Aloha and Gratitude

It's Thanksgiving today.  I wondered if gratitude and appreciation are very much different from each other as I walked over to Duke's from our hotel on Kuhio St. this morning.  I sat on the open breeze-caressed veranda at Duke's, eating my just-fine buffet breakfast and watching people down on the beach and out in the water, playing.  

Waikiki looks like a living postcard most of the time with Diamond Head standing like a 1930s travel poster icon.  With things so bucolic and tender, you almost want to poke it to see if it might poke back.  

People living in the area the day Pearl Harbor was bombed felt the same way, felt that paradise was almost too much to be grateful for, that life was so simple and easy they wanted to make more of a ruckus so they wouldn't all nod off into a nap.  Then, the harbor was bombed horribly and everything changed in a day.  Thousands of men were killed, caught off guard and unable to respond to the Japanese attack.  This is the kind of thing you think of on Thanksgiving day in Honolulu if you stop for a second, pause between your tropical fruit and your cinnamon brioche french toast.

But, you also think about land and sea, air and fire, because they are all so palpable here, and they create an enveloping environment that feels very close to what you imagine peace to be.  How ironic that paradise was once bombed and sent up in flames when the pervasive value of its people was aloha.

Waikiki is a curious place to be when you are faced with questions about gratitude because so much seems idyllic for the visitor.  Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire, a fiery form of mother nature, is a lady flowing with gifts and beauty here.  All of them relax you and fool you into thinking life is wonderful everywhere, just like it is here.  In Oahu communities, locals look out for one another and extend aloha to each other.  Our waiter at Duke's this morning told us, "This is a small island, and everyone knows each other, so you have to stop and say hello."

I'd be silly to believe that all is perfect here.  Humankind has a way of making its own self miserable even in places like Hawaii.  Drugs, alcohol, jealousy and territoriality mar the paradise that many strive to create.  But even sillier would be to dismiss the spirit of aloha in the island's residents, an age-old value of giving generously and extending a welcoming hand of friendship.  It is far more pervasive than anything else and underlies all the sweet memories visitors take with them when they leave.  For that I am very grateful today.  Aloha.  It gets down to love, all over again.  For the grateful heart is the one that extends love to the world.