This is the cover of a notebook I'll be using to keep track of my mental health. In the mid-1900s, Hawaii and its cultural commodities like hula and mele were suddenly discovered by white America and marketed to traveling mainland suburbanites as a vacation destination. This, only a few short years following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. There is this attractive sense of resilience about Hawaii. It's a place where, in spite of harsh realities, the islands are somehow elevated above any and all worries, worries that can't really land anywhere permanently. Leave your troubles at the door, Hawaii seems to say. Pull up a beach blanket, have a Mai Tai. Of course, none of that is true. Hawaii, in its purest and most natural state, doesn't care one way or the other how we're doing. Hawaii, and the gods that govern the mountains, the sky, the stars, land and waves are too busy pouring lava into the ocean, creating new land masses, growing coral, generating 10 foot tall wave faces, surviving Rapid Ohia Death, pollinating naupaka, etc, etc, to be bothered all that much with human events and relationships. I think maybe that's what we learn by living here: life goes on. Troubles don't disappear, but life goes on in spite of them. The rain pours, the winds blow, trees grow strong and then they fall and the seedlings sprouting nearby create a forest. We're no greater than all of the other elements that make up this dramatic ecosystem, where upheaval and incredible change is happening every day. Crabs and lobsters molt their exoskeletons, butterflies emerge from cocoons, birds lose their baby feathers in order to grow the plumage of maturity. Goats grow antlers and assert their dominance. If the natural world is hell-bent on making its presence known each and every day, it's not hard to see our connection, and even reflection, in it. That's not something that an be sold in an advertisement, especially not in 1950, when all things Hawaiian were diminished into tiki icons and grass skirts. I am, however, pleasantly surprised by the ways our community is currently uniting behind values that aren't based in the west. There is a clear push to indigenize the language about Hawaii, and communicate native values to the broader world, as opposed to making western marketing strategies fit into the round peg of the current climate. People everywhere, not just in Hawaii, are wanting to connect with their cultural identity. I still feel like an outsider, I think I will always feel like an outsider, but I see what I want. I hope that my aspirations to connect with myself and my family and my environment in a more meaningful way is something other people are longing for as well. And this, I hope, will be a cornerstone of my mental survival going forward.
