The Hula

I want to talk about the Hula. No, seriously, the Hula dance. A few months ago, I got to attend, for the first time ever, our university's annual luau. The Hula does not have any crazy acrobatics or rapid gyrations. Instead, the Hula is slow, gentle, and peaceful, with music that inspires the soul, and gestures that sweep away language and culture barriers.

In the performances I saw, there were people of all colors, shapes, and sizes, and the dresses were cut to match. Traditionally, both sexes are allowed to hula (and I want to learn it some day). The music was beautiful. Every person on that stage was beautiful. Size, skin color, and gender vanished, and there was only beauty. For a few moments, Something felt divinely right about all of it, and I cried. Just a little. This was an important experience for me, because it showed me that we are capable of doing things that are gentle, peaceful, inclusive, and harmonious.

And yet when things aren't harmonious, when we feel anxious or threatened, when we don't feel safe, we sometimes alienate others, say really hurtful things that we don't mean, or behave in ways that aren't true to our beliefs and values. Sometimes we may say VERY inappropriate things in an attempt to alleviate tension during a tense situation. And these things can deeply hurt others. To any whom I may have offended with such behavior, this is my olive branch and apology. It's a feeble apology, but it's honest and heartfelt. And it comes with an effort to learn to do better. In fact, it's changing my career path.

I've been giving a tremendous amount of energy to the study of ethics and positive psychology lately, in realization that the Internet has turned the planet into a giant echo chamber, where the effects of our interactions with others is immediate and apparent. In this way, it has almost become like a single organism, with different species and cultures functioning like different tissues. Events like major conflicts or world wars are like bodily illnesses, and peace rallies are a kind of immune system.

My heroines of the last decade or so have all been women who've recognized this in some way and been recognized for that recognition: Jane McGonnigal had a traumatic brain injury that inspired her to use games as a mechanism for tackling problems on both the local scale (Superbetter, which focuses on improving the body) and the world scale (World Without Oil). Lauren Faust, you all know and love, or you wouldn't be here. Tiffany Shlain is my latest heroine. Her film, Brain Power, explores the Internet as a kind of synaptic underpinning for a global consciousness, in which we all participate. I believe all of these expressions are the attempts of a global body to heal itself, after a too-long period of conflict.