Good Morning SuperForest!
Jackson here.
Most of you don’t know this, but SuperForester Jordan has a twin brother, Aaron. I’ve been begging Aaron to join Team SuperForest for ages, and today he thrilled me by sending in an excellent post! I hope he doesn’t mind me tag teaming this post, as he wrote about something very dear to me and I wanted to chime in.
But first, Aaron’s post!
“LIVE ALOHA~
When put together, they form the very core of what it means to be alive.
Aloha
[Alo = presence, front, face] + [hâ = breath]
“The presence of Divine Breath.”
When you Live Aloha, you live with righteousness. And giving your Mahalo is an extension of passing your divinity to another.
Mahalo
[Ma = In] + [hâ = breath] + [alo = presence, front, face]
“(May you be) in (Divine) Breath.”
There’s a reason why Hawaiians are the friendliest people on the planet. Live Aloha!
An excellent post! Aaron sent this in and right after I got it, I found this amazing animation from mapsofwar.com. It is a map of the history of today’s major religions, beginning with the birth of Krishna and running to present day.
Does this remind anyone else of a game of Risk? It looks exactly like Risk. You conquer new territory, you’re beaten back, you get reinforcements and rally… Until only one player is left.
Now, to come full circle I’d like to tell you about the Wainiha bridge.
On Kauai where I was raised, there is a set of double bridges on the North shore of the island. These bridges can cause confusion for first time visitors as they are single lane, and don’t allow for cross traffic. The only way to cross the bridges and not raise a fuss is to wait on one side until the bridge is clear, and then you and all the other cars on your side cross as one…
Sounds easy enough. But there are no posted rules, and if you didn’t know the protocol, chances are high that you’d just drive onto the first bridge without thinking, which would annoy the person trying to cross towards you. Or, you’d wait until one car crossed towards you, and then think that it was your turn and start to go, but then someone else would’ve seen the first car going across, meaning that it was still their turn and they would go and find themselves driving head on at you, and quickly everything would get bunged up.
Here’s where the Aloha spirit comes in…
Misunderstandings over who is supposed to cross when are a daily occurrence. 99.9 percent of the time, if two cars end up on one bridge facing each other, a series of gentle honks and waves will settle things, and one car will back up and allow things to flow smoothly.
But .1 percent of the time someone will totally lose it. I’ve seen screaming fights take place over whose turn it was to go. I’ve seen people stop mid-bridge, turn their cars off, and take the keys out of the ignition, and start eating lunch in response to an automotive meltdown in an oncoming car.
The Wainiha double bridges can be extremely trying.
Of course, this is a micro/macro situation. If you are living Aloha, that is remembering that we are all one family here on one shared planet, then someone not knowing the bridge crossing rules isn’t a big deal. If you aren’t living Aloha, you’re going to scream and yell and rage.
For like the planet Earth, Kauai is a very small place. And also like the planet Earth in space, Kauai is alone in the middle of nowhere. (In fact, if you are on the Hawaiian islands, you are the furthest point from any other landmass on the planet. Isn’t that cool?)
The yellers and ragers are seen yelling and raging by everyone waiting to cross the bridge, and word spreads around the tiny island, and pretty soon, if you’re the one who’s been doing the yelling, you quickly find that your refusal to live aloha has painted you into a corner, and maybe it’s time to visit another island.
Earth is a small planet now. The internet has made our lives seem so totally dependent on each other. If we’re going to yell and scream at one another every time our bridge crossing scenario is disrupted, it will get around. People will talk and stare, and we’ll feel uncomfortable in bars. But if we live Aloha, we can all enjoy paradise together.
Let’s nip the game of Risk in the bud. We don’t need one religion turning in all the cards, amassing the final army, and spreading it’s monotone over the globe.
We need to all live Aloha.
This is the way the game board should look:
Aloha everwhere! There is room in Aloha for everything and everyone. I’m not sure you can say that about much.
Thank you SuperForester Aaron, and mapsofwar.com
All my love to each and everyone.
-Jackson
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