Twenty something years ago, I was in Longs Kahului in the Maui Mall and I saw something that I have been thinking about ever since.

An elderly gentleman shuffled in carrying a bag. His cane was hanging off the crook of his elbow so he could use both hands to carefully hold the package. He greeted every cashier down the line of registers and gave every woman a perfect double pīkake flower from the small bag, presenting each one like it was made of pure gold. All the Longs employees looked happy to see him, and he was greeted with hugs and handshakes. One of the workers went scurrying to the break room to get him a cup of coffee and a pastry. It was clear that this was a regular visit.

I wrote about that moment a few years later. A woman from Maui read the piece and contacted me to let me know it was her father I had seen, and that it had been his habit to visit the Longs and bring flowers from his yard for all the cashiers to put in their hair or display by their registers.

But then, people from other communities and other Longs locations insisted they knew the flower man and that he was theirs. It seems there wasn’t just one man doing this one sweet thing in one Longs. There were others, male and female, bringing not only flowers but fruit or baked goods or their little dog to say hello to everyone.

Back then, I thought the man I saw must be lonely. I figured he was a widower and that he came in every week to talk with the people who worked at the registers, maybe get a kiss on the cheek, have someone ask him how he’s doing.

I am older now, and the world feels so much older.

Looking at that story with the perspective of time and in the context of the cruelty of our modern world, it looks different.

Perhaps the man I saw was not a lonely little person searching for connection. Maybe he was a warrior. Maybe he was waging a solo battle to make things better in whatever way he could, by sharing the bounty of his garden, making sure the workers in his world felt seen and appreciated, and by being someone they could rely on.

His wasn’t a random act of kindness. It was a regular act of kindness.

There is so much about this moment in history that is chaotic and uncaring and outright cruel. Conflict rules the news cycle and grievances fuel social media popularity. We live in the Age of Outrage, where nothing matters if it isn’t noticed, and to be noticed, something must break through the monotony of everyday troubles and be truly horrific.

The news cycle spins so quickly that today’s trauma captures attention for a matter of days before fading from importance, and follow-up stories lose relevance when each new terrible thing comes into focus. Kindness is seen as foolish and weak, or worse, it’s seen as unusual, like something you would never imagine could happen between people of different races or different cultures.

In 1970, a conference was held at the East-West Center on the future of Hawaiʻi. One moment dominated the days of intellectual discussion. A woman in the audience who was not on the discussion panel stood and offered her definition of aloha spirit, describing the kindness, patience and unity of heart and mind that makes up aloha.

Pilahi Paki’s words were unscripted, and they echoed like a truth bomb. Audience members rose to their feet, she was quoted in news stories for years afterward, and when her definition of aloha was codified in state law, she famously said, “The world will turn to Hawaii as they search for world peace because Hawaii has the key and that key is aloha.”

It’s hard to know what to do to resist the overwhelming forces that seem to be bent on destroying lives and livelihoods, health and environmental protection, the rule of law, the promise of science and the respect for truth. No one knows how to make the chaos stop. Being out here in the middle of the Pacific can make one feel both relatively safe and totally powerless.

There are no fast answers. Most days, there is just deciding to be a warrior within our own little sphere of influence, sharing what we have, being reliable and reliably kind.