Latest / The iAlign Podcast with Flint Mitchell / #14 - Respect, Racism, Wolf Sanctuaries, Sustainable Living, and the Aloha Spirit With Caden Waidyatilleka

Transcript

#14 - Respect, Racism, Wolf Sanctuaries, Sustainable Living, and the Aloha Spirit With Caden Waidyatilleka · The iAlign Podcast with Flint Mitchell

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: What's up y'all?
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Seeking Authenticity.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Flint Mitchell, and I get absolutely psyched by having conversations with authentic people that I admire about the things they value.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Their stories and perspectives don't just make me smile, laugh, and think.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: They inspire me to wake up earlier, listen better, focus, and work harder, and help make me a better version of myself.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it's my hope that sharing these conversations through this podcast might do the same thing for you.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: In this episode, I talk with Kaden Wagyatilica.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Kaden is a really genuine and kind friend of mine I met while I was on Oahu.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Our mothers grew up together, and so when I went to live on Oahu for a bit, meeting him was already like having a bit of family out on the islands.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: The first thing I noticed about him though was how connected with the environment and how intentional he is about preserving and protecting it.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Anytime we couldn't meet up, it was usually because he was tending to their garden, which he's walled up with bricks made of plastic that he's collected, or making lily coy bars from the fruit that they grew.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: He sees issues impacting our earth and wants to help.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: One other thing that was striking that I ask about first in this discussion is that Caden and his twin brother grew up with different skin colors, which, in Hawaii, leads to different childhoods.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Here, we talk about a bunch of interesting topics, including racism and respect in the Hawaiian Islands, his experience working in wolf sanctuaries in Colorado, and volunteering through Central America, and his passion for trying to create and teach about a more sustainable and environmentally friendly earth.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: He's got a ton of positive energy.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: I love listening to him, and I know you will too.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: But really, what it was was from the top of the mountain to the ocean front, this is one source of life.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Just makes you really appreciate the land for what it is, rather than like, I gotta get to where I'm going and do what I'm doing.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, stop and realize where the hell are you?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, this is beautiful.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for doing this with me, my man.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate it.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, my pleasure.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: No, I was so psyched that we met when I was traveling through Oahu earlier this year because it's always nice to have a little bit of local knowledge when you're traveling through the islands, you know.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: All right, yeah.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Find the find the hidden tide pools.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm pretty excited to have you on the podcast for a variety of reasons.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Cool that you went to college on the mainland, so you kind of have a perspective of growing up in Hawaii, but also experiencing the mainland.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but to start off with, I'd love to hear your perspective on growing up with a brother who has a different skin color, which for the audience, uh Caden's father is Sri Lankan and his his mother is white from the mainland.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so you're a darker tone mixed.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: I pull more the Sri Lankan side and he pulls the howley side or the the white side.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what was it like?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, did you see a different experience growing up than your brother?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when we were kids, you know, it's definitely not as big of an issue, but as we grew up, I definitely noticed it.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, one of the things is I started moving around from school to school, and he stayed at a public school the whole or private school the whole time.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was just one thing, and and that happened for a variety of reasons.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: But another one is in Hawaii, you know, people talk about racism and reverse racism and how reverse racism is not a thing, and for the most part it's not, like you're just racist if you're you know being like that.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: But but in Hawaii, there is this kind of a bias, let's say, against white people or howlies because of just you know our history of the colonials coming in and taking over.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: So people that you know you see modern day racism with are saying, like, you know, the whites never have to deal with anything, they have their privilege, but not in Hawaii.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: In Hawaii, if you're white, you are the minority.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody here is mixed or Asian, you know.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it definitely, you know, I I actually had a lot easier of a time growing up than my brother.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the schools I went to for high school, you know, it's a very one of the schools I went to for high school was a public school.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh it just everybody, you know, treated me so differently because I was brown, I fit in, you know?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're white and you walk around the halls, the the guys will come up to you and they'll be like, hey, get dollar, get dollar.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: They're trying to ask you for money.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as you pull your wallet out, they're gonna jack you.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: But when I when they asked me for a dollar, I'm like, bro, what are you talking about?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're like, all right, all right, whatever, get out of here.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they don't they don't mess with me.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Wait, how old are you when this is happening?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is my freshman year of high school, dude.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it was it was definitely an interesting experience, and I and I was definitely able to make a lot more friends, you know.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was able to just float around.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas if you're very white, you know, you kind of stick to the whites, you know, people in in these schools, you know, and you're very not ostracized, but you're definitely met with some abrasion by certain, you know, communities and people.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's wow.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely was interesting.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And at what age you said that you really started seeing that becoming aware of it?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um around eighth grade, when I left, I left Lutheran the next year, and I went to Washington Middle School, which is a public school.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's not necessarily like a ghetto school, but it's definitely there's a lot of really low-income me low-income housing like people, a lot of you know, Micronesian parents with you know the first generation students.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, so it definitely was you know a huge shift.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the first day I met this guy, and he ended up being we have a we have a street in Hawaii, Pololo, and everybody knows it's not even a street, it's just an area, a valley.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody knows Pololo is kind of the rough neighborhood, you know, you don't want to get caught in Pololo or you're gonna get in trouble.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so I ended up, you know, talking to this guy, and he I ended up befriending him.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: We became cool.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then later I find out he was in a gang, and you know, a few years afterwards he dropped out of high school and he ended up stabbing somebody and going to prison.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, that kid sat next to me in you know, eighth grade homeroom class.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, how the hell?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's crazy.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: But because I was, you know, colored skin, we didn't have issues.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: We got along, we were able to hang out, and I could run with him.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it actually offered me protection in school because some people were like approaching me, like, hey, do you want to join gangs?
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to do this?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to do that?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just like, I know this guy, and you know, just talk to him, don't talk to me.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so, but if I was white, then I would be the target of attack.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so my brother could not have gone to school with me there, he would have had such a different experience.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's wild.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And what's so wild about that is it sounds like that's a conscious decision, not from you guys, but from like the parent level.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, it's it's kind of like it's established, like we can't send our son here because they're gonna scrap.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so exactly, and so he had his whole education through K through 12 at one school.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas I I had a bunch of different experiences, and I felt like that actually really helped me because every time I was changing locations and going to new school, I had to be really personable, I had to make friends, I had to find new friend groups instantly, you know, and so it really helped me, you know, be able to, you know, charm people, I guess, or like find a way to make friends basically.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I think he never really got that experience.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: He's so used to having his one group of friends and he's not gonna go out of his comfort zone and he's gonna stay where he's at.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not no disrespect to him, of course.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, he's a great guy, but it's something that happened because of you know his his skin tone and the way he had his upbringing versus the way I had mine, you know, coming from two different skin tones.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I met these two, these two kids, they're probably I don't know, four, five years old.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: I was on the beach or something, and I was talking to their parents and we're just kind of laughing.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they were from uh from the island, and this little kid comes up and he goes, I'm a hundred percent local.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, classic.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you're four years old.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you saying that?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's so interesting.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, was he?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because that honestly can be some people, you know, they claim local, and I guess there's this difference of like local being born from here or like local, like I've assumed the culture, and I've taken it in.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because there are some people that it's sort of I guess the difference between like being a local and being like Kamaina.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Kamaina's like being one of the family, whereas local's just like you're from Hawaii, you know.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not I'm not you know Hawaiian by any means, but I still feel like I have that cultural identity of Hawaiian, you know, so to speak.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it must be at least a little bit interesting when the Hawaiian culture is so tied to the land.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that seems like what it really kind of epitomizes the culture is like the connection and the respect of the land.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely, and it seems like that has become maybe the factor that's most important about being a local or being Kamaina is like your connection to the land itself, to the islands.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's tough because that's you know, way, way back in the day, the native Hawaiians were actually 100% sustainable.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that also being from Hawaii influenced me to venture towards a more sustainable route.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: But essentially, you know, they were able to live off the land, things like kalo, tarot.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: They would, you know, cut it, they'd harvest the corn, and then they could re-plant it and it would regrow.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And they had a system, you know, and with their fishing, you know, they would create these little ponds and they would feed the fish in the pond.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the fish would come in and they get bigger and bigger and bigger.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Once they're too big, they can't escape the pond and they become easy to harvest.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the way they would naturally fish, they catch big fish, and they're not overfishing the populations.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: So there is this sort of cultural identity of sustainability as well with it, you know.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's wasn't Waikiki in that high kind of in like Ala Moana, wasn't that all marshes or like kind of those kind of um I think yeah, closer to like Diamond Head in between Diamondhead and Ala Moana, I believe, was kind of a wasteland, and I think that's why it got bought out.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think the more regal areas were kind of kept for a while.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: But the first that's why the first you know hotel in Waikiki, or they're pretty much on Oahu, uh, started there in Waikiki, is because you know that was the area that they bought out first, and you know, they made it a beautiful place now.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's something for sure.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean it's definitely, you know, not it's a good place for for mankind to exist in, I'd say.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but kind of going back to that topic, how do you see that now affecting you or your brother?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: I guess he lives on the mainland now, but maybe affecting friends or family or other people, does skin color now impact you when you're searching for a career or searching for a job or just kind of living on that living on the island?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a really good question.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think it does kind of differ a lot from the mainland.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, on the mainland, there is definitely, I feel like, uh a more bias towards, you know, people that are similar to you.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: You want to be around your folks.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: But here in Hawaii, everybody's so mixed race, you know, half the people are, you know, mixed with all kinds of stuff that it's it's hard to be racist because you can't just be like, hey, you Chinese, Filipino, Portuguese, you know, Hawaiian, because and you're probably half the same things yourself, you know.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it's hard to, yeah, hard to really pinpoint this racism, but there it definitely still exists.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I think when like finding a job and stuff, everybody's super down to earth.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's you know, and and the other thing with that is in Hawaii, it is a little bit more about who you know rather than what you know.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can be all qualified for the job, that's great, but my uncle Kimo needs a job, so he's gonna get the job before you because he's family or something, you know.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean it it seems like that's pretty pretty prevalent.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I had a um uh friend a while back whose whose dad worked in construction on the island, and his I think his job was specifically like keeping up relations.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, it was because it was uh because construction is even construction in general is about relationships, but then you put it in Hawaii and it's really like who's getting the project, it depends on who who you know.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, and that's the thing, it it really is a lot about who you know.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to know some things, but like having that connection with somebody, it basically ties you into the Kama Aina, where it doesn't matter if where you're from, as long as you're in that tight-knit family, like you're gonna get provided for.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you think that stems from?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I I wonder if it is a little bit of sort of not necessarily, I guess maybe, yeah, I guess so, but the racial oppression when you know colonialism happened, you know, people were sort of segregated and forced to, you know.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think they imported, I guess, like the Chinese to work on plantations and stuff, so pineapples and sugarcane, when that was a big um industrial like crop for us.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I think that just forced everybody to sort of say, hey, we're family, you know, but people mixed and people, you know, assimilated with the culture.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I guess that whole representation of family and like taking care of your own was so vital because that was our means of survival that maybe that sort of translates now into this aloha spirit that you know we still feel in the Aina today.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's it's fascinating because I don't think a lot of people really appreciate uh how Hawaii was taken over um and created a state because it was not well done by the United States.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, yeah, a lot of people you know feel Captain Cook is the guy that came.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: They call him like Captain Crook because he's he's kind of stole the land.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And there are places like in Hawaii, if you've ever been to like Wai Nai, it's on the west side of the island, but it is a very well-known like anti-tourist spot.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like one of my buddies, um, you might have met him surfing, but he he went over there one time, he brought his board, he went out, paddled out.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: But he's a howli guy, he's from Arizona, and um, you know, he comes back to his moped and his seat is ripped up, his windows are and mirrors are smashed in, and like they spray painted on his car, like or or uh his moped, and like it was a clear sign that he was targeted because he was white.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't gonna come up to him, but this is your warning.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, you want to mess around in our neck of the woods, you're not welcome.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's really interesting because I mean when I when I was on Oahu for a couple months, I was just looking for a surf, and I was very I was cautious about going over to the west side.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um but what I found was if you I and I I don't know, I can't speak, I only had a couple experiences.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: So why not?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: The West Side is far more native.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, right?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I think they got pushed out.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: That was sort of as land was being bought up, they got pushed out to the west side, which was the less desirable side.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's fascinating because it's like the government has pushed them.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think this is another thing that people don't appreciate from the mainland, is like I have a similar feeling of connection to the land I'm from in California, in the Bay Area.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's yeah, the greatest place.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and when people litter here, of course, it it it it irks me, you know.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: It it pisses me off because I feel so connected to this place.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: But what people don't appreciate is that if you push out the locals in California, they just they can move.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: When you push the Hawaiians away, like where do they go?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: They have 1500 miles of ocean, right?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's not exactly the same, it's not the same thing.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um what I was trying to say was when I went over there, the the locals I met on the west side were the nicest people.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you went to like Eva and stuff, that area's clear.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: That one's that's fine.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: I I asked her.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but like it was interesting because it was uh it was it was clearly about respect.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: It was like this Hawaiian aspect of respect.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was I I didn't go out and and I made a very conscious decision to be very smart about what I was doing, and I think that's that too too.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and in return, I was met with a bunch of really big smiles, you know.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's actually really good to hear.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's true.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like I I I know you from you know, spending a lot of time with you, and you are a very like humble down-to-earth guy.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one thing that I think that registers with them is like if they can sense your mana, you know, your spirit, you know, they can tell kind of who you are.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: You come in, you know, super cool, they're not gonna disrespect.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: But I think maybe my friend might have been ripping the horn or or not the horn or you know, reving up, being a little obnoxious, maybe.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then he comes in and he's just catching every wave and he looks like Mr.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Hot Hotshot, then I think they're like, screw this guy, you know, who's this arrogant guy coming through?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: There's good and bad in in every place, right?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like I might have just had a good experience and he might have just had a bad one.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: But this is actually an interesting point that I'd like to hear your perspective on, which is I feel like because of this kind of history of uh of oppression from from the from the mainland government under Hawaii, it feels like respect maybe maybe it was beforehand, but maybe that's why respect is so uh important in Hawaiian culture, and it's not only that, it seems like, from my experience, people in Hawaii have a better sense of who's genuinely being respectful.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like instead of yeah, and I think we also have a very large population of Japanese, so that of course brings over the Japanese culture.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so that's why when you walk into somebody's house, you take your shoes off.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're talking to an elder, it's uncle, auntie, you know, as a sign of respect, not like hey Jim, hey Bob, whatever, you know.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: You call them uncle, auntie, so-and-so, because it just shows that I'm the cakey, you're the adult, I'm giving you the respect.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if that's also just the culture and perspective that you know we're brought up with.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: No, absolutely.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it seems kind of like it is.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's a very important part of the culture is being respectful.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I it is interesting.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um tying kind of the Japanese roots and the Hawaiian.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: It it I guess from my perspective, I until I lived there for a couple months, I didn't really realize how um much more diverse the area that you know Hawaii was than than it really is.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's so true.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: It is such a melting pot of cultures and you know, different ethnicities that I think that really does define it and make it what it is.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's so, you know, you know, any person, even even white people now too can come and there's such a large community out here of all races that there's kind of this harmonious, like as long as you are seen as like one of the locals or you're from here, or you have that mana about you, or you're you're the aloha spirit we talked about, you know, then people kind of they they think of you as family, they're not gonna disrespect you, and they're gonna like open themselves up to you.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think some of you know, Hawaii's people are some of the nicest people, you know, where they will just give and give and give, and you're like, I what did I do?
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just you know showing up here.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sometimes absolutely it's it's true.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that Hawaiians are the nicest people I've met as a collective whole, and once again, you get good and bad people everywhere.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, of course, of course, to be fair, like I I I think that the the reputation of Hawaiians being very um you know excluding towards yeah, yeah, excluding like there is a there is a uh history that you have to take into account.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: They probably are never going to treat you like like you're a local, and you have to be okay with that, but yeah, but they will treat you respectfully and and with that aloha spirit.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's like definitely, I mean they they have.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: A right to be mad, you know, and that's and that's fine.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: They have justifiable reasoning, but it's it's true, it is very prevalent.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of it, it's almost like politics in a way, where you know, one of my my friends, he's he's a big surfer, and I feel like that's so cliche, like oh yeah, my Hawaiian surfer friend.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: But no, no, he is uh but he he goes into these competitions and he's a howli guy, and so he he goes into these competitions and he's an amazing gifted surfer, but every time he always places second or third, never first, and because first goes to the local boy in that town that like is representing you know his uncle and his grandfather, everybody, they've all been surfing these places, so he wins it no matter what, and you know, and so he's done amazing cool things, you know, and then like they'll totally not even score him on it, and like they'll totally forget about it, and they're like, Oh yeah, this other guy got this, and somehow, no matter what you do, local boy always he's always beating you, he's always better, and then at the end, you know, they they either give you third place or second place, you know.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you really kicked ass, second place, you that's dude, that's uh kind of a hilarious story.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's tough.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: So he shows me he's got like six or seven plaques, he's like, Yo, second place, third place, second place.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's so funny.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: But all the locals that are out there surfing, they're like, bro, you're one of us, you're one of us, you're one of the G's, because you you do what we do, and you're killing it out here, and we see you putting in the work, like they give him a respect.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the politics of it is no, well, you know, this guy's father and his father and his father's father, you know, they all have been doing this competition since it started.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, no, and that's an interesting separation actually of the the kind of the culture between the politics of it, right?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's like in in the culture, it is it is kind of all about respect.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then in the politics, though, it that's where it kind of gets separated, right?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think that's just sometimes like in Hawaii, you know, it's this there's the Hawaiian style, and you gotta do it the Hawaiian style, or it's not, you know, gonna compare.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're not even on the same caliber.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: How did you take this kind of this this perspective uh growing up in Hawaii and how did it kind of influence what you want to do when you were starting to question college?
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And did you ever question staying on an island?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, well, so that's one thing.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: I I growing up going through a bunch of different school systems, I kind of realized at least general education for the most part in Hawaii is pretty poor, especially the public school system.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's really bad.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, one of the the the reason my my ninth grade, I was at that one school um where like you know you could get jacked and if you're walking in the halls.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And one and it's just just the fact that somebody would even be walking around in the halls waiting to jack you rather than being in class says something about the school.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I was in an honors English class and my mother's an English teacher, and so in our honors class, we had to read The Great Expectation and Yeah, exactly.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a challenging book for sure, and especially for freshmen, and so none of the kids hardly even speak English.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody's speaking pidgin, you know, crayol English.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: We're just eh, brahda kind, that kind of stuff, and you know, to have them read something like great expectations is just so unrealistic.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: So none of the kids would do it, and none of the kids really could do it.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: So eventually he stopped assigning.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was just like, okay, read a chapter, read a chapter, and then we would talk about it in class.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: But we didn't write a single paper, we didn't, you know, do any like major tests really because nobody would be able to pass them.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And after my mom saw that, she's like, You went, you were in honors English and you didn't write a single paper, like, no, you're out of that school.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but um that that going forward, like UH is you know a pretty good school, especially for things like marine biology and anything sort of or ocean or science related, even their geology and stuff, their sciences are pretty good.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: But generally speaking, I feel like the quality of education in Hawaii is not as strong as say on the mainland.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it's definitely you can make the connections here and you can do the networking here, and that gets you the job, but not the not the the material.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so going to the mainland, I went to Colorado for school, and I had a blast out there.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was an awesome place, but it really inspired me because it was so different than what I was used to.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was so stimulating.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean by that?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, for one, uh I went with something called Woo Wee, is a Western Undergraduate Exchange, and it's basically sister schools with UH and a bunch of other schools on the West Coast have this agreement like we'll take your kids and you take our kids for half off or for free or for in-state tuition, not free, sorry, in-state tuition.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went on that scholarship, but the requirements were you had to do, I think, 60 hours of you know, some sort of assisted like learning type of thing, which was like volunteer work or you know, w working under someone in your major or something like that.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and um for for my degree it was ecosystem science and sustainability.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I I loved the major itself, but one of the things I had to do was the 60 hours of volunteering.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was so in like in love with what I was doing, I ended up doing over a hundred hours of volunteer work, and I worked for like three different organizations, like the Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado, uh the Wolf Sanctuary, like W-O-L-F, yeah, sanctuary, and that actually got to work with real-life wolves and wolf wolf dogs, which are like you know, half-reeds.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: But um, it was such an amazing experience, and you know, and wildland restoration volunteers, like it was just overall such a great experience that I just kept going back for more, and I was learning so much.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so just to be able to not only learn in the classroom and see it in a textbook, but then to actually go out there and be required to do this, but yeah, you know, go get your hands dirty and you know what am I actually doing?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Environmental what?
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then here it is, you know.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: That was so huge, which I very rarely see in Hawaii.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: I only had one or two teachers really like turn you on to education in that sense.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, applying it.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, what was working with wolves like and also actually first question was the uh did the part wolves, did they come from owners who bought them and like couldn't handle them?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you think, oh, it's cool, I want a little baby wolf, and then it's a wild animal.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: It tears up your couch, and yeah, they get seasonal depression and all these crazy things.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: They're like they're wild.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: They need they need like you know, 50 to 100 square feet to like run around and do their thing, and also the environment, it's so hot in the city, or you know, some of these people would have them in apartments, you know, and that's you come home from work and your entire apartment's in shambles, so they're like, we have to get rid of this animal.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so instead, they would actually have to euthanize and kill those animals.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: So instead, this the wolf sanctuary would collect them from like wherever the pound or whatever, and um, then they'd house them up in the mountain and they created these huge open pens, and you know, you're feeding them like raw meat, it's like intense.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: But eventually you build bonds with these these creatures, and they're amazing.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're because they're pack animals.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Once you join the pack, you're in the clear.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're not in the pack, there's they have different levels.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, like I guess I I don't know if it was like one through four or if it was like four through one, but basically let's just say if it's a level one, you know, you can you can cruise with them.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's more dog than wolf mainly.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a chill animal.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: But if it's a level four, you have to like be an employee working there for two years as a volunteer.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no re no no questions asked, and then you're allowed to maybe meet them, you know, if they're receptive.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: But one of them was a female wolf, and there's there's like the alphas and the betas.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: So she was a female alpha, and what that meant is she's the leader of the female pack, essentially.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you were a female at all, she was very aggressive, and especially it's kind of weird, but if a girl was on their period, she could sense that and was extremely hyper-aggressive because it's like, oh, you're a fertile female, your competition.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: I need to take you out, kind of like what?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: So like it was it was well known that, like, unless you're you know working there and you know you're a guy, you can handle her, but if you're a female, she's off limits.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's and it was very but but once you get in the pack, she was really sweet and she's really loving.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: But anyone who's not in the pack, she was hyper-aggressive.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's so it it was wild for sure, and it was a cool experience.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: And just being out in the mountains in the snow, it's such a change of taste.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm used to this right here, you know, the sunrise, sunset on the beach, you know.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, had you such a change of pace.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: Then had you been coming off the island for a while, like had you had you went and ski before?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, so luckily, so that's my half howley side.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Luckily, I had ties on the mainland.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Half my family's on the mainland.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, most of my family's on the mainland.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so my grandfather's brother lived in uh Lake Tahoe for a bit.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I when I was maybe about 12 or 13, went out to go visit him and he taught me how to ski and stuff.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then as I grew up, I was snowboarding and skating and stuff.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: So when I got to Colorado, you were kind of at home when you went to Colorado, yeah.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: What were the what were the other kind of wild differences you had between um living in Hawaii and living in Colorado?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, let's see.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the major differences for one was like the people.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: I I definitely felt like in Hawaii I have a lot more genuine friends.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of friends in Colorado and I would hold them close, but I I definitely feel like it's I help you, you help me.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're you know, we're business partners more than yes, and like we get along super well, we click, but it's like I have my own stuff to do, and you have your own stuff to do, you know.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas here in Hawaii, it's like everybody knows everybody, and you know, no matter what you're doing, somebody's willing to help and jump in and stuff, and it's at no cost, you know.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas on the mainland, it's sort of like, yo, I drove you, where's my gas money?
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Here we don't talk about gas money, it's you drive them because they're your friend, you know?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I had a couple friends actually, it's an interesting story, but like a couple of my friends, and they were the Howley guys, would ask us for gas money, and all of us would get so pissed off because I'm like, I'll drive you across the island and back, and I'm never asking you for a penny, but you're gonna ask me gas money, and you took me like three blocks to go fill up your gas.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so we would get so pissed.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, like that became an ongoing joke, and like, like, oh, you get gas money, like, oh, you can pick me up from your house, it's on the way.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, yo, gas money, gas money, and like that's just like a huge joke with us.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: But it it at first was like, what the heck?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna really ask?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Three bucks?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you don't want me to fish out three dollars for you?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Come on now.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, so you can put on your card.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's something, it's it's funny because it's not even just something like you notice, it's something you notice that's like, what?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you asking for that?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: And especially in Hawaii, it's such a small place, you're not driving me across three, four states.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: If that's the case, then yeah.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: Then I'll of course I owe you money, but like, you know, you're driving me a 15 minutes, it's like, seriously, here's two dollars of gas.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: So then what other I mean, maybe when you were entering kind of your last years of of college, was it were you dead set on coming back, or did you ever think about staying?
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I definitely did think about staying.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I know my my family, like family is very big out here, and I'm sure it is everywhere in the world.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think for me, you know, my family, my parents were getting older, my brother was still in the mainland, he's younger than me by two years, so he was kind of doing his journey, and I had already kind of completed my journey.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, okay, let me come home, take care of the house, take care of the people, see what's going on, and you know, make sure things are still running smooth.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because one of the things we did here that inspired me to go into sustainability was we had a huge garden.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: We had a bunch of papayas, we had these things called hyotan.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're uh like I think Chinese or Japanese long squash, and they're like these monstrous things.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can buy them in the store and they're pretty small and compact, but the ones we got were like a good two feet like average size, and it's kind of like a potato vibe, but it's a little bit, it's like clear and a little bit softer and stuff.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: But you basically could add it to any like soup or something, and it gives you volume basically.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can feed a lot more people, sure.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we had all of these different things that we were growing.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: We have limes, we have star fruit, we have uh sour sop, moringa, which is a tree, so that one's not much maintenance, but we just had a huge you know abundance of different edibles.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: We did food scaping, yeah, and so to come back and help out with that.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Also, you know, I I'm very well connected out here, so it's gonna be easier for me to find you know opportunities.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: I felt so yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean by I had completed my journey?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so one of the things that I did earlier on, so I ended up getting my GED, my junior year, and just you know, skipping my whole senior year of school, which is I know non-traditional, but um, I did it sort of because for one, you know how I said I was kind of a rowdy kid.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it comes with the territory of just traveling so many schools, I think, is you kind of just are a little bit rebellious.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I ended up doing a prank with one of my friends.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: We ended up trying to scare the girl he liked, and instead the dean came and we scared the dean, so we got suspended.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it was on like a block period day, and two of my grades went from like a like I had a B and a C in a class, and the C I was working hard on because it was I ended up taking a junior level course my sophomore year, and then like a a uh a sophomore course like my junior, and it was weird, like my my transcripts got all messed up as I was transferring.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, I was in this like higher level course, and uh I ended up missing it on a block period day, which meant I missed two two days worth of school, and they punished me academically for a you know uh a disciplinary action, which my mom had a huge issue with at the time too.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean she's like, Yeah, if he wants to be stupid, make him do something stupid, don't punish him grades-wise.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: But basically, my my C went to a D and my B went to a C, and going to transfer for colleges, that's not looking good.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, screw this, I'm way too smart to be getting wrapped up in this BS.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I ended up just getting my GED and traveling abroad.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to Peru in Guatemala, took a little gap year, my senior year.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, and that was really fun and really enriching of an experience.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of people usually do that their like sophomore junior year of college, sort of, you know, study abroad experience.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I feel like by then you're already on your path, you're already in your zone, it's too late to sort of have this life-changing moment.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: But because I was able to do it, you know, fresh out of high school essentially, um, it gave me a more worldly perspective.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I went to go do things.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I went to go work with kids and like see if I wanted to be a teacher and go into the teaching route.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then I worked with exotic animals.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had like an oscelot and a toucan and a bunch of monkeys and all that cool stuff.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was fun.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: But um to see if I wanted to be a vet or go into some kind of animal route, and it it gave me a lot of light and you know helped me realize that I kind of want to do a mixture of both.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of want to teach about animals and life and the you know, the environment, and also gave me this worldly perspective where I was meeting, you know, Germans, I was meeting, you know, French guys, Belgian people.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, you know, I've only heard of Belgian waffles.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: Who the hell is this guy?
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: But I got to learn, you know, there's there's three different cultures, you know, there's like a German, there's like a French, and then there's like the Flemish in Belgium.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, where would I learn that in the textbook?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, not even in European history.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: Surprised you learned that in Guatemala.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, you know, of all places.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it was really cool.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: And one of my really good buddies that I still like, you know, was in touch with today, I actually met him in Belgium and had a good hangout with him.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's funny, he showed me all the Belgian beers and stuff.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a friend I made when I was 18.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: I just turned 18 and he was there for my 18th birthday, which in Guatemala is the legal drinking age.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I also that's a little bit of a bonus is I got to experiment with alcohol and how to do it in a safe manner.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: So when I'm in college, I'm not binge drinking, getting blacked out drunk, and completely irresponsible.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: But then I already knew all right, here's my limit, here's my tolerance, here's where I'm at.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: No, exactly.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was good to know already how to drink before, but in a legal way, right?
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so you're traveling through Peru and Guatemala, get learning about exotic animals and getting experiences teaching, how that could change your perspective then on what you're gonna do next.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, for one, it definitely just showed me that life is so much bigger than where you are, like, especially coming from Hawaii.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: We're in a small pond, you know, it's it's easy to be a big fish in a small pond, but you have to realize there's a bigger ocean beyond that pond.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the pond is just one location, but there's a million of these other ponds and you know, the ocean to worry about as well, um, with that metaphor.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: But but yeah, like just because there's a problem in Hawaii, there's not, you know, there's gonna be problems elsewhere in the world, and you can take a look at how they have dealt with it and how they chose to find a solution for that and implement it in your own way to your own place.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it definitely broadened my mind and like gave me a wider perspective on how big the world is, and not to be bogged down by just like, you know, oh my life in my town sucks because this.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, you know, you gotta see that the world is so much bigger than your one little town in your one area on your one island, whether it's the mainland or our land, you know, um, but yeah, it was it was definitely an eye-opening experience.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you do that before you went to college.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um I my pushback would be I think that there's always uh you can at any point in time you could probably have the the life-changing truth or or or or experience.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's a good point, is that at some point you do become pretty set in in your career and what you're doing.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think definitely a lot of people are switching majors way too often in college, and you know, you spend all this time and then your credits don't count.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's because they don't know what they want to do.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: When you're a freshman in college and they're like, pick a major, you're like, oh, I like math.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you're an accountant, go.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, no, wait, this is terrible.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to do this.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: But then being able to how would you choose then what you want to do?
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: I would say a lot of people don't know what to what don't know what they want to do until they're like 40 years old.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: Can't be accomplished when they're 40.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, right, exactly.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, like just being able to take that gap year before, you know, while your mind is still a lot more of a sponge that you know, soaking up information and go try out things.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: What do you like?
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: I like you know, sports, I like you know, blood and guts.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, why don't you try tropical medicine or why don't you try you know go to shadow at a you know a stadium and see how the medics there work and like you know, that you can do in that year, yeah.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: And like just get that experience, and then you're like, oh wait, actually, I don't like blood and guts.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't wanna, you know, and then now you know medicine may not be your field or something like that.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: It seems so it just it seems like something you really value then is just kind of hands-on experiences, kind of like with your garden or with uh the the volunteer volunteer organizations you went with.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's really it's really about like you just enjoy tangible experiences, and those are kind of how you direct yourself.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think definitely, for me at least, you know, getting my hands dirty taught me more than you know what I could learn in a textbook.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of maybe the idea of street smart versus book smart.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can learn everything, you know, on paper, but when you get put in the real test, how are you gonna fare?
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like having that experience in the streets is gonna you know take you a little bit further, maybe, at least in the real world, maybe not academically.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, and that's kind of maybe a tough aspect of um academics in general, is that there is a difference between theory and practice, and there's a difference between what people are learning in classrooms and what they're really gonna need to know.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, of course, an honest question is you know, in high school, where do you start teaching them about taxes and teaching them about like like because in um in our society that's not it's not frowned upon, but it's not necessarily done to an extent where kids are coming out with super practical knowledge.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I still I do believe that that kind of education system where you're learning about a bunch of different things is important because that's also a mind opening.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Experience, but at the same time, people need to be preparing for shit that's actually going to happen.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Definitely.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: I do think these real world experiences are going to open your mind and shed some light.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think another thing is, I guess it is sort of my gripe with the uh education system, at least for my experience.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I felt like I was learning information that was being told to me rather than learning it from myself.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like this is the history lesson I want to teach you from the book that I wrote.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: Here it is, rather than me going out and experiencing it, like going to a museum or going there somewhere else.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and maybe for me, just being more of a visual learner, that was the key to helping me get, as my grandfather would say, turned on to education.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you need to be stimulated by it.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: You can't just, you know, read a million books and think you know it all.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you do need to like have those experiences to cement that further in your head.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, and and maybe that's even just a broader perspective on whatever you're doing.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not interested in what you're doing or you're you find it dull, maybe it's because you're not looking at it or trying to do it from the right way or perspective.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like maybe if you find something unattractive uh as far as a career goes, maybe there's a way, different way of doing it, right?
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, for sure, for sure.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: How are you planning on taking that perspective of enjoying um kind of more tactical experiences with your interest in teaching about you know animals and and and nature?
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: How do you plan on maybe implementing those kind of desires in the future?
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think for so you're just talking about how to teach more people about environmentalism and that kind of stuff.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, teach them about things you're interested in.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's gotta like start with the youth, and I I really think that for a couple reasons.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: For one, you know, they're more impressionable, they're more likely to listen.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of older people have their minds pretty made up, but also they have creativity, and I think that's a very huge aspect of sustainability and being sort of like a solutionarian.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: You wanna find a sort of outside of the box approach because that's you know, I feel like that's the best way to find success with this.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's um why so one of the things I did was I I sort of created, it's called Life in a Bottle, and it was this thing we taught to middle schoolers at Kimeku Middle, which uh it was just it was basically a plastic two-liter bottle.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: You cut it in half, flip it upside down, right?
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: The top half, and you put it in the bottom.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can use what's called leka, it's a little clay pebble for hydroponic growing.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can put fish in the bottom, and the fish will create nutrients, they'll eat off the roots, and eventually you can grow, you know, these little gardens inside.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: You put cilantro seeds and little, you know, something dill, green onions, something like that.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, and it was just a really cool idea to show kids that you know we we drink a two-liter bottle of coke and then we throw it away or recycle it and think we're doing our part.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: Really, we're not.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: The recycling is is at least in Hawaii, it's a joke.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we used to ship it out to China and then we had the whole issues of Trump, and then China stopped taking our plastic, and so now it's burned and used for H power, which is not good.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to burn plastic for recycling, that doesn't make sense.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to stop saying, you know, it's reduced, reuse, and then recycle.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: So stop looking at recycle as the first step.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: You want to look at reduce first, try to minimize, okay, I'm gonna cut down, it's healthier for me, it's this and that.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: Find an excuse to cut it down and then reuse it.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, rather than recycling the plastic bottle, you could turn it into an aquaponic thing.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now you have something, you know, you're creating life, it's fun for kids to enjoy and look at, watch the fish.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you're creating little herb gardens potentially, um, especially if you do it on a larger scale.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's pretty much hydroponics um or aquaculture, sorry.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh hydroponics is no fish, so aquaculture is the fish.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's just it's just overall something that you tell like an adult that they're gonna be like, okay, cool, whatever, I'm not gonna do that.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but if you tell a kid, they get inspired and then they try to one-up you, they try to find it, okay.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, now I'm gonna do it with a gallon jug.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: Whoa, look at this.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, or hey, I got two of them, and I'm they're gonna do something cool with it.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, and another example was a lot of my friends.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: Another one I learned about this in Guatemala the second time I went.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: I went back uh most recently because I had a neck injury and I was on medical leave for work, and rather than just sitting around in my bed doing nothing, I was like, let me go venture out and do something.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: So one of my friends, or a friend of a friend, was building a sustainable community in Guatemala.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I went out there and I helped him build a tire home um from the ground up with reused compact earth tires, and um, you know, revamped his garden, built an herb spiral, got him set up with all his food and all of that, and um things for the pollinators, so that way, you know, it's gonna create a lot of life there.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so in doing that, I visited this house in San Marcos, which was really cool, and the whole house was not the whole house, but majority of the house was recycled, reused, recycled.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, there was concrete, and that was about the only thing that was not.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: But the skylighting was made from old modello glass bottles.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_00: There was some there was a room with some green light in it from Heineken's, like it was the skylighting was all glass bottles.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the insulation for some of the walls in other areas were um they're called eco-bricks, basically plastic bottles stuffed hard and like tight with plastic.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, not only does that take out, you know, X amount of plastic from the environment, but it also, you know, gives a second life to it.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you seal that up, you know, that's that's can be used as insulation and it'll it's gonna contain the mess, and that's those can last 500 years to decompose, you know.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 50:10
  unknown: Yeah.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: Rather than letting that just be scattered throughout our ocean, floating around in the wind and whatever, right?
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's it's so you have a passion for trying to take this kind of trash out of the environment or prevent it from getting into it, right?
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, one thing is is definitely prevention, but regardless of how much we prevent, there's already a huge mess that we need to tackle.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so part of it is definitely stop adding, stop adding, but but also you know, how can we get creative and make this fun?
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, like in a normal adult's like, I'm not gonna sit here and want to pound out these things, but you can get a whole classroom doing it, and the kids are gonna think it's fun, and the kids might do it, and you know, then you take these eco-bricks.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: I actually built a wall with mine as like a retaining wall, and I have a garden behind it, so you know they are functional as well, and that's gonna never decompose.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that wall is pretty pretty permanent.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's cool because it's kind of uh, as I see it, a culmination of some of the experiences you had, right?
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: You take this one aspect is you appreciate learning things through tangible experiences and kind of making them fun, right?
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: And showing it to the kids in ways that they can learn it in fun ways and in ways that they actually actually appreciate.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because like you build this thing, you actually understand what it's doing, and then you can understand the impact that it could have, and then you then maybe that's a path for learning about the problems that already exist.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: But then on the other side, it's also like it's not just this tangible aspect of you of you liking to learn through experience, it's also doing it in a way that kind of relates to your Hawaiian roots, which is this really strong connection to the land, right?
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: And to your community, and like trying to use both of those things um in a way that that supports the land around you, and and that it totally makes totally makes sense.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think that was one uh class that most kids from Hawaii, I would imagine, but at least I did, was really enjoy was our Hawaiian studies course.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: And part of it is learning a little bit more about the Hawaiian culture and the way native Hawaii used to be, but another one is learning about what are called Apua systems, and yeah, the it's basically from mountaintop to the ocean front, and one stream is is one waterway, and every aspect going down the mountain and in the lowlands and then all the way to the ocean, how you can use that water source.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so, all of our instead of like like the little districts or towns and stuff, we have aqua systems where it's Pololo Valley is the valley that we were talking about earlier, but basically it's this valley in between these two different systems of where water would come down, yeah.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm in a different Aqua system, and all these different people, you know, we don't even realize that.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: To us, this is just oh, I'm from this town, I'm from that town.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: But really, what it was was from the top of the mountain to the ocean front, this is one source of life, essentially.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: And how many times can you use this in different areas to sustain life?
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a beautiful thing that's very overlooked, but you don't really stop to think about unless you have taken a Hawaiian studies course in school, and and that's pretty mandatory in a lot of you know local schools, maybe not some of the more elite like private schools, but at least you know, elementary schools for the majority of the population have at least a few Hawaiian studies programs.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a that's a fun reference.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you made that because for people for mainlanders driving on any highway in Hawaii, you'll see that you'll see that name with the district it's associated with.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people don't know what that really means.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, oh, maybe it's a town, right?
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: But it really is like uh an established area or a historical area where everything that was needed by the people in that area was provided for in that by that region.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: From the mountain, from the mountain to the sea, and that's just such a cool way to think of life.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I guess it was it's more uh you know, it's an older way of thinking of life.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's a lot different, but just that's that's such a beautiful thought and just makes you really appreciate the land for what it is, rather than like, I gotta get to where I'm going and do what I'm doing.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, stop and realize where the hell are you?
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, this is beautiful, you know?
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I guess kind of on that note, then um, we've talked a lot about a lot of cool things about kind of Hawaiian culture and and I and your experience growing up there and uh and your brother's experience growing up there in a in a kind of different way.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: Talked about your travels to Colorado and kind of learning how you enjoy learning through tangible volunteer experiences or organizations and kind of then trying to teach people what you've learned is important.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_01: What would you say from this discussion is one thing that you think people could take away from it?
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's it's hard to say just one thing other than put on your masks and don't go outside.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm just kidding.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's a couple things, you know.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: For one, is like it's pretty cliche, Hawaii Hawaiian style thought process, but like take your time and relax and enjoy things, you know.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: Take take a second, pause, be thoughtful, be present, but also, you know, to not be afraid to like explore and get out of your comfort zones for me growing up, going through all these different schools, you know, my first few schools, I was shy, I was quiet, I didn't really want to make friends, I didn't really want to talk to people.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I had maybe one friend, and life was kind of boring and not not as exciting as it could have been.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then eventually with time, you know, I learned to just take these risks and you know, hey, whatever, I'm gonna crack a joke here, I'm gonna do this and that.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I learned that like, wow, that's a much better way to live for me at least.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was finding a lot more life in that.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: So just to and to also maybe not be so centered in on your zone, I guess like conflicting with stay present, but also be mindful.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is not just your one problem here to look at.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you can look elsewhere, and the world is so big and so vast that there's a lot of other people that I'm sure have the same exact thing going on in their life that you do.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, look at how they address it and look at how they handle it and collaborate with people outside of you know your comfort zone.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just because they're not the same skin tone or hair color or from the same state or from the same town doesn't mean that you know that makes them any less of an individual, and you know, may hey, you never know, you might learn something from I want to thank Caden for that discussion.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: As I said at the beginning, he just has a ton of positive energy, or as he calls it, the aloha spirit.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's wild to hear about two brothers in the same location having different childhood experiences because of the color of their skin.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: Likewise, I appreciate his perspective on why respect is so important in the Hawaiian culture and so tied to the environment.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's a lesson that I am always grateful for a refresher on.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that we all have common ground, literally from the earth that we walk on.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hawaiians actively teach this lesson to their children, but it's one we should all take a bit more notice on.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_01: It makes me wonder not only about the environment of California that is so dear to me, but also how my actions are impacting it.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe it makes you wonder the same thing about wherever you are from.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you like this episode of Seeking Authenticity, that's freaking awesome.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: All I want to ask of you, the listener, in return for the time and effort I put into making it, is that you take a deep breath.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean really breathe.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: Breathe so that it stretches out your shoulders and your back and your chest and pushes out your stomach.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: No more of these shallow, bullshit breaths.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: They're barely keeping you alive, my friend.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: And after you exhale, go out and soak up today.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because in the end, your actions and the way they interact with the world and the people around you right now are all you have in this life.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_01: So be authentic with them.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_01: Peace.