Managing with Aloha and Sense of Place

Place.
It’s a powerful word.
More than that, Sense of Place is a powerful instinct and kind of emotional intelligence.

Place is much different than ‘location’ for it’s not just where we happen to be situated, or where our feet alone happen to be planted. Place moves as we move, and it reaches some very loving tendrils up into our souls and allows us to keep the very best of what it offers us. Then, we start to wear Place like we wear our skin; it is now becoming to us. Our new attachment to Place has been this gift of deeper character.

“The definition he shared with us for sense of place has always struck me as being concisely intuitive: He said that sense of place involves both the feel of a place, and the feel for a place. In our classes, he taught us that place (wahi in Hawaiian) is personally defined for people by their own “locational experiences.”

— taken from page 205 in Managing with Aloha. The “he” I refer to here is the late Dr. George Kanahele, a highly respected scholar and civic leader of the Hawaiian renaissance of the 1970’s, a renaissance which is still alive and thriving in Hawai‘i today.

Sense of Place is about feeling it.

Place is our context for so much of our lives, and it involves all our senses. It is in fact, very sensual. We feel it deeply, and therefore, we can also share it both instinctively and intimately.

Place cradles a kind of intuitive wisdom. It protects this wisdom, allowing it to age like a fine wine does. Then, Place gives us this wisdom with complete vulnerability and generosity, for Place will always be bigger than we people are; it will always have great abundance. It holds abundance so profound that the giving of it in parts goes unnoticed. It is shared without being missed or depleted. Amazingly, yet naturally, the opposite happens; more bounty is created, more abundance. Place gives to us, and adds to our being, and we become the way it grows and keeps living.

We first think of certain places as dirt and soil, rock and land, natural greenery and man-made architecture, very tangible and touchable. Very hold in our hands see-able. But that’s only the beginning of Place’s promise. Place is everywhere.

We do think of Place more easily in terms of its’ location though, albeit a very BIG location with no edges to it, at least no edges we can actually touch. Place is palena ‘ole, limitless and without boundaries — even when you’re on an island. Here in Hawai‘i we think of the ocean, the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean to be more precise, and of the sky, a startingly multi-blue sky which shows off rainbows daily, rain or no rain, and some of the most spectacular sunrises and night-falls you will ever see. When we think of rain, we think both of the clouds’ full which fearlessly challenge our highest mountain summits, and of the warm wet drops which individually get caught in our hair or our eyelashes (and we look up to catch more.)

Place is big enough for bounty, but it is unassuming. Place is humble enough to be small enough for us. We can, and do, take comfort in knowing that we can actually hold all of it’s bounty in the very personal, very unique package we call “my sense of place.” When we think of Mālama, the value of caring, compassion and stewardship, we can take responsibility for Place, holding it close enough to protect it. And that we do, protecting it fiercely.

Ultimately, Place allows us to be more comfortable with being who we are.

I tend to wax poetic when it comes to Place, and I find I can never talk about it enough or arrive at a succinct definition as wonderfully as Dr. Kanahele had (and he would ‘wax poetic’ about it too!) Here on www.managingwithaloha.com, Sense of Place will be our theme for 2007. We will gratefully open ourselves to having Place mālama us as part of our on-going learning how to best live, work, manage and lead with aloha.

Related Readings;

• Visit the Nānā i ke kumu index here at MWA; it is within that value’s chapter in MWA that I specifically refer to Sense of Place as part of how we “look to our source.”

• For more images of our home in Hawai‘i, visit the Flickr photo stream of Konaboy; he captures the spirit of our Sense of Place here beautifully, and that of every other place he visits. I am in awe of his talent, and deeply grateful he has chosen to share it with us.

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Postscript;
Like the cotton batting sandwiched between the layers of a Hawaiian quilt, there are certain concepts which I think of as underlying all nineteen values of the Managing with Aloha philosophy.

In my first years online, I had begun choosing one as the annual theme of Talking Story, my blog. As I’ve mentioned before, I now feel this is most appropriate to do here, where I can invite all of you, who read specifically as MWA practitioners, to help me add your mana‘o (your thoughts, beliefs and convictions) to these “key concepts.”

I look forward to hearing from you.

Here is the list of Key Concepts we refer to in our MWA Overview classes:

Aloha
The genuine spirit of all relationships, and the fertile ground from which everything else will thrive. Our Aloha is the authenticity we bring to our connections with others

Ho‘ohana
Work with passion, with purpose and intention, and with full joy while realizing your potential for growth and creativity

Sense of Place
“The feel for a place, and the feel of a place.” Place nurtures and sustains us; it shapes our experiences and lends form to our lives

Strengths Management
Capitalize on the talent and gifts you have within you; celebrate it by harnessing it. You can minimize your non-strengths and make them irrelevant

Value Alignment
Work with integrity by working true to your values. Focus all energies on the right mission at the right time, for it honors your sense of self

Language of Intention
Speak intentionally, and be true to your good word. Drive communication of the right messages, and you drive momentum and worthwhile energies

Palena ‘ole
Create abundance by honoring capacity; physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. Seek inclusive, full engagement and optimal productivity and scarcity is banished