More Lessons: Deeper Into Aloha

Islands –a state– taught me one of my most significant lessons. It also taught me one of my biggest obstacles.

Hawai’i is the Aloha State. Like many people, I just always thought of “aloha” meaning both “hello” and “goodbye.” Then, I arrived on the Big Island for the first time with my now ex-wife, who is from Hawai’i. I began understanding it a lot more as soon as I stepped off the plane.

KOA is the largest open air, international airport, in the world. You step off the plane, after coming in over black lava fields, and walk down steps to the tarmac where you head your way into receiving.

No, there are not any half naked women and men bestowing leis on you, but there is a nakedness to the experience, an invitation. It is an invitation to aloha, to live aloha.

Aloha is so much more than a greeting; it is an offering. Its surface meaning is love, affection, peace, compassion and mercy. It is what you offer someone, and yourself. The deeper meaning is, “The presence of life,” or “Breath of life.”

When I first touched down there over 15 years ago now, is when the lesson of aloha began forming in my mind. It is how I would begin to end letters, emails and columns. It smoothed me, made me gentler, made me look upon the world with softer eyes. The Philly boy, who had used anger so much as a defense, was not angry anymore. It began to adjust 35 years of thinking.

I also encountered an obstacle that would eventually catch up to me. Love, affection, peace, compassion and mercy. I found I could offer this to everybody, in sincerity, but “mercy,” offering it to myself, pleading with myself to take it, was something I struggled with. I could not accept it. Yet.

The idea of mercy was something I contemplated often as I sat in front of my fireplace, alone, at the start of The Covid Lockdown. Enter the sounds of Peter Gabriel’s “Mercy Street.” Let’s take the boat out/wait until darkness/let’s take the boat out/wait until darkness comes.

In the darkness of the Covid Lockdown, I cast off into America, and into myself. I had aloha in my heart for everybody, but no mercy for myself. I knew how the trip would end. There was no mercy waiting for me at the end, only an end to exhaustion on the Big Island of Hawai’i.

My last trip to the Big Island, perhaps the last time I will ever go there, even though it is my favorite place on earth, was a time of very harsh lessons. I stepped off the plane, my last state and the last piece of driving included in my Odyssey Through Covid America.

I deplaned, walked down the flight of stairs, stepped onto the tarmac, and it felt as if a sledgehammer hit me square on the forehead. I wanted to lay down and cry. I pushed myself, though, making it through customs, and made my way to my rental.

The island was as beautiful as ever, the warm winds wrapping around me. The hammer blow was not about anything outside; it came from within. I felt severed from aloha. Disconnected, I made my way to my Airbnb.

Important lessons that I had learned had brought me to the presence of mind that I would be leaving Hawai’i, and not ending my life on some quiet beach. I had ignored my gut, though, ignored the recommendations of others, to go to another island, one I had not been to yet.

The Big Island and I had a history. My connection with it had been forged by my now ex-wife. This was my first time there alone. That loneliness made me spiral away from all of the lessons that I had learned.

It was a loneliness like a black hole, and it pulled me in and down, breaking the net of connections I had learned a few months prior. I was powerless against the wave after wave of darkness crashing my psyche. Six months prior, I knew there was no mercy waiting for me. I had not allowed it and still didn’t allow it.

I was ready to face many things, begin a new journey. I was not ready to face this yet.

I looked for something in me. A swagger. The joy of a beautiful drive. The wonderful hospitality of the Airbnb owners. Something. Anything. Even the old defensive anger.

Nothing was there.

It was like another time, in my far distant past, right before the turn of the century, a highlight in a traumatic life. I won’t get into that here, but it was a traumatic event. It triggered a period of decompensation (I love that word). Basically, my mind shredded and left me naked without any coping mechanisms or defenses. On the tarmac in Hawai’i, that’s how I felt, my mind shredded, without the period before it. All of my coping mechanisms and defenses were just gone.

When I asked my wife for a divorce, I knew what was about to happen. As I asked my business partner for a divorce about the same time, at the beginning of 2019, I knew I was disconnecting myself from all of my identities. My journey across the US had brought me in touch with teachers, but I had not put together the lessons yet. I had no idea who I was, nothing to ground me, as was the plan at the beginning of the journey.

I also did not have anything to protect me.

I had put together enough pieces to know that I wanted to live life, continue to live, but that was it. I needed a place, stability, to begin again. So, the Big Island became neither an ending nor a beginning. It was a pause between breaths. The pause was painful. Excruciating.

As I forced myself to explore parts of the Big Island that I had never seen before, I could get caught up in moments. One such one was I was “finished,” where I could put a “The End” on the columns and book. I had made my way to Southpoint, and then, from there, drove and then hiked my way to Papakolea.

Splashing in the surf, like a child, the Philly came on me and I stood there smiling. I had done it! Six months on the road, close to 40,000 miles, all 50 states. I had accomplished a dream!

The feeling was fleeting.

Yeah, I needed to go back to my car that was parked in Seattle. I needed to figure out what was next. I had no idea, only that there was a next.

That there, that hike away from the beach and to my rental car, was a very old lesson but with a very new feel. It was a hard lesson, made harsher by the things, the identities, I had left behind.

Sometimes, all that you can do, all that you need to do, is put one foot in front of the other.

It would be another six months before I could put words to the difference, that was no help there in Hawai’i, but it did make the pieces start fitting together.

I trudged away from that beautiful beach how I wanted to live my life, how I needed to live my life: with purpose, passion and authenticity.

Aloha

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