belonging – ANDREW MELVILLE

Why I Hugged My UnVaxxed Friend the Other Day

November 9, 2021December 12, 2021admin

It’s tough out there right now. So many, many people functioning on fear.

I am a fully vaccinated anti vaxxer. In a perfect world, I would not go near a vaccination.

I have a healthy distrust of big government, big business, and big pharma. To be honest I would not trust any of them as far as I could throw them.

I chose to be double vaccinated, not for myself, but for my family and community. The decision was simple. Not that I liked making it one little bit.

But this is not a perfect world. We are all immuno-compromised because of the tainted air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, the work we do, our unhealthy homes and workplaces, and the inequitable society and economy we live in.

If we put a lens to the disgusting chemicals that abound in our environment, a COVID vaccination and its potential side effects probably pale in comparison.

Exhaust fumes, pesticides and nitrates in water and food, chemicals in building materials, cleaning materials… the list goes on and on and on, and it has all been in the name of gross profit, well actually greed.

I write not to excuse or justify for a moment the use of vaccination. It is simply to set a broader context.

This is not to debate or to use the tired adversarial debate process, of who is right and wrong.

No one is right and wrong in this.

I got vaccinated because I spend a fair bit of my time with marginalized members of our community, those on the edges, that we now deem ‘immuno-compromised.’ They include my 92-year-old Dad, who I visit regularly as his care-giving service has been halved. I spend time with people from the disability community, who have no choice over their compromised health. I spend time with people of various ethnicities who through inter-generational trauma, poverty and suppression through colonisation have compromised health; physical, mental, and spiritual.

None of these friends and whānau have the same access I do, as a middle-class white pākehā with a small disposable income, to organic food, home grown food, herbal remedies, yoga and meditation programmes that all support my immune system.

There is plenty of science that clearly demonstrates those in lower socio-economic groups do not easily have the bandwidth or the environment to ‘pivot’ to healthier lifestyles.

If we could get what I have in these so called ‘alternative’ sources of good nutrition, spiritual and mental health to the wider population, we might shut down the Ministry of Health, Pfizer et al tomorrow.

After all, they do have a vested interest in people remaining sick, otherwise they would all be out of a job.

But we are where we are.

And we have a new minority that run the risk of being turned into lepers; the unvaccinated.

I get it.

When I go out and I see people not bothering with masks, sanitizer, tracing, or social distancing, I judge. I think, come on, get with the programme.

But I then move on to work to source some compassion in myself. The fear in their eyes equals the fear in the eyes of those fully vaccinated following the rules. And let’s face it the rules are messy, inequitable, and frequently don’t make much sense.

Tragically, there are so many hidden sources, political and ideological behind the information we are consuming. We have outsourced what we think and feel, not solely to government and business, but to the algorithm that is choosing the information we consume. We would do well to hack and disrupt the invasive memes that enter our homes and heads that follow an orchestrated coded agenda, and browse sources far, wide, and unpredictable.

The government’s PR campaign is growing tired.

In Aotearoa Labour and National governments alike have been manipulating the population with PR and media since the early 20^th century.

A recent article in Memories magazine by the wonderful radio documentarian, Hop Owen, now in his nineties, tells the story of the introduction of radio to Aotearoa. At the time, a radio set in the home was the very latest technology. But its introduction was mired in political agendas.

Hop writes that in 1934 Auckland’s favourite radio station 1ZB was owned and operated by “Uncle Scrim” a former Methodist City Missioner, who knew well the misery of Auckland’s poor and unemployed. He gave a weekly talk called The Man in the Street that was obligatory listening for anyone in Auckland with a radio set. But an election loomed, and the reigning Coates/Forbes coalition (yes they had them even then) of the Reform and United parties (predecessors of the National Party) were worried Uncle Scrim would use his platform to support Labour, and the government Post and Telegraph department that controlled radio frequencies jammed his broadcast. He did get to broadcast his script the next day after a furore and it contained no endorsement of the Labour Party.

Labour won the election in a landslide victory, but it too would go on to try and control the airwaves. They made the way for parliament to be broadcast for the first time in the western world under a pretext that it would bring democracy to the people. They then went on to stage manage, and carefully select speeches, speakers and edited debates to better represent partisan government views.

It does not feel a long stretch 85 years later to the controlled daily PR briefings we endure from government ministers and health bureaucrats every day. And isn’t it strange that the signage and branding in vaccination centre booths is remarkably like those in polling booths? Just saying.

So where do we go.

We must dig deep in ourselves to source love, compassion, and acceptance. It takes work. It takes stepping through our fears and reactions. For me I now have a two hourly daily practice of yoga, breath, and meditation. That calms me. I have used lockdowns to expand my practice. I am growing vegetables and tending my garden more than I have ever done before in the 30 years I have lived in this spot. I teach meditation and breath workshops online, for people in workplaces and homes to bring a bit of peace and harmony to the fear of the chaos of the world beyond our bubbles.

In my own small way, I wish to bring these immune system building practices to others, and one day in an evolved world, they will become the norm, rather than toxic food, air, water, chemicals drugs and adversarial politics.

We are so blessed to have a short time living on this planet. The natural world we live in is magical and amazing at every turn. If we can pause, wonder and be curious about its magnificence perhaps we can better source wellbeing. In front of me are a vase of flowers and some fresh fruit, they are exquisite. They are beautiful beyond compare. What human mind could ever design something so remarkable. We work to get close, with our imaginations and creativity. But we thrive when we surrender and let go to the fact, we are only a small speck in the cosmos. Our ills derive from getting way too big for ourselves, thinking we can control natural systems for our own benefit.

As western systems of governance, business and science are failing us, it is timely to turn to the ancient wisdom of indigenous knowledge sourced ( honoured and not appropriated) from India to North America to Aotearoa. Western science and thought are slowly catching up to the thousands and thousands of years of wisdom in indigenous science, that melds physics and metaphysics, and teaches harmonious living with tangible and intangible systems of our natural world.

My teacher Sri Sri Ravi Shankar puts politics and religion like this:

“The role of religion is to make one righteous and loving, and politics means caring for people and their welfare. When religion and politics don’t co-exist, then you have corrupt politicians and pseudo-religious leaders.

A religious person who is righteous and loving will care for the welfare of the whole population and hence become a true politician. And a true politician can only be righteous and loving.

Today both religion and politics needs reform. Religion must become broader and more spiritual to allow freedom of worship and to encompass all the wisdom of the world. And politicians must become more righteous and spiritual. “

So whānau, breathe. In your mind and your soul, hug one another, whether it is mentally or physically. Have compassion for all in this time of fear.

Source yourself in activity and thought that brings you peace.

Step away from the drama that pipes into our homes and affects our systems, manipulating adrenal systems, evoking cortisol, dopamine, and oxytocin without our control.

Take time to reflect, to meditate, to do nothing and whatever works for you to still your mind and relax.

In te reo Māori the achingly beautiful, timeless, prescient and connected language of this land,

Kia manawanui, kia māia, kia arohanui.

I Quit

September 9, 2021September 9, 2021admin

I’ve called time.
At the tender or ripe age of 60, this is it. Enough.
I quit.
There is huge freedom in being a quitter.
I’ve given up.
I’ve let go.
I’ve surrendered.
So What?

To quit in today’s world usually has a negative connotation. That’s interesting. A quitter who gives up is often seen as a failure.

But the very word quit comes from two great concepts; freedom and silence.

It’s latin.
quit1
/kwɪt/
Origin
Middle English (in the sense ‘set free’): from Old French quiter (verb), quite (adjective), from Latin quietus, past participle of quiescere ‘be still’, from quies ‘quiet’.

It is time to unravel all that I have thought was important over the past few decades, because most of it wasn’t.
And I think as a species, we humans have been overthinking our importance and shaping the world to our own detriment. That is why I am quitting, giving up, letting go and surrendering.

Phew, it does feel a great relief.

I have been so attached to getting it all right for so long. Trying to solve every freakin’ problem with my intellect. How arrogant is that? But most of us do it. We think if we nut everything out, we can solve any problem. Well, who decided whatever it was, was a problem in the first place!

So to coin a hugely overused cliché, what is the roadmap?
Well for a start there are two very colonizing, limiting words.

Road.
We would well do without them. They have so limited our horizons, the ways we navigate. Yeah I get they were designed to make it easier to get around, and in a certain time that was probably a good idea, as to navigate rugged terrain limited our movement and access to opportunities. But at what cost? Now the road rules and negates so many other ways of navigating our world, that are usually far more harmonious with other species and the natural world. Bugger the road.

And Maps.
Maps started out to make life easier, didn’t they? But maps have way out lived their usefulness after centuries of use to dominate, separate, colonise, divide, own, rule. You get my point. And anyway, there’s GPS.

So goodbye road, goodbye map.
I don’t want a roadmap for the future.
What I do want is to quit, to find freedom, quiet and silence.

The world is already going through so much crazy change, any map or any road you might have is going to be obsolete the moment you look at it.

The massive challenges we face, environmentally and socially have been on the cards for many many years.

The thing was, when people started to talk about the future and the opportunities and risks of globalization, the use of resources and the wicked problem or enormous potential of developing the developed, developing and under developed world, it all became an ideological or intellectual debate.

Debate. Now there is another outdated concept. Oh dear, and that has been the supposed basis of democracy in the world, debate. I am really not sure whether ‘debate’ is a useful process at all. It’s an adversarial clashing of egos more than anything else, and has the world always ended up a better place in the hands of those who won a debate?

So we were all getting it wrong trying to fix everything with our heads, our logic. So arrogant.

We had taught ourselves to distrust, disown and discredit our intuition. It was witchcraft, it was ropey, soft, vague, dangerous, woolly, feminine, dangerous, unproven, hugely risky.
Well was it, is it?

My intuition told me a long long time ago that we needed to live more harmoniously with each other and with nature. I didn’t have the data, and to be honest, quantitative data has never really been my thing. But I could sense we were pushing it. Stuff was going to wear out. Surely life on this planet has always been about cause and effect. You use things and people up too much, and things will bounce back. There will be an effect, there will be an impact, and the force may well be far greater than you thought.

So here we are. Pandemics. Storms. Busted infrastructure. Stuff running out. People not happy.

My aim is to do far far less.

I quit work. I quit recreation. I quit consuming.
Undoubtedly I will do a little of all these things.
But I will DO far far less, and aim to BE far far more.
Much more meditation every day.
Teaching myself to think less and less and less.
Teaching myself to reflect more and more and more.
Teaching myself to love more and more and more.
Teaching myself to practice Festina Lente, to hasten slowly.
To be in balance with action and stillness.
Hmmmmm.
Ahhhhhhhh.
That feels good.
I quit.

Let’s Teach Side Hustle at School.

October 8, 2020admin

Like many people growing up in the late 20th century, I was told at school and home that success looked like achieving well in education and work, focused around core subjects and career paths into professions or trades. There were set steps to follow, and you were always being measured against others and ranked. The measurements, metrics as we talk about today, were numeric, linear and quantitative. There was a cut off point where those with enough marks headed in one direction in life, and those with not enough marks headed somewhere else, usually to lower paid employment or perhaps no employment at all.

However, turns out my greatest successes in life have been my side hustles. But no one ever taught me that. When I was very young, I experimented with friends about making things to sell. It was a game. We made art, cookies, or perhaps even mud pies, and played shop, selling them to family or friends for a few cents. It was a little glimmer of what it might mean to be entrepreneurial and receive reward for something you made from your efforts. Later in life, products and services I have designed and delivered myself have been the most satisfying and the most lucrative.

But my education for this was only ever a game. This approach to creating things, selling or exchanging them, was certainly not on any school curriculum. And once in the work force, creating new ideas, products and services in most of my early roles was not valued whatsoever. You followed a set line, a set of formulas with parameters around delivering work and outcomes. Step outside of the set rules too much and you were reprimanded.

Today, I still see this continue. I have witnessed children in school, students in university, hungry to turn their ideas into realities that will benefit their families, communities, and themselves shut down time and time again. Many is the time I have seen an inspired student or graduate deflated as their enthusiasm, their vision and their creativity is shut down. They get told to follow the script in their career, if they can in fact find a job.

In the Māori and Pasifika world I have seen this frequently occur too with another twist. These students want their study and their research to go straight back to their whanau and community, and yet they get told their study is an ‘academic exercise’ and they do not get to deliver their ideas and have to turn to compromised roles in mainstream workplaces.

An entrepreneurial or creative spirit happens on the sidelines.

In 2020 as traditional jobs disappear in the thousands and kids have spent half the year out of school, what new alternatives can we look at to fulfil on dreams, to source an income, and to ‘make a living’ in the true sense of the word? (Interesting how we default to thinking about cash when we talk about ‘making a living’ rather than giving this phrase a broader intent!) I’m pretty damn sure that professional roles for life are on the way out for good.

The power base of the tired old professions of accountancy, law, medicine and engineering are less and less relevant in today’s world. Many of the services offered by these professions you can now google, or manage yourself. I see more and more of the traditional firms resort to fear tactics as they desperately try to remain relevant, inculcating a risk averse business culture, telling the population that it is very dangerous to do without a lawyer, an accountant, an engineer or a doctor. It is tragic that many parents, teachers, academics, business and government leaders still push these professions as the pinnacle of achievement. And in so doing they’re selling their children and their children’s children a very dud deal.

Maybe it is a bad idea to try and quantify and systemise something as creative as a side hustle. But then again maybe we should honour, celebrate and encourage rangatahi today to have a few strings to their bow, to experiment with technology and creativity, with science and with art, and where all these often sidelined endeavours intersect. I once teased an old friend with a strict socialist ideology that the best thing I could ever teach my children growing up was how to write an invoice. And I wasn’t kidding. Writing an invoice can give you many things; an awareness of business, financial literacy, self sufficiency, self worth. I know for myself writing an invoice for my services is very satisfying and empowering.

Let’s pivot, no in fact lets pirouette, to put the entrepreneurship of the creative and tech sectors at the forefront alongside sustainable uses of the land and our beautiful resources, to grow food and shelter. Is it timely to change out what has been seen as the ultimate professions. Let’s honour the collective, the diverse skills in our communities. It is time to move away from hierarchies that values certain human attributes above others.

Kia Manawanui, Kia Kaha, Kia Māia.

The Opportunity For Māori Values To Re-Build NZ Inc.

September 18, 2020admin

Whatever way you choose to cut and dice it, colonisation was, and still is brutal for Māori.

If not at the scale of warfare of some parts of the world, the brutalization of the spirit, of a way of life, of a humanity has deep scars still running through Māori communities today.

But there is a further tragedy, and one that could become a triumph if people’s mindsets can shift.

Three massive fissures in the wellbeing of Aotearoa, the Christchurch earthquakes, the Christchurch mosque terrorist massacre, and the COVID19 pandemic have shown the generosity and values of Māori communities coming to the rescue again and again, often in simple understated ways.

On each occasion marae, always a place of welcome and haven, were instantly in action providing food and shelter for displaced people, without question. Again and again. No delays or processes about waiting for approval, funding, or criteria to be set. And alongside those marae, Māori health and social service providers rose quickly to each occasion supply what people needed, door to door.

And there have been more subtle ways that te ao Māori has been a massive contribution in this nation’s times of need.

When the mainstream public; numb, speechless, and desperate were flaying around to understand, to find meaning, to make sense of it all, we started to see words like whānau, aroha, kia kaha on placards and on lips throughout the motu.I

will never forget witnessing a crowd of many cultures gathered outside a Ponsonby mosque bursting into a rendition of Te Aroha to express just that… the waiata led by a Chinese man.

Why does the nation turn to kupu from Te Reo Māori in times of great hurt, of great need? On the one hand mainstream New Zealand continues to persecute Māori, with racist jibes, institutional racism, casual racism, fear and ridicule. But on the other, when the chips are down, what set of values do people turn to?

When we hear talk of the Kiwi Ingenuity of Aotearoa New Zealand, of our ‘down to earth’ nature, of our ‘can do’ attitude, and our non-judgmental friendliness on the world stage, what is the source of that in our history?

Without research, and without any academic nous, I strongly believe that it was not simply the pioneers and colonists that forged the ‘kiwi’ way, it was Māori.

And yet that contribution, as with many others from the Māori world is never fully acknowledged. Our qualities as a nation are assumed to be an evolution of some pioneering spirit, and anything wonderful in the growth and forming of this nation is rarely attributed to Māori.

Now, as we face years of re-set, come-back, re-formation and re-invention, where does a Māori tikanga sit in the mix?

From every vantage point that I can see, the collective spirit, the focus on whānau, manaaki, tiaki, aroha and whenua is an operating system robust, age old, harmonious, productive, unifying and fundamentally utterly humane. It is a universal and cohesive winning formula. This is what we need to re-emerge.

We have led the world for so many initiatives in our history. We love being the David to the world’s Goliath and we are good at it. But we have hugely underplayed how much Māori contributed to these successes. It remained hidden.

Now as communities process the grief of a decimated economy with work and livelihoods in complete disarray, we can perhaps finally start to take seriously the ratification of Te Tiriti o Waitangi forward. We can move on from it being an abstract idea, that has been thrashed and manipulated by colonising governments to this day, ignored by the business community, and reviled by the mainstream public to have it be a living document, and foundation for a cooperative template for partnership.

The tragedy and missed opportunity is that the colonial view of Te Tiriti was so literal and narrow that it fully missed the nuance, the inter=connected, holistic and sustainable operating system of Te Ao Māori.

Wake up people! A true partnership between the best of the kiwi mainstream western world, and the best of Te Ao Māori can make our place magic. We know we can pull together as one. We all get the concept of rowing the waka together. Let’s now live into that promise, that opportunity.

Let’s learn to fully love our whenua, our maunga, our awa, our moana as living beings, as extensions of our whānau. We’ve started to write this into our legislation, let’s honour it, let’s be it.

My personal experience as a pakeha in Te Ao Māori has always been one of love, of acceptance, of an all encompassing aroha that stretches way beyond words. I am at a loss to understand why so many pale, stale, males like myself are so frightened of this world.

I guess it is attitude, and that dear Aotearoa, is what we have to shift.

I’ve had the privilege to be invited to document and articulate efforts around co-governance between hapu/iwi and government. When this has progressed well, usually after decades of intransigence on the part of bureaucrats and colonised thinking in Iwi, it has been beautiful to behold. People work together to make the whole far greater than the parts, the whenua is loved, cherished and gives back, and stormy times and conflicts are navigated.

I am not suggesting a utopia, that is always a lie and a fantas\y. But we can do and be so much more.

Kia Kaha, Kia Māia, Kia Manawanui.

Know Your Place

May 9, 2016admin

Navigation is about triangulating where you are.

You identify three points, and you have located where you are.

Knowing your Place is also about understanding a trinity of who you are and where you are from.

1. Your place- geographically
2. Your place – where you welcome others
3. Your place- the legacy you create

Knowing your Place also requires another mighty threesome to be in balance; heart, mind and body.

Knowing your place will ground you in every environment and every interaction.

Why is this important?

Knowing who you are and where you are now, where you have come from, and where you are going are critical to effective engagement with others.

Today people want to know your back story, your current story, and the story of the future you are creating.

Knowing your Place is more than identifying with one geographic spot, that of your birth or your upbringing.

A nomad (both digital and physical) can Know Their Place as much as someone who has lived and worked in one place for many years.

It is about a knowing, a belonging, an identification with place, self and others than will ground you.

Most indigenous cultures start from a place of seeking to know your lineage and where you are from. Many consider our lineage to connect right back to the beginning of time and the creation of the planet and universe. And if you are into metaphysics, you can follow your DNA back to when were were an idea for an atom in the primordial soup.

But that gets very deep.

And that is great, because Knowing Your Place is about taking a deeper look at where you fit.

In English Victorian and Edwardian times the phrase ‘know your place’ was to ‘put you in your place’ in a hierarchy or stratified class system. Today we don’t have to do that. We can connect with our natural world, and the nature of our worlds of family, teams, groups, society and people. And take a journey to identify our place.

Our Place.
Your Place.
This Place

Sense of Place.

Place is a many layered concept.

I think of a metaphor for fly fishing. To be a great fly fisher, you work to cast your line to place it gently on the surface of the water. Your aim is to replicate an insect alighting on the surface of the water. The more attuned you are to your environment, the place you stand, the grace with which you move, your attention to the micro world of insects, and movement of current, and wind, the more you will find the sweetspot of place, to replicate the delicate movement of an insect.

A sense of knowing your place is akin to being ‘comfortable in your own skin’ and the world around you. Knowing your place allows you to embrace uncertainty, diversity and change.