We have a sad paradox in our modern society, and it's one I tend to concern myself over time and time again in my writings and thoughts.
We have built tools and countlessly increasing methods to bring us together in ways physical and digital that are barely comprehensible. Freeways and jet planes and social media and video conferencing and location monitoring and and and.
Yet we are lonelier than we've ever been.
More separated from each other, from community, from family, from tribe, from connection, from love. We can see it in the rates of depression and suicide and mental health and divorce and and and. Many of us are surrounded by people, alone. Many of us are alone and lonely.
Humanity needs more connection, more tribe, more community, of course. But until then, and during those moments any of us is feeling a little lonely, there's an easy way of looking at the world that alleviates all of that. There is a way of being, of remembering, that can take away some of that loneliness and replace it with connection and innumerable paths toward hope, or strength, or resiliency, or calm, or whatever it is that your soul is yearning for at that moment.
This is the recognition that we, you, do not exist alone but occupy a little perch on an infinitely complex and genealogical web of familial connections back to the beginning of existence. And that, in the truest sense of the idea, in the same way we might be able to call up a living family member to gain their insight into a particular problem, we can look to the physical and elemental figures around us to gain their insight, their strength, their understanding, to guide us.
That tree, that entire forestland, that cloud, the sun and moon, that shark, that mountain peak, that owl, that wind that just came up from behind you, that other wind blowing through the trees in the distance, that rain, that dragonfly, that rock. It's all family. Gods and goddesses. Deities and demigods. Ancestors and elementals. Spirits and energies.
Made of stories and stardust just like you.
In fact, actually just like you. Not in some Lebowski-looking bearded dude above the clouds all omnipotent and vengeful or loving, but in real, visceral ways that can have real, meaningful, direct impact on the way you feel right now…on your emotions and the decisions you make as a reaction to them.
And yes, I wrote that somewhat poetically, because emotions move us quicker than facts do.
As the old Chinese saying goes, "where the heart goes, the feet follow". But the facts and the science are there too. From the beginning of our spacetime some 13+ billion years ago everything in existence has been pulsing outwards and away from each other, but connected still in the family tree of time.
The Hawaiian cosmogony, our creation story called the Kumulipo, alludes to this, the beginning of which was beautifully discussed during a 2019 joint lecture by native Hawaiian elder, Larry Kimura, and modern astronomer, Doug Simons.
At the lecture, Kimura showed the audience a slide of his unpublished English translation of the prelude to The Kumulipo, which begins as follows:
When fundamental space altered through heat
When the cosmos altered, turning inside out,
When the sun was flickering between darkness & light
Attempting to brighten the moon,
When this complete abyss was dotted with tiny stars,
Then began the slime that established a physical space
The source of impenetrable darkness, so profound,
A fathomless power, reincarnating itself.
"As an astronomer, when I first read this, I was just dumbfounded by the astronomy flowing from these words," says Simons. "The first line beautifully captures the inflation of space immediately after the big bang in just six words. After the big bang, the universe was dark prior to the first stars emerging, which were made of only hydrogen and helium at that point. Then we had white dots—stars—with darkness in between. The fifth line of The Kumulipo is a beautiful match to what we astronomers know happened in that first generation of stars."
In the Kumulipo we travel from that starting point through many, many successive generations until we arrive at the first physical life and slowly but surely the emergence of humankind and then, eventually, to you, me, and all of us.
In the same way evolutionary biology connects us to all things, Hawaiian thought reminds us that all existence is our family.
In Hawaiian culture, as it surely is in your heritage wherever you are from, this was expressed in myriad ways through mythology and cosmogonies of your own. From the Kumulipo and all the major deities, to the likes of Hi'iakaikapoliopele and Maui and countless others, we are shown that our greatest strengths can be found inside of us because of who we came from and what we see around us.
If you're lonely. If you're sad. If you're contemplating a big decision. If you don't know what to do. If you have some free time.
Go somewhere outside and just be there. Sit. Or walk. Look up. Look down. Make friends with the world around you. Talk to it.
The world is always talking to you, you should talk back to it. That way, when you need help. Like big kine help, it will recognize your voice, recognize you're family.
I once heard an elder say we talk to the universe (call it prayer if you want) about all the small things, so when we need to appeal about the big things they recognize our voice.
Thinking Hawaiian isn't about "being" Hawaiian, it's about being human…about becoming that which you already are.
This is the practice.
This is the remembering.
You don't need to drive out to the mountains or the beach, right out your door is wind, sun, rain. Ancient Hawaiians built relationships with the universe around them. Make friends with your neighbors.
Take your shoes off and set your bare feet on whatever ground is around you. Put your hands on a rock, or the bark of a tree. If you think that looks weirder than all of us staring at these little metallic rectangles all day, keep going.
If this concept is new to you, pick something that you build a relationship with. What does it feel like in those first seconds you step out your front door. The wind or calm, the sun or rain. Or pick a tree or view you see every day. Watch it change through the day, through the seasons.