Embracing Nature’s Rhythm: Lessons from HawaiI

I sit here lounging in an Adirondack chair—the sun sending its warmth and love to my skin—on the island of Oahu, Hawai’i. There is something magical about listening to the wind wrestle with the palm leaves, about the free concerts of melodic tunes sung by the birds. Spending multiple weeks each summer and winter on the northwest shore is sacred—entirely different from anything tourists would pay to experience. It’s quiet, rural, a little shabby, and deeply rich in native culture.

The house is nestled in a valley that once belonged to the people of the land—dedicated to the god Lono, the god of agriculture, fertility, and peace.

The people of this land—both today and those who came before them—understand Aloha ‘Āina: love for the land. They practice Mālama ‘Āina: care for the land. They live in relationship with it, not above it. And it hurts my heart to witness what human corruption can do to something so perfectly ordered and generous.

I love nature—I hate what humans have done to it.

We’re animals, aren’t we? And yet we’re the only ones who seem to abandon our natural course. Why is it that in a city like New York, the birds still find their trees and stitch their nests together with twigs—and scraps of plastic and paper, our sorry gift to the world? The squirrels claim whatever scraps of grass or dirt they can, digging their small little seed vaults. Even the deer run through the parks, searching for their home, in a forest of concrete.

Paradoxically, it both breaks my heart and fills it to know that nature never changes. It is one truth that—thank God—remains consistent. Nature remembers what we forget. It knows how to resist what threatens it, how to endure without protest, how to yield without losing itself. If nature ever became as corrupt as humans, I wouldn’t believe in a Creator. Its order, its intelligence, its quiet obedience to a design greater than itself speak louder than anything man has built.

It also understands that it must die to itself every year.

Each fall, trees and plants willingly die to themselves, releasing their leaves, conserving only what is essential to survive the winter. There is no panic in this process. No resistance. Only trust in the cycle it was created to follow. And then—inevitably—it returns.

Alive.
Renewed.
Reborn in the spring.

Here in Hawai’i, the new year was never marked by a calendar page turning in the dead of winter. The ancient Hawaiians celebrated the New Year seasonally, during Makahiki—a time aligned with the harvest, with rest, with peace, with honoring the land and the god Lono. It was a season of renewal that made sense. Life slowed down. War ceased. The earth was acknowledged for what it had given to them, and people reflected before beginning the cycle again.

It followed nature’s rhythm—not humanity’s deception.

We are energetic, living beings—one with nature. Electrical. A heart can stop and be brought back into rhythm in an instant. Life responds to electrical charge. Trees and plants root themselves deeply into the ground, communicating through pulses far beneath the surface. They respond collectively and intelligently—signaling to one another, across the world, the changing of the seasons.

Is this how far we’ve drifted from what we should instinctively know? Why does nature understand what we do not? Have we lost our way so completely that we no longer recognize the true rhythm of life—the necessary seasons of growth, release, rest, and rebirth?

Who decided this is the new year?

And why do we accept it so easily, without pause or reflection? Why do we allow ourselves to be pulled away from the wisdom written into creation itself? Our Creator encourages us to observe, to reflect, to ponder—to read the lessons woven into the natural world, if only we would slow down long enough to notice.

– The Nonconformist