Big Island Trip
This past weekend I had the pleasure of presenting at both UH Hilo as well as the Hawaii Japanese Center. Both presentations went really well although they were very different. The first was at UH Hilo. There were only three students in attendance. This was probably due to the fact that it was a late Friday afternoon before a long holiday weekend causing the campus to be empty. Although tired, the students were interested and engaged according to their evaluations. They were so cute, sincere, and smart. One is even planning to come to Honolulu for an appointment. Another was figuring out how to understand and deal with her samurai father better. The last was going to try and figure out what she was afraid of, the next time she got angry. The students said that there should have been more people there because it would have created more discussion and wished we had more time. Overall it went really well. My BFF Tom even said that it was my best presentation. The next day, at the Hawaii Japanese Center, there were over 65 people and they ran out of books to sell, luckily we had plenty of extra books. My hosts, the Hiura’s, made us feel so comfortable and went all around to help publicize the event. The audience was made up of some of my high school classmates, a group from Papaiko and some Puna people from last years audience. About 25-30% of them were men. They were an intelligent and engaged audience. Tom said it was even better then yesterdays talk at UH Hilo. Afterwards the people that fund the center took us to dinner at their yacht club (which prides itself in having no yachts). It was a beautiful spot. The dining room was glass all around and it was on an outcrop into the ocean with water all around. The sea turtles come in all the time and they even said that you can see whales sometimes. The food was so good, like going to Hy’s steak house. But we only had one hour to eat before we had to catch our plane. The Hiura’s are very well respected and loved in Hilo and I’m sure that we benefited from the goodwill they’ve generated. There are so many receptive, intelligent, nice, helpful, and supportive people on the big island. They are the first audience to ding me on the fact that I didn’t directly address the title question of the speech… Why Smart Men do the Same Dumb Things. Politely of course. It was really interesting to see how some old rock head guys, like my brothers, came but didn’t agree. Compared to some old more flexible men and women who were very interested and asked intelligent questions. There was one really fanatical, relatively young, Japanese women who told me I was wrong. She came up to deliberately tell me so. She also instructed me to change my next book “and then you get ‘em right!” she said cutting off her feelings and being aware of them at the same time is possible and empowering. She did it all the time and found it exhilarating. She said she taught her daughter how to do so too. I think its more likely that lady Ronin just ran over other people’s feelings and thoughts, as she was doing to mine in this conversation (i.e. she knew she was being abusive of other people and didn’t care or she thought she was doing it for their own good). My question is how do I disagree with her without getting her so upset that she can’t hear what I’m saying or beating me up. I didn’t think it was right for her or my bushin for me to walk away without me saying that I disagreed. Maybe I should have for my bushin, not try to change her mind, just say that I disagreed. It seemed kind of silly for this stout, short Japanese women to be walking around like a ronin in Hilo. This trip showed me that it seems I present better when I don’t prepare too much. It’s more fun and not so exhausting.
