Huliau - The Return Voyage

We live in a noisy world.

We have coming at us in any given moment:  Telephones that no longer sit quietly next to our bed or on our office desks (Now they follow our every step into movie theaters, church, and romantic dinners with our lover); Mail that no longer comes once a day on the eagerly awaited footsteps of our postman (Now it beeps its electronic announcement night, day, and every moment between); News that no longer slaps at our doorstep at dawn, or arrives from Walter Cronkite’s lips at dusk (Now it comes at us 24/7, from so many contrary and irritating voices that it’s hard to know whom to trust).

Yes, we can turn off the cell phone, the computer, and cable TV.  But they remain a demanding, addictive call to arms.  We are sorely afraid that we will miss something.

There was a time when we missed nearly everything, and never felt the loss.  Never gave it a thought:  So fully preoccupied were we with our immediate human relationships and the unavoidable life in our faces.

I can almost hear my twenty-nine year old son laughing his head off at these thoughts, some 6,000 miles away.  He is mocking my words–calling them nostalgia, accusing me of being an old geezer.

But permit me to clarify (for son Sam, and for the rest):  Mine is neither a judgment nor indictment of the abundant gifts of technology, the miracle of instant communication, the  demanding world we’ve created.  That is not my intent at all.

Rather, it is this.  How can we discern?  How do we decide, among the Google of accessible information:  What holds water?

Twelve years ago, the Hawaiian Grandmothers told ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Imaikalani:  “When you’ve heard all the lies, you will know the truth.”  Daily, in these twelve years he has been strenuously tested.

So much knowledge;  so little wisdom.  In every niche of the Internet, we find voices  of ignorance that will affirm our own.  There is no longer a need to be alone in our nightmares, fantasies, conspiracies, or falsehood.  Everywhere there is a chat room or a website to keep us from feeling the occasional, well-deserved loneliness.

In the early days of cell phones, when it still felt outrageously intrusive to have the person standing in front of you at Starbucks answering classified ads, or in the toilet stall next to yours arguing with a boyfriend–there was still the remaining hope of an agreed upon civility.

‘Iokepa used to laugh and say of that ubiquitous cell phone usage:  “Yes, we know you are not alone.  We know you have someone who will actually speak with you.”   And it did, at times, sound like the point of  it all.

So there is Rachel Maddow and there is Bill O’Reilly.  There is Wikipedia and there is Amazon.  Newspapers disappear but there is no escaping Google.  Publishers and bookstores fold; Netflix flourishes.  Choose your weapon.

We fill ourselves with endless trivia.  We have no protective sensory screen.  Infomercials pours into our ears and eyes, and then undigested, out of our mouths.  It is a terrifying national version of the childhood game of Telephone: So many distortions in the repetition.

We repeat what we hear.  But have no ability to explain what we repeated.   We are marionettes, and someone–many many someones–are pulling the strings.  We pass as literate when we are puppets.  We spout opinions that won’t hold up to challenge.  We heard it, we read it, it sounded true.  The plethora of source smothers any likelihood of  independent observation or idea.  How do we know,  What holds water?

Without exception,  my authentic thoughts and feelings (mine, not Keith Olbermann’s) emerge from complete silence:   In my walks along a beach, down a country lane, or in an urban forest–those places where my gut drowns out the stuff my mouth spouts reflexively.  My answers matter, it seems, only if they’ve traveled the full length of my looping intestine.

Yet I realize that even a walk in the park demands a certain confidence–and its corollary courage.  We must fully believe that we are capable of independent thought–and then we must exorcise the noise that passes for consensus and conventional wisdom, in favor of our quiet knowing.  ‘Iokepa says:  “We owe it to our soul.”

If it holds up alone on top of the mountain,  it will, very likely, hold water.