Life can get really busy without our even trying -- especially true if one is curious and somewhat extroverted.  One of my goals is to LIVE as if I live in Hawaii. Twice a week I jog around Queen Kapiolani Park and then swim at San Souci Beach.  Being out in the green and blue of this marvelous world is such a joy.  

Driving around Diamond Head on my way home, I found myself singing a song from my teenage years in Southern California:
       Don't like shoes upon my feet
       To be at easy is such a treat
       Smile at everyone I meet
       That's the Hawaiian in me

Ethnically, I am not Hawaiian.  But my Heart is AT HOME in these islands.  The Aloha Spirit has been hard pressed in these self serving times but it has survived.  After our recent earthquake on the Big Island there was no looting.  People gathered together to cook for one another.
It doesn't take much observation to understand that the people with the biggest hearts are not the ones most likely to end up at the top of the heap.

Some people see our islands as isolated.  But to me the water doesn't isolate us but connects us to the rest of the world.  Our islands have received countless waves of people coming from north and south, east and west.  We are delighted by our kaleidoscopic diversity.  Here we are all minorities -- all of us between cultures -- or perhaps, among cultures -- free in ways one cannot be in the presence of a dominant majority.