But aloha wasn’t only about giving and receiving, it was also about family and unity. Aloha was the foundation on which every Hawaiian built his or her character.

Now, it has become a rare commodity.

I live in the town where my mother grew up. It’s still a small speck of houses, at the end of the road on the Northern tip of the island. People wave at one another when they pass on the road. Everyone knows what everyone is else is doing (or think that they know, at any rate). Sure people smile, and for the most part are not rude to one another, but this is not aloha.

Most people who’ve move here or those who have come here on vacation have no idea that this bastardized aloha is not the genuine article. There would be no way for them to know. To most transplants, aloha is the fact that the big moke at the beach didn’t kick your butt or call you a racial slur, when you accidentally stepped on his luau feet. Or, that the check out girl at the grocery store called you uncle or aunty, which could be construed as a affectionate term, but in reality, was said because she forgot your name. To the untrained eye, aloha is alive. Maybe not well, but alive still the same.

The unfortunate truth is that aloha is dead. It has been for some time. Just when this tragedy occurred is not clear, but I imagine that the death throes began somewhere around the time that I was born. More specifically, around the time that the plantations began closing and the the hotel industry began to flourish.

At the middle of the last century, Hawaii was no longer viewed as simply another island outpost, run rampant with godless natives that needed to be whipped into shape, modernized and educated. It had become of strategic interest to many different countries who had already established themselves there. The logging industry and whaling industry had come and were on their collective way out. There needed to be another form of industry that could capitalize on the temperate climate and cheap labor force that Hawaii had to offer.

Enter the plantations. Sugar cane became the new king.

There were 5 main sugar plantation companies, all eager to ride their cash cows into the sunset. During the mid 1800’s the workers began to organize, demanding more pay and better working conditions. The plantations owners responded by getting rid of those upstarts and bringing in a new labor force from various Asian and European countries. Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Puerto Rican and Portuguese were brought in by the boat load to harvest Hawaiian sugar cane. Whenever one ethnicity began complaining about wages and working conditions they were replaced by another.

I won’t get into the politics or fallout of such practices, but I will say that during this time Hawaii began to undergo a transformation that put it on track to becoming the racially diverse melting pot that it is today. It is also important to mention that during the assimilation of those various ethnicities into Hawaiian society, those immigrants were educated about the importance of preserving the endemic island culture. Children were taught about Hawaiian history in school, they learned the language (to a certain degree), and while retaining their own heritage, began to adopt the Hawaiian spirit as an extension of their own. The idea of aloha, of having and sharing love for the land and the people was sustained despite the radically different origins of those new immigrants.

My grandparents generation lived and practiced aloha; I see it in the way that their generation interacts with one another. There is a certain harmony that guides them, an unspoken kindness and affability that is not so common in subsequent generations.

They are the last, the keepers of the flame. When they all pass away, so will what remains of the true spirit of aloha.

But why? What caused this decline?

The answer is as simple as it is complex, but in a nutshell it had to do with trading happiness with happiness and more importantly just trying to survive.

Trading happiness for happiness: Where did all the aloha go?

Part 1

Things were better when I was a kid.

Life wasn’t something that required a credit card, a password or any device with an acronymic name to enjoy. I wasn’t counting calories, concerned about keeping my sugar or sodium intake in check and certainly didn’t give a damn about my abs.

We had 3 channels on TV, the radio played rock, oldies and disco and you had 2 types of blue jeans to choose from: Levi’s or Wranglers. One made you a rad, the other made people gag with a spoon. The two fast food joints were known for their differences; one flame broiled their patties, the other fried them, and you chose were to dine according to your mood.

But those were luxuries found only on the mainland. In the islands, you could go to Tex’s Drive In, Dick’s Coffee Shop or Cafe 100, distinguished only by the quality of their gravy. You wore the pants that were handed down to you or bought on sale at Woolworth’s.

At night on the black and white, you could watch Star Trek re-runs if the rabbit ears were cooperating, followed by Happy Days and Lavern and Shirley. Your choice of footwear was simple: Rubber boots, rubber slippers or cowboy boots; farmer, beach bum, hillbilly.

Life was simple: Get up, eat a loco moco at Cafe 100, go to Itsu’s to buy bait, beer and hotdogs, head down to 4 mile to fish all day while my dad drank with his friends on the side of the road.

How much better could life be?

Star Wars? Oh yeah, I saw that in the movie theater. Ditto, Raider’s of the Lost Ark. Video games? That was when the ONLY place that kids wanted to be was the arcade, and it cost money. The look on your parent’s face as they forked over another fiver whose fate it was to be fed mercilessly into machines that returned the investment with sound effects and perspiration, priceless.

It was a simpler time.

There weren’t as many people, traffic was something that occurred in places like New York or LA, fantastical places unto themselves. People were friendly to one another; they didn’t exchange suspicious looks. No one worried about being mugged, tagged, flash mobbed or twittered about. There wasn’t H5N1, mad cow, GMO crops or Ethanol. No one had to worry about someone stealing their PIN or piggy-backing on their WLAN.

However, what existed in abundance was aloha.

Aloha: Hello, goodbye, love. Those were the good old days. So, where did it all go?

Recently, my wife Anna and I went to visit my mom in Idaho. She was born and raised on the Big Island back in the plantation days, which according to her, was a time that was less glamorous than it sounds. Back then, they were lucky if they got a new potato sack dress for Christmas. They ate what  grew in the garden or was raised in a pen. They watched the knobs on the tube radio.

Life was simple, perhaps too simple.

My mother saw living in Hawi as a trap, a dead end. She wanted more for herself and her son, so as soon as she could she packed me up and headed to the mainland. Although I returned to my home to spend summers with my father and the rest of my family over the next decade, my mother never looked back. She was done.

But I digress.

Despite the fact that the only racism that I have ever experienced in my life occurred in Idaho (granted that was before Idaho underwent a ‘cultural revolution’, yikes), upon returning with Anna, I encountered some of friendly folks that I had met in years.

Genuinely friendly, people.

Cashiers making minimum wage who were eager to engage in conversation over the health benefits of quinoa. Strangers on the street or in the malls that were smiling at one another. Waiters who really seemed to care if our french fries were crispy enough for us, who were willing to stand over the fryer themselves to ensure that we received the deep-fried, chipped spuds of our liking. It was both refreshing and alarming. Refreshing because I was beginning to think that geniality was dead, alarming because I live in the aloha state, which has become, over time, bereft of its intrinsic commodity.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t fantasize about living in Celebration, nor am I the type of person who enjoys engaging door-to-door solicitors of any kind, in any sort of debate. I enjoy my space as much as the next guy or girl. I prefer to sit in the least crowded section of a restaurant, I turn the chat function off on Facebook.

Am I guilty of killing aloha? Did the ideal somehow arrive at its current moribund state because of something that I or my generation had done? Now that we carry, at any given time, an average of three devices on our person that can not only receive radio, TV and streaming data, but help us find our way, do our taxes and make phone calls, shouldn’t we all be happier? Perhaps a better question would be: Where has our happiness gone?

Day 45 – Max Interval Circuit V

Today was the first time since starting Insanity that I didn’t want to do the workout. It’s just that the whole thing has become so monotonous. With P90X there was a sense of the same tedium but with Insanity it is more pronounced. All of the exercises seem to be only slight variations of one another and after 6 weeks they all blend together and I am beginning to lose interest. I think it would have been better if they combined some of the routines from month one along with the routines from month two. It would have broken it up, at the very least.

Also have been noticing that now we are both experiencing lingering pains in certain areas: neck, knees, ankles that only seem to become worse as we continue. I’m not saying that I’m an old fart, but I’m beginning to feel like one.

I have also noticed that I have pretty much peaked as far as how much more muscle tone that I can achieve. My stamina is still up there thanks to all the cardio but I have lost some tone that I can’t wait to get back once this is all over.

We completed the workout, but speaking for myself, I wasn’t left feeling satisfied. I plan on hybridizing my own routine once Insanity is over to address the loss that I have experienced.

I still like the program but am counting the days when it will be over. It’s beginning to remind me of Groundhog Day.

The train wreck that is craigslist’s Rants and Raves

I shamefully admit that one of my guilty pleasures is to peruse the Rants and Raves section on craigslist.org, whenever I get the chance. What began as a casual curiosity has now become a daily ritual.
The reason?
It is disturbing. Very disturbing.
Reading what other people post is eerily fascinating to me. It’s like listening for the sound of crunching metal right after you hear the sound of car tires skidding down the road. I harbor no ill will toward my fellow man, but a part of me wants to hear the glass shatter, to hear the sound it makes as it peppers the road.
For all of my perusing, I only post my own thoughts when I feel the need to be lambasted. I don’t really think that the other readers need to benefit from what I have to say, and quite frankly, I could care less. But I do feel that reciprocity is necessary. I don’t know why. I don’t think that lurking and reading posts without injecting my own personal detritus is the fair or proper thing to do.
You need to buy a ticket to ride the ride.
But still, the act itself only adds to the dementia that is R&R.
How can I say that someone’s ideas are fractured and unfounded when the mere act of posting a response validates that person’s view point?
But that isn’t the scariest part.
The thing about R&R that is the most unnerving is the fact that the people who post on craigslist are real, everyday folks. Many are probably a lot like myself, waiting to hear the sound of someone screaming for help as a siren wails away in the distance.
Sick, I tell you.

another shout out to my only fan!

The purpose of television is to remind us to go out and contribute financially to the betterment of our society. And to convince us that our minds are useless for anything else.