Keep fighting for your reo and identity
We fail in life when we try things we can’t do, and are patently unfit to attempt. Perhaps that explains why, unlike those ideas brandished by motivational experts and success coaches, our life does not take the course of a straight line: A javelin thrown in space without pesky gravity or friction to slow us or drag us down. No, thankfully we are our own worst gravity.
I say thankfully because the truth is our lives are mostly a comforting circle, as we keep trying things that we can’t do, and always end up in exactly the same spot – with a blank expression and unruffled urge to do it all again. It fills in the time.
With that in mind, let me introduce you to this, my New Year resolution column.
The concept of New Year resolutions has been mined clean of fresh insights and humour over the about-4000 years since Babylonians started leveraging personal growth off a fresh temporal start. But here I am, cracking open the old chestnut again: scooping out some nutritious brain food.
We set goals at the start of the year and – ha! – fail to deliver on our personal KPIs. Let me tell you, in the world of unreachable KPIs there is no KPI more unreachable – and punishing – than the ones we set ourselves. Except, obviously for about 90% of the ones from our employers.
But if forward-looking resolutions are a disaster in the making, then perhaps we should adopt backward-looking resolutions. We should resolve to learn from last year before we run into this one.
One personal non-failure for me was my reo Mā ori. It improved and this is no small thing: I started learning in full immersion at Te Wā nanga o Raukawa in Ō taki in 2018. However, I had to leave that beautiful environment and return to work.
For fellow Mā ori who are learning and juggling work, here are some of the things from my resolutionto-look-back that helped me. You have to fight the incursion of te ao Pā kehā into every hour of your life. It will overwhelm you if you let it. Delay that next episode of Stranger Things and watch an old episode of Waka Huia instead.
Over the past year I have watched hours and hours of Waka Huia on YouTube. It was my reo lifeline. I love those episodes from the 90s, filled with kaumā tua and kuia who grew up in reospeaking households and arrived at school unable to understand what the Pā kehā teacher was saying.
Listen to them speak, soak up their reo. There’s zero production value, no subtitles, but god, the old (and the new, wonderfully-produced) episodes are filled with treasures.
Listen to Mā ori radio stations. There are 21 stations funded by Te Mā ngai Paho, and if you’re out of range, try streaming them.
Find someone to speak with in te reo. Preferably someone who speaks it better than you. My fluent teenage daughter fulfils that role for me, and now I have the wonderful privilege of being ignored in two languages.
Embrace the anger from having to fight for your identity: stolen and replaced by a culture intent on destroying our world, which still has the nerve to categorise us as Stone Age savages.
In the end, learning te reo is a lot like being a parent – you fail only if you give up trying. No, give up caring. No, give up caring or trying, for more than a few hours each day.
Take it easy on yourself is what I think I’m saying, but don’t stop: And ngā mihi nui rawa atu mō te tau hou. Kia pai te wā Matariki.