Main image: There’s more to Hawaii than meets the lei. (Shutterstock)
Who doesn’t want to live in a place where an overarching spirit rules the land? Where people put the needs of others above their own. Where kindness and respect flow like an undulating ocean wave. In Hawaii, what matters is “the essence of relationships in which each person is important to every other person for collective existence.” And if you think that’s tourism marketing copy, it’s not. It’s real. The words are enshrined in the 50th state’s official Law of the Aloha Spirit.
If you're willing to listen to how people really feel about your being here, you'll open up a pathway to connection.
Longtime resident and realtor Beth Thoma Robinson helps newcomers adapt to life among the 1.5 million people who live on Oahu, Hawaii (the Big Island), Molokai, Kauai, Lanai and Maui. It’s a vital part of her job. Robinson, who lives in Kohala on the Big Island, writes stories for the blog run by her brokerage Hawai’i Life, to sharpen the focus on sensitivity head on.
“If you’re willing to listen to how people really feel about your being here, you’ll open up meaningful conversations and relationships and a pathway to connection with Hawaii, the place and the people,” she wrote in a recent post.
What Hawaii won’t do is change for you.
Hawaii may be a dream location for surfers and free-divers. But if you’re thinking of relocating and you fail to respect the indigenous culture… you’ll soon find yourself out of your depth. (Vitor Rossetto / Unsplash)
So what’s the first step to fitting in? Take your cues from everything around you, Robinson advises. What’s the name of the community you live in? What does it mean? What does the name of the street you live on refer to? Why is there a highway named after Queen Liliʻuokalani? Who was she and why is she important?
The state’s history informs its present. Hawaiian culture turns on its past, both ancient and recent. In the 19th century, Hawaii became a constitutional monarchy acknowledged as a sovereign nation by the crowned heads of Europe. In 1893, the U.S. booted out the last monarch, Queen Liliʻuokalani (of the namesake highway), and ceded power to sugar and fruit plantation owners.
But centuries before that – and more importantly in terms of defining the culture of the islands – the Polynesians who crossed more than 2,600 miles of open ocean in outrigger dugout canoes forged a bond with their newfound home that still persists today. They chose to worship, not conquer, the land.
The Hawaiian word for land, ʻāina, means that which feeds us. Again that’s not sentiment, it’s rationale. We are who we are because of the land acknowledges a reciprocal relationship with the ocean, the waves, the weather, the volcanoes.
“The assumption of relatedness is baked into everything: into the language, the cultural practices, the stories and traditions, and into day-to-day life,” says Matt Beall, who founded Hawai’i Life and has lived on the islands for 30 years.
Beyond the bliss of the beaches, another side of nature invites the challenge of verticality, as experienced by the first undaunted Polynesian inhabitants. Ropewalk, Maui (Will Rust / Unsplash), The Valley of the Temples, Oahu (Guille Pozzi / Unsplash)
A hundred years ago, the indigenous Hawaiian lifestyle and cultural ways were not tolerated. Now that’s changing. Hawaii has worked hard to reclaim its native identity through the reintroduction of its language, chanting, music, hula, arts and other practices. Everyone who moves here – like the Japanese, Koreans and Filipinos who came to work on the plantations in the early days – contributes to island life and the melting pot of influences.
That’s what Jason Burch discovered. He was working in marketing in Los Angeles in 2022 when he saw pandemic job lay-offs likely and started looking at options. That summer he and his wife bought a home sight unseen in Captain Cook on the Big Island, about 30 miles south of Kailua-Kona.
Burch chose Hawaii Island because it was big, has a diverse ecosystem, live volcanoes and two international airports. “Pure paradise,” he says. The couple and their toddler daughter live on a 1.1 acre property with fruit trees and lush greenery. “We went from city life to country life overnight,” he says. “We had no idea this was what either of us wanted.”
As respectful incomers, the Burch family immediately felt welcomed by neighbors and the local community. They loved the small-town feel of the islands, enrolled their daughter in school, began volunteer work, opened a design business…
For the Burches and others like them, the pillars of aloha law have been easy to absorb. Kindness (akahai), unity (lōkahi), agreeableness (ʻoluʻolu), humility (haʻahaʻa) and patience (ahonui) are more than a set of best intentions. In Hawaii, they’re behaviors that become internalized by those who learn and listen.
Surf and turf. Surfing was appropriated by Californian musicos in the 1960s, but its origin barrels back to 12th-century Polynesia – when the strength required to master the power of waves, while balancing on a plank of wood, served well in shaping tribal leadership battles. In the same spirit, in 2020, Hawaiian Pacific Islander Carissa Kainani Moore took the sport’s inaugural gold at the Tokyo Olympics. (Tatonomusic / Unsplash)
To live in Hawaii is to find your way to what brought you here in the first place. Aloha means to hear what is not said, to see what cannot be seen and to know the unknowable. Those are the words of the statute. And that's how life is lived.
• Remember you don’t become Hawaiian just because you move there. Values play out differently from on the U.S. mainland and elsewhere in the West, where people put a premium on individualism and being self-made. Hawaii is not a place to lead a solitary life.
• Recognize the pride Hawaii takes in its culture, from surfing (they perfected it) to sailing (outrigger canoe traditions live on) to hula, a ritual with religious roots that tells a story of ancestry and geography.
• Respect that some places remain off limits. Hawaii’s temples, called heiau, were built to worship ancient gods. Burial sites hold great value to native Hawaiians.
• Re: clothing, don’t overdress. Aloha shirts with slacks and shoes constitute business attire. The shirts now ubiquitous around the world originated in Hawaii in the 1920s and quickly became a symbol of life in paradise.
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