Righteous anger does not exist… Ideally, we’d be able to disarm any assailants and flood them with love, albeit boundaries, so they grow and rise up in their spirit and learn. Not bumbye, now. Whenever we feel justified in our anger, we are about to misbehave. We are still Human, we may get angry, but, it’s our kuleana to answer with the light instead of the darkness. -Nomi Kaheaonalani Carmona
I found this comment this morning on my facebook page and really liked it. It speaks to me because I know that, especially when the subject is politics, I have a real bad habit of getting righteously angry. There are a whole bunch of people out there who are not very nice and not very smart and very often deserve a big blast of vitriol, but that doesn’t make it a good idea to send aforesaid blast their way. It can be downright counterproductive at times.
Anyway, it was also an educational comment for me because I had to look up the meaning of the word kuleana. I love the sound of the
It really is a paradise on Earth
Hawaiian language, so many vowels rolling in gently like the waves, Aloha, Mahalo, leis at the luaus, and the clattering K’s give it a quick energy, Kona, Kuaui, Waikiki, I think of Hula dancers in grass skirts and fierce island warriors in outrigger canoes. Anyway, kuleana has quite a few meanings but the gist, as I understood it, is the obligation to act right because you have the privilege of doing so. Sort of like a noblesse oblige for the common man, what the Jews call a mitzve.
Kuleana. For me, right now, it means that since I have the amazing privilege of living in Prague and teaching English, I own an obligation to be the best English teacher I can be.
As a writer, it means I need to pour it out and not hold back. With less righteous anger, of course.
www.gurukalehuru.com 
You’re thinking about Hawaii too, eh?
Hmmm. Makes me wonder if these Central European winters aren’t kicking our fucking asses. I have been SERIOUSLY considering moving to Hawaii this year. I’ve been thinking about it for the last 6 months, Googled the living beJAYzus out of it, bookmarked, taken notes, etc.
But people like me don’t get to live in Hawaii. There’s always a reason to stop us, to keep us from doing the Obvious Paradise Thing. Perhaps it’s my vitriolic nature, my need to bitch and dump and shit on everything that doesn’t go my way (see Dunkin’ Berliner blog for examples).
Or it could be the paperwork. I’m trying to take a Czech and a dog there. And there are impossible quarantines in place. For the dogs I mean.
Peace from Berlin Island …………………………. Melvis
And I just looked up bumbye, it means eventually or later on. I figure you probably already looked it up but this saves other readers the trouble. Nice concept that Kaleanu.
or Kuleana
Kuleana. I noticed the mistake in the headline when I woke up this morning and changed it.
Nice blog, Craig! I read the one about German toilet habits, the one about rolling bales of hay around in the square and the reasons for not taking an expensive camera into the middle of a bunch of drunks and the one about the seat Nazis. I will be checking it out more in future.