Aloha spirit begins with each of us
By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Staff Writer
It happens all the time. You're driving on the H-1 going 'ewa near Ward Avenue and you're trying desperately to merge into that darn Vineyard exit, but you just can't get a break. Or you're stopped in the lane smack-dab where the road ends and the orange cones begin and no one but no one will let you into the open lane.
Or it's Christmas time at the mall and you think you've found the last open parking stall somewhere five miles from Liberty House when all of a sudden a little Acura darts out of nowhere and snakes that spot right out from under your nose.
And from that one incident, you declare for all the world to hear: "There is no aloha spirit anymore!"
Perhaps you carry the thought around for days. It colors your perceptions.
You relay the story to everyone you know, and every time you retell the events of your vehicular dissing, you reach the same conclusion.
Maybe you even write an angry and detailed letter to the editor. Maybe that letter includes threats like you'll move to the Mainland or move back to the Mainland or you'll never visit here again because this place is ruined.
It's funny how the concept of "aloha spirit" has become so tied to driving. Maybe it's because getting in a car and heading off toward a destination is sort of a metaphor for life: traveling the path, taking the journey, making the trip, or like Seawind sang in the '70s, "you've got to follow your road." When someone gets in your way, it feels like a big deal, like somehow a major goal has been thwarted or someone is working against you.
It seems we've lost sight of what aloha spirit really means. We're socked with that phrase routinely to describe things that should come under a different heading, like good manners or good customer service. If a store clerk doesn't pay attention to us fast enough, we decide that establishment doesn't have aloha spirit, when in actuality, what it doesn't have is an attentive clerk.
When your stuff gets stolen off the beach or out of your car, you decide aloha spirit has been taken along with it.
The trouble starts when we let ourselves fall into the trap of thinking aloha spirit has something to do with the way we are treated. In a way it does, but that's secondary. The entire concept is based on how we treat others:
As you sow, so shall you reap. What you put in is what you get out. The Golden Rule. Stuff like that.
Maybe getting cut off in traffic should serve not as a symbol that the aloha spirit is dead on our roadways and in our islands, but as a reminder that we have to contribute more to the pot.
A sticker on a badly dinged and dented bumper spotted on H-1 said it all: spread da aloha. And the driver even made shaka as he was cut off.
Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Her e-mail address is lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.
