WAYFINDERS: looking to the sky to find Home

In the article, The Women Navigators, writer Tim Henry tells the world something that, until Disneyʻs Moana came into our lives, no one really knew how ancient Polynesians got themselves from island to island.

Moana was not wrong.

Even though, as the article states, the movie actually did a very...much tamer...version of the tradition of how - for real - it has been the women who have brought everyone home, by sea, using only the sky and the inborn ability to navigate from within, trusting ourselves and nature to get us home, where we belong.

A Sacred Tradition (in more ways than only one)

There are purists in my Culture.

Yup.

On both sides of the Pacific Ocean.

There have always been.

These are the people for whom even folks like I am not allowed, somehow, to know, or by that matter, see how this...navigation stuff...fits into my own life, and what is done with it.

We do not all know how to captain a boat, all us Hawaiians...hell, all us Polys - we do not all know how to do everything that you see on television.

I do not navigate the sea.

I navigate life using the stars, because the stars have not ever led me wrong, even when it felt like what I saw and was told and felt told me (through my fear) that something could go wrong, that I did not have the instructions as given to me by someone else as to how to do things their specific way.

Wayfinders...leading the way home, even to ourselves.

The one place that people do not realize is home is within ourselves.

We can call a building home, we can believe that someone else is our sense of home, and we can say we are going home, but lots of us donʻt think of our very selves as being the only home that any one of us has truly ever known.

For that matter, will truly and also ever own.

We are the only thing we come into this lifetime with, and we are also the only thing, other than a collection of memories of a life lived as well as we could, that goes with us when we leave this consciousness.

It is the reason why, if I am asked how to live longer, I tell people to simply be more concerned with living, period. If we choose to live right now, and in this one moment, we live.

If we choose to wait until what life LOOKS like to others as created by us, and we are waiting to be something in the eyes of others, please choose differently, or else you will waste life on maybes.

Maybes suck okole, very dearly.

Maybes - they are the ultimate way to procrastinate, because it points to the human compulsion towards being non-committal, towards not having to grow or to change. Most of the time it is because seriously - we really have no clue of what we are doing. Repetition might be a great teacher, but, it is also the ultimate enabler in that if something makes us feel okay for a moment, we tend to believe that it will fix things every single time, will willingly go through the same shit we have gone through for a long, long time, and still tell ourselves that everything is fine but internally, we know we are full of crap.

When we ask ourselves if we are okay, even then we are silent and the only answer is - nope.

No one tells us how to navigate these feelings. We are told that they are normal, and that everyone has them - but, rarely are we EVER taught how to deal with and get through them. Our parents, or the people who raised us, had a responsibility to raise us well enough so that we would be able to navigate all of those ugly times in our lives.

I am a Pisces - I like the word "navigate" - it makes me think about the ocean. When I think about the ocean, I think about Pismo, which is my North Shore, and also where he is...

As a Hawaiian child I was fascinated by the sea and loved sitting beneath the starry sky at night,whenever we got the chance to go to the shoreline. Even though I played with my cousins, there was never a time that we were there that I was not sitting on the sand, or perhaps on one of the lifeguard towers, beneath the blanket sky, believing that I could see into forever and always feeling like someone was looking back at me. It always made me feel lots safer thinking that for real, we were being taken care of from Above.

It was my father who taught me about how my own ancient ʻAumakua did like Moana did in the movie - they used what they were born with to get themselves to where they needed to be.

I am not different.

My daughter, not different.

All of the women who came before me, also - not different.

All of us always referring to our ʻAumakua somehow.

All of us credited those women.

All of us looked to them, in prayer, in thought, with hope that we also would be those same kind who got ourselves out of a jam, out of harmʻs way, and back to the safety of the people who we love the very most, who also love us that much, too.

That place called Home.

There are things that all of us needs a Wayfinder for...

I am a Wayfinder.

I seek the answers from a place which people think is such a mystery but, the actual mystery is why people do not see the things that are there for all of us, and all we have to do is look for it. If we cannot find it, then it is best that we find ourselves someone called a Wayfinder.

A Wayfinder is someone who helps us navigate rough spots on the path, on the ocean, on our way, and a Wayfinder is someone who will make certain that we know that there are far more possibilities in this Universe than only the one that oneʻs mind will tell us is the only way.

We will get you to that place you need to be, so that you can continue on with your voyage, and we will do our best to make certain that you know what perils lies ahead, as much as we will tell you where it is that you will find your bounty.

I Am a Polynesian Wahine from the Mainland, born and raised on this side of the ocean, and only what things we have been taught and told is the truth of the very All Of Us...All Us Hawaiian Folks.

Just like my ʻAumakua, I, too, Am a Wayfinder.