Take pride in this pudding

On Friday night I took my first Uber ride in nearly three months. I was on my way to visit close friends I hadn’t seen in about as long.

After weeks at home, both things felt novel and exciting. While on the way to South Melbourne I took a Snapchat video call from one of my sisters who was a couple of hours ahead of me and already enjoying the company of friends at home in New Zealand.

Except things were, are, different for her: She was at a pub.

As we in Australia progress slowly and steadily through our transition back to the new normal, whatever that means, including the reopening of pubs for a small number of guests, what New Zealand has achieved has made it the envy of the world.

It was possibly unachievable for many nations, including here, for reasons of borders and geography and population, but it was a hard and painful task.

New Zealanders should take collective pride in your success and continue to rally in the ways that have served you so well. After my video call ended, I felt envious.

My gran passed away a fortnight ago when the Alzheimer’s she had been crippled with for close to 15 years was wiped out by health complications unrelated to the virus. I think many of my family had grieved the loss of the person we had known before the disease took over, but death is death – and if affects us all very differently.

At 8.30 on a Monday morning I watched on a laptop as my grandmother was carried in her coffin into a chapel, and I wept.

Not because I wasn’t somewhat relieved that she had deservedly found her eternal, but because I could see my mother visibly upset and I wasn’t able to hug her like normal times would allow.

My hopelessness was replaced somewhat with feelings of joy as I observed my siblings, my stepdad and my extended family doing just what I wanted to do. It wasn’t by chance that my mother received those hugs and that she, her brothers, and my grandfather were able to have that day to properly grieve – and we have the entire nation to thank for that.

As is the case in many countries around the world, including in the United Kingdom, where my South Melbourne friends are from, we are having to find new ways of dealing with many emotions, including grief.

By and large, with the exception being those who lost loved ones during the height of levels 4 and 3, the commitment to the cause has meant that so many New Zealanders have been able to process emotions largely in the way that they know how.

Take it from me that learning how to grieve differently, without those you love near, is difficult.

At the height of one of the biggest challenges faced by civilisation in over a century, a New Zealander is leading the way. Jacinda Ardern has lived up to the hype about her style of leadership and has become the standard for leaders around the world. Again, this isn’t by chance.

Irrespective of whether you believe that the Government’s Budget is best spent in business, infrastructure or public services, Jacinda is your representative on the world stage, and she isn’t some mythical beast. Jacinda, with all her empathy and consideration and humbleness, is New Zealand.

Despite not necessarily believing that he would have made the best prime minister, I don’t doubt for a second that Simon Bridges would have got you through this, because he, as well, is New Zealand.

In democratic states the leaders are the people.

Don’t get me wrong – we’ve been lucky here, too. Both Scott Morrison, and Victorian Premier Dan Andrews have been impressive, but I do have a heightened sense of pride in the All Blacks scarf that hangs, currently collecting dust as I work from home, in my city office.

We’re taught as children that envy should be avoided, but I’m not convinced that is the best way to assess envy.

After I finished eating and drinking with my friends, I called another Uber. As I sat on the drive home my previous thoughts of jealously, just hours earlier, justifiably warped into happiness and pride.

My sister, long since tucked up in bed, had enjoyed time out with multiple friends in public houses when so many others around the world can only dream of that.

She, like you, has a workplace that is safe to go to, galleries and museums open to attend, club sport recommencing to play and watch, cafes to gossip in, and parks that are open where her children can play.

There is a commonly misused phrase that comes to mind as I evaluate what New Zealand has achieved as a nation.

We’re often told that ‘‘the proof is in the pudding’’, but that’s a shortened version of the proverbial ‘‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’’.

In order to prove something as being true you need to go further than to assume – you need to know, or try for yourself, as the well-used saying now, postabbreviation, fails to identify.

The economy will recover. Those left in difficult situations will be supported and assisted accordingly. You will get through this. May you all, if even only for a brief period, cast aside humbleness and take pride in the fact that the pudding tastes good, and is well deserved.

You put people first, and that is New Zealand.

Sam Barrett is a lawyer living in Melbourne. He is a past pupil of New Plymouth’s Francis Douglas Memorial College.