What was your first reaction when you first looked at my list of Twelve Aloha Virtues?
Were you satisfied with them, or did something else come to mind that you immediately wanted to add? If so, I hope you took the liberty of adding it to your own list.
Maybe you picked out one or two as favorites? Maybe they weren’t exactly favorites, but they resonated in a different way?
Did the twelve give you a feeling of recognition’s contentment, or the longing of discontent, and a wishing for more?
Part of my own enchantment with my list is that my reactions have differed from year to year. Particular ones do jump out at me, and every year those ‘jumpers’ leaping off the page are different, causing me to wonder about the roominess (and fickleness) of my own brain with its ever growing and ever changing capacity for abundance and scattered possibility (Palena ‘ole goodness :).
Because I always do this in December, I wonder about the influences of the past year, and how many are recent, insistently pressing because of any gravity (the economy truly is a doozy right now), or spectacularly influential in the way they have lingered or created habits over the course of the entire year.
So ultimately I do choose each year, and I then sit down with a blank Word doc opened on my laptop, and as I look at the blank screen and rest my fingers on the qwerty of the keyboard, I ask myself, “Why?”
- Why these? (or why this particular one)
- What are they trying to tell me?
- What shall I do with them?
- Is it just for right now? Is it a quick fix, or is it a could-be-forever kind of thing?
And this year, there is a different question, one which has not come up for me before;
- Who shall I share this with?
Usually this is an exercise of self-reflection I tend to keep to myself. A private pleasure, sort of like a candy bar you buy with no intention beyond licking your own lips in savoring the sugary, chocolaty goodness of it. There will be no sharing of the candy.
But not this year. The need to share was immediate. It was yet another “Why?” for me.
I think my virtue page jumper this year created the question at the same time as it jumped at me, for the virtue is one I have never written about before: Humor.
Within virtue, we set our hearts free.
Humor. Speaking of hearts, this comes from Proverbs 17:22 “A cheerful heart is good medicine.” Laughter fills the holidays, and no one can tell me our ability to laugh at ourselves is not character-building and virtuous.
And...
Your character emerges from the deep inner weavings of your values, your spirit, and your instinctual emotional well-being: It is flushed out and propelled toward others on the vibrations of your good intentions. Indeed, the virtues you choose to practice were in fact chosen by your “moral excellence.”
From: In Keeping with our December Tradition: Twelve Aloha Virtues
This year though, I know Humor will be important to me. I don’t know how I know, I just know that I do. And because I believe that my own Aloha spirit talks to me, I am okay with just listening to that part, being okay with the ‘just knowing’ and then going on from there.
Curious about what would come up, I searched my own Flickr photostream for “funny” and this was one of only two pictures which came up: Kūki‘o Tidepool Life; a Sea Urchin I had very unkindly flipped over. In both cases, “funny” was curious thinking for me, it decidedly was not humorous at all.
Yep, there is some reason humor is calling to me right now...
So I will be off to that blank Word doc next, and see how else Humor will talk to me.
How about you? Which one did your Aloha pick out for you?
We will Ho‘ohana together, Kākou.
~Rosa
Want a bit more coaching with your own questions? From the archives:
The power of questioning: Ask “Why?” Five Times
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