In January 2013, per USA Today, then-President Barack Obama attended the Inauguration Parade. Obama, Britannica reports, was born in Honolulu, and the parade was the perfect occasion for him to perform a certain famous hand gesture. He and then-First Lady Michelle Obama, USA Today goes on, were photographed making a sort of half-fist, with their pinkie fingers and thumbs outstretched. The gesture, which needs no introduction for many, is the famous shaka "hang loose" sign.

The meaning of the gesture is easy to convey, but perhaps much harder to explain in a literal sense. As Saa Tamba of Kaua'i's Tamba Surf Company put it to Atlas Obscura, the gesture is " ... a way of saying hi, a way of saying goodbye, and spreading some good spirit, you know, the eternal spirit of aloha."

In these trying times, there could be nothing more fitting. We're very preoccupied with good and bad vibes, positive and negative energy, and green and red flags, and no hand gesture quite exudes all things good, positive, and green like the symbolic shaka signal. Like a smile, it sends an instant message: I'm good, and I'm sending you some aloha to be sure you are, too.

There isn't a clear-cut origin story for the super-chill shaka, but it tends to be connected with the grim story of a worker who lost several digits on a Hawaii sugar plantation.

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