I have promised to write about my Hawaii trip.

I have the outline done. (Honestly, I do)! I swear, the story will come!

Although I am remiss in completing the account of my trip, I want to share with you a brief note about the Hawaiian culture.

I love to study about places I visit. I especially love to know about the cultures, ethnics, religions and belief systems of those places.

As I am planning to spend a lot of time in Hawaii, I began to study.

I’m embarrassed to say that I had a very limited understanding of a simple but beautiful concept.

I am sure you have all heard the word “aloha”. I had, and thought it simply meant, “hello” or “good-bye”.

Here is a bit more information: (I hope you will find it as enlightening and lovely as I did).

‘Aloha’ is a greeting, and a word spoken in parting, but there is much more to it than a simple “hello” or “good-bye”. Aloha was a recoginition of the spirituality of another. The word comes from “alo”, which means presence, front or face, and the word “ha”, meaning the breath of life. When you combine them, they mean “the presence of Divine Breath”.

Part of the culture and use of Aloha has to do with a concept called “mana” which is spiritual energy or power. If there is life in all things (the trees, the ocean, the fish, the flowers, the birds, etc.) , then in all the world was life, was god, was Aloha.

Life, or Aloha, exists in all things.

Because of Aloha, one would give without worrying about receiving (a concept I mentioned in my article “Giving to Give”).

Aloha had spiritual energy or power = mana. A Hawaiian had to cleanse himself of hate or anger before speaking Aloha. It was not just spoken as a greeting, for it was something that must be felt from the heart.

If you saw the movie “Avatar”, you may have seen the way the blue people greeted each other by putting their faces together and saying “I see you”. This is Aloha. It is recognizing the divine nature of the other, and acknowledging his spirituality. They also recognized the life in all things – an awareness I think could benefit us all.

I am very much looking forward to returning to Hawaii, and to learning much more about this lovely culture.

Aloha.

Louise

I just got back from a wonderful eleven days in Hawaii.

No, it wasn’t a vacation, but it might as well have been. I love my work so much that I feel like I’m cheating all the time!

A church group invited me to give seminars to their members. This was a volunteer adventure. (More on that later – about how when you give to give, you get so much in return!).

I delivered six workshops, over twenty personal consultations, and trained many others to use effective tools to help each other.

I promise I will tell you all about it, especially how we packed in boat trips, dancing, shopping, fine dining and movies with all of this fabulous personal improvement.

Needless to say, I’m tired! But very happy.

Over the next few days you will hear specifics, and I will share some of the successes from my wonderful Hawaiian friends.

Aloha!

Ethics has several definitions. A very workable definition Lance uses in his speeches, basically describes ethics as making choices that make sense – choices that lead to more survival, rather than less.

He described ethics as the footprint you leave wherever you go. What we do affects those around us, and we can either uplift people and enhance them, or bring them down. Obviously, uplifting and enhancing would be the more ethical choice.

This got me thinking about how even the small interactions we have with people can make a difference. It brought to my attention an encounter I had last week, and I’d like to share it with you:

I was in a barbeque place in Austin, Texas a few days ago. I’d just flown in after a whirlwind trip to the east coast. (Texas has fabulous barbeque, as you may know!)

There had been a very bad accident in front of the restaurant a few days before my visit, so that was the talk of the day.

A disabled man began to talk to me, telling me about the accident he’d had in front of that same restaurant twenty years ago.

He is crippled for life, and his speech is severely impaired. He struggled to talk and I struggled to listen. Somehow, I felt it important to give him my full attention.

It took a long time for me to get the story of the accident, and how he was in a coma for three weeks. The doctors told him he would not live.

He was determined that he was going to live, and he did. Although it might not have been my choice to live under those circumstances, it was obviously very important to him, and he was proud of having won.

I validated him for having made his goal to live happen. He lit up like a light bulb, and grabbed my hand and kissed it. He pointed at me and, in his very disfigured voice said, “friend”.

It really got to me and made me wonder how often anyone actually had listened to this man. That encounter kept drifting into my thoughts over the next few days, and I was very glad that I had taken the time to listen, even though it wasn’t really pleasant for me to do so.

I thought about all the times that someone had done something for me that may not have been hard for them to do, but had been very meaningful for me.

Here’s the point of the story: you never know how you might affect someone. Sometimes the smallest thing can make a big difference to another.

Although I’m not perfect at doing so, I’ve made it my personal policy to try to leave everyone I encounter with something positive – even if it is only a smile or a compliment. It might make a difference. And the attitude can spread.

Sometimes it seems that we can’t create much of a difference around us, but I think if everyone made it a point to bring others up, the world would be a better place.