How does what we do contribute to that overall vision?

Another week on roles and this one is taking quite the out there, macro approach — a wānanga that’s been on my mind and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one either — but what our roles are as part of the bigger scheme of things.

Yes our roles how they contribute back to the collective, but humour me please, what is that collective’s role? 

Is it to conquer new lands and add them to the Commonwealth of other colonised nations? Is it to advance technology to the point where we end up like Wall-e or Handmaids Tale, in a state where Papatuanuku and our taiao (environment) has finally had enough of us and we have to resort to drastic measures in order to hold onto a life we once knew?

Is our role to survive from day to day and hope ends might meet that week? Is it to assert our dominance over another and detail why we’re the superior race?

Is our role while we’re here on this earth to make like the atua and our tupuna (ancestors) and to realise our potential? To navigate and traverse new frontiers, both beyond our known limitations as well as within our own selves? 

How does what we do contribute to that overall vision?

I know I lay it on you every so often and just ask the questions and leave them there for us to wānanga (internalise), but surely there’s a bigger vision that we’re all working towards,  and I’m confident we’d all arrive there faster if these conversations were normalised and we knew how we could tautoko and support each other.

I don’t have the specifics, but as of course — whakapapa will never lead us astray.  Āio is the vision.  Balance, peace and harmony.  With all the separate individual parts working in unison, giving and receiving no more or less than necessary.  A healthy ecosystem of reciprocity, understanding and compassion.

I have a few different ways that I’m expressing and wanting to express āio in my life, both on a micro and macro level.  You could call that work/life balance, or more like kaupapa/kaupapa life balance lol but it would pay to take an extra step back to observe how one kaupapa connects to and impacts another and analyse how our roles fit in the whakapapa (process, connection) of everything.

Then we might be able to answer what our role is in the bigger scheme of things.. as an individual and as a collective.

Tēnā tātou,

Hana.

pic: from the Ngai Te Rangi Rangatahi Summit two weeks ago where we four (Raniera Rewiri, Waimirirangi & Tamoko Ormsby) were on a hauora & environmental panel sharing whakaaro. All a different expression of āio, in my opinion…