David Slack.
An All Black and a comedian prove the value of giving someone a chance, writes
It will disappoint my mother to read this but it’s true: not everyone enjoys this column. For such a reader I bring good news. You can see this columnist being hanged by the neck until dead, any time you feel like it, night or day. Find yourself Episode 3 of Te Radar’s Chequered Past, heat up the popcorn. I’m the one with the neck beard and scowl, playing murderous Phillip Levy, of the murderous Burgess gang, in goldrush New Zealand.
Poor old Levy. The neck beard did nothing for him, and later readings of the history suggest he may not in fact have committed the crime. But too late now: the trapdoor opened beneath him and that was that. Or, as one kindly Wild West sheriff wrote to a young rustler’s mother, to spare her feelings: ‘‘He was admiring the view when the platform upon which he was standing gave way’’.
It is not news to say that the worse you behave, the longer your memory may live on. NCEA students: this is what they mean in Julius Caesar by ‘‘The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.’’
Also, NCEA students, can I ask you to take part in a little experiment: are you able to name any of your greatgrandparents? And do you know what any of your grandparents do or did for a living? This is not to shame anyone but to consider just how long the memory of a person endures.
How long will we be remembered? And what does it matter anyway? Perhaps what matters is that the good we do is not interred with our bones.
How do you best acknowledge these things? Statues are not much in fashion presently, but award ceremonies, well, people are splashing their penguin suits with Deutz every night of the week for those. Why so many? Marketing, is most of the answer. Marketing, and career enhancement. The ritual incantation of the modern working world is: ‘‘It’ll look good on your CV’’.
The more awards you can put on that CV, like gold stars in Year 3, the better. And so it’s the Fruit Box Packaging awards on Thursday and next Monday it’s the Excellence in Road Chips and Asphalt gala, and it’s all a whited-out blizzard really.
But sometimes the intention is more noble. The good that has been done is acknowledged, and it’s a lovely thing to see. This week’s conferment of honorary degrees at Wintec in Hamilton, say.
The purpose was to honour Liam Messam and Te Radar, hugely accomplished in their fields and thoroughly terrific people.
What it also quickly became was a tribute to their wonderful parents. Radar thanked his for their unwavering, unquestioning support, no matter how questionable and unorthodox his adventures in comedy and documentary-making ever looked.
Could his Dad help him build a replica of Bob Semple’s tank? ‘‘No problem, let’s get the tractor.’’ He’s off to Timor with a press pass he’s made by laminating a TVNZ visitor card, and he’ll be using it to get the Australian air force to fly him there from Darwin. ‘‘That’s nice, Andrew, go well.’’
Also, he said, his Dad told him: never whine, and never complain when things go wrong. What you’re getting the chance to do is a great privilege, and don’t forget it.
Radar talked about encouraging people to do imaginative and maybe stupid things because so much good can come of it, and he’s right and this is the good that people can do.
It was a warm, kind night. People spoke about the work Messam does with young people, and about his remarkable parents. Wanda and Lewis Messam are in their sixties. Over more than three decades they have fostered more than 300 children, raised three of their own and five adopted children, including Liam. They made him who he is, he said. He talked about doing what you can, where and when you can, to help people – youth at risk, young Pacific Island people.
Everyone that night talked about about giving people chances. Later, Radar said he had loved hearing Jacinda Ardern talk about bringing kindness back, because that is what it is to give people a chance: kindness.
It is the good that people do.