The History of Live Aloha
by Robbie Alm (used by permission of the author)
Like a lot of adventures, it started off in one direction
and wound up going on in a totally different direction. We
were looking to fix government and ended up looking to
ourselves as the key to improving Hawai`i. And each step
along the way has had its own reason and rightness.
It was the early summer of 1993 when Mike McCartney,
Constance Hassell and I sat down to talk about government
reform. We wanted to see how we could assist, what citizens
could do to support a goal of high quality government. We
agreed to start by gathering a wide variety of people to just
talk about Hawai`i; where we were and where we were going.
The guest list was about forty and if anything was designed
to elicit vastly different views.
After a couple of sessions, there were very clear results:
we felt the Hawai`i we loved was at risk, we felt that our
governance left much to be desired, we felt an absence of
leadership in all areas of life, and we felt that individuals
needed to take more responsibility for what needed to
change.
At that point, the group changed. Many came to one or two
meetings and never came back; having spoken their piece or
seeking other ways to contribute or just having too many
other demands on their lives.
The group that remained number around a dozen, united by a
view that the most compelling challenge was to have
individuals exercise greater responsibility in their own
lives. We all had come to the view that what Hawai`i needed
was to have all her sons and daughters take much more
responsibility in their own lives for what Hawai`i was and
what it could become.
We knew well what we were up against:
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The crushing burdens of day-to-day modern living with
its traffic and its cost of living, with drugs and
violence, with the break-up of families, and so on.
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The sense of helplessness or numbness that grows in
people who believe that the have no power or ability to
change the way things are and that their individual acts
are of no consequence.
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And, the all-too-frequent cry of why don't "they" do
something about this, the desire to have the cavalry ride
to the rescue and the anger that the cavalry doesn't even
seem close to arriving.
Our group believes strongly that the attitudes embedded in
the above paragraphs are a major part of the problem and a
major blow to the future we all desire. A community is, in
the end, the sum of the attitudes and actions of its
individual members. A healthy community flows from the
individuals whose attitudes and actions are healthy;
community-concerned, caring and responsible.
What we wanted to do was to find a way to encourage
individual responsibility and action in an environment that
did not encourage people to believe that individual action
was of significant value.
We decided on the following path:
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We would ask all the people of Hawai`i to agree to
undertake certain basic actions in their daily lives.
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The actions would encourage sharing, would encourage
caring, and would build community.
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There would be a common set of actions so that we
could all gather strength and a sense of community from
seeing each other participate.
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The actions would be things we could all do regardless
of where we lived, or what we did, or how much money or
power we believed we possessed.
-
We would provide a rallying point, a symbol and a call
to action, to bring our people together.
Thus was born LIVE ALOHA. We are, in so many ways, lucky
to live in Hawai`i. One of the greatest gifts of this land is
the depth and beauty and wisdom of the culture of the
Hawaiian people.
We do not presume to define aloha and we certainly do not
see anything we have worked on as a fulfillment of aloha. We
do see ourselves as taking a few steps along the path of
aloha. These steps we take jointly, these steps we take with
honor and with a spirit of caring. We are guided always by
the values that we believe underlie the spirit of aloha:
respect for others, respect for the land and all that
surrounds us, caring for others and the loading of
responsibility for living this way within ourselves.
We choose the `ohi`a lehua flower as our symbol at Haunani
Apoliona's urging and her words speak best for all of us:
"From the blackened, silent, barren landscape left by the
desolation of lava flow emerges the lehua, flower of the
`ohi`a. With strength of spirit, it pushes forth from the
embers and grows. Favored by Hi`iaka, sister of Pele, the
`ohi`a lehua takes many forms from tall trees to low
shrubs, adorned by leaves from round to narrow and blunt to
pointed with blossoms of varied hues of red, yellow, pink
and white. The lehua's diversity, simple beauty and
enduring strength mirrors the diversity, simple beauty and
enduring strength of Hawai`i."
We choose the colors of land and of our flower, and we
choose a format (and a writing style) that made this an
everyday kind of thing.
The program is at one level very simple. Make the
commitment to live in a manner which expresses aloha to all
around you and as part of building our community of aloha,
undertake a set of visible actions that being to demonstrate
the spirit of aloha.
And, we began our program by simply passing out a bumper
sticker which says "Live Aloha" with a red `ohi`a
lehua flower on the side, and a card setting forth the twelve
actions and briefly explaining the program. We now have over
150,000 distributed through Hawai`i and across the United
States, sought out and requested by over 500 individuals and
entities. Just reading the letters we have received (and
anyone is welcome to do so) will fill you with a sense of how
important all of this is to people.
Grass roots and low-key, our style has always been
directly tied to our goal: having individuals make a personal
commitment and then individually undertake the life that goes
with the commitment on an ongoing basis.
In the future, we hope to find at least two ways of
spreading the word further, by encouraging the children of
Hawai`i to share their sense of what "aloha" or "living
aloha" means, and by encouraging the media to make aloha a
more prominent part of their agenda.
Aloha in Action
Respect all elders and children.
Leave places better than you find them.
Hold the door. Hold the elevator.
Plant something.
Drive with courtesy. Never drive impaired.
Attend an event of another culture.
Return your shopping cart.
Get out and enjoy nature.
Pick up litter.
Share with your neighbors.
Create smiles.
Create a list and share it.
What Aloha Stands For
A stands for AKAHAI, meaning
kindness.
L stands for LOKAHI, meaning bring
unity.
O stands for OLU`OLU, meaning
politeness.
H stands for HA`AHA`A, meaning
humbled.
A stands for AHONUI, meaning
enduring.
