Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls

"aloha means goodbye."

Aloha is more than a greeting or a farewell. Although it's used that way by tourists and outsiders, the true meaning of aloha has much more depth than that to native Hawaiians and other Polynesians.

In A Dictionary of the Hawaiian Language, Lorrin Andrews defines it as “A word expressing different feelings: love, affection, gratitude, kindness, pity, compassion, grief, the modern common salutation at meeting; parting”.

Others have described it as a specific sentiment or feeling, rather than one that has already been defined. Queen Liliʻuokalani-- the only queen that Hawaii ever had-- said,"Aloha is to learn what is not said, to see what cannot be seen, and to know the unknowable."

Aloha's use as a salutation also comes from its literal definition, "the presence of breath" ('alo' meaning presence and 'ha' meaning breath). “When we greet people and leave people, we are experiencing the sharing of breath in one another’s presence.”

The concept of Aloha is so important to Hawaiians that they instituted the Aloha Spirit law in 1986, which mandates that "state officials and judges treat the public with Aloha". The University of Hawai’i’s Center for Labor Education and Research breaks down this concept into an acronym:

‘Akahai,’ meaning kindness, to be expressed with tenderness;

‘Lokahi,’ meaning unity, to be expressed with harmony;

‘Oluolu,’ meaning agreeable, to be expressed with pleasantness;

‘Haahaa,’ meaning humility, to be expressed with modesty;

‘Ahonui,’ meaning patience, to be expressed with perseverance.

This concept, the spirit of Aloha, is at the core of Aloha, Say the Pretty Girls. Who do we become when we treat each other, and ourselves, with Aloha? How does it change the way we view the world, and move through it? And what exactly does it mean to you?