There is something remarkably similar between the two of us apparently very dissimilar human beings. ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Imaikalani, an indigenous Hawaiian, who relinquished wealth and Western advantage to live, walk, and speak the ancient traditions and wisdom - and me, a Jewish woman, author, and cosmopolitan world traveler.
And yet, still…
‘Iokepa, when challenged with, “The ancient spiritual world is lost because it wasn’t written down;” he responds, “It’s alive because it is passed in the breath. We just haven’t been using this muscle.”
And when I’m challenged with, “You write memoir – it’s neither fiction nor history;” I respond, “I write from lived experience.”
Are we - is this - so very different? We, apparent opposites, draw from that which is alive in us, filtered (in our cases) through differing experiences and personal gifts.
“It’s not someone else’s culture, ‘Iokepa says. “it’s the one that lives in you. We prove ourselves in different ways. “ He speaks of more than just the two of us.
Too often, young or old, we seek to fill the seeming deficits in our lives with someone else’s treasures. It never works. Even if I write fiction, it will resonate with my own birth, upbringing, and failures. Even if ‘Iokepa travels the world with me, he does not presume to be a Parisian or a New Yorker.
When, for years, I taught a Writing-to-Find-Your-Voice workshop across the country, I insisted that each of our voices were singularly ours. I can truly admire yours; I cannot duplicate it. Our treasure, our gift from the Creator, sits within. What we can learn from others is how to access and polish what is already ours.
Or, as ‘Iokepa has said. “You really can’t fail at anything you’re not trying to control.”
I have lived, these 28 years, within ‘Iokepa’s profoundly foreign and magnificently intriguing culture. I am neither Native Hawaiian nor what, he warns me, are, “folks who want to be treated as customers to my culture.” I am something quite else.
Married for these many years to a Kanaka Maoli cultural practitioner and living on his land, I have struggled – and ultimately succumbed – to simply being an appreciative and respectful guest. To varying degrees, I have been gratefully treated as such.
And now, full circle. ‘Iokepa speaks of a deeply spiritual people who reach, with great ease, across the life/death continuum to access the wisdom of his ancestors. Who see, hear, and know what has been too often invisible to those of us whose believe our only access to spirit is within books.
He is challenged, regularly, by Western “realists” who doubt his story;, who find his “lived experience” fantasy. ‘Iokepa relishes the doubters. He reminds me. “We need them and their challenges more than we need the ‘unquestioning believers’ or the ‘foot in both worlds” dilettantes.’ These folks are on their own genuine trajectory - as I was, 28 years ago, when I confronted a very peculiar Native Hawaiian stranger with my own formidable questions. We listen; we deepen our own confidence in one another’s journey..
Here - ‘Iokepa is reveling in what we often do not value in ourselves: the power within our own capacity to know; the faith in our own wisdom. It is preferable to live a life circumscribed (and celebrated) by that which is our own, than to parrot that which is an exquisite picture of someone else’s. “We cannot fail at what we do not try to control.” The sun is the sun. The moon is the moon. ‘Iokepa is the man I married. I am the woman he chose.