confinement: we've been here before

Perhaps not in this way, or not even in our lifetime, but we’ve been here before. We’ve been confined to isolation, restricted in our capacity to do what we want, how and when we want to…

Te ira atua (the gods) were confined between Rangi and Papa (Sky Father, Mother Earth) and aeons later, they discovered there was an alternative reality available to them, one that was unknown and unfamiliar.. they wrestled with that newfound knowledge and with each other until they settled on separating them. After many attempts, Tāne (atua of the forest, light) got his flex on, switched up the game and leg pressed his parents apart and thus bringing about the dawn of a new age, te ao mārama (the world of light).

The lockdowns being enforced to combat covid-19 are dismantling our understanding and comprehension of how we’ve been living — as individuals and on a collective level.

We’re being confronted to reflect on what and who is important to us, to reevaluate if how we’ve been living is how we want to continue, to take a breath and be grateful for what we have.

But even beyond that, let’s not be so naive to convince ourselves that what’s happening with corona is the first time we’ve been confined to any form of isolation or distance from what we’d rather be doing…

How many of us have confined ourselves to lives of comfort and complacency? You know, that nice place where nothing grows… who has isolated their goals to the darkest corners of their minds starving them of oxygen?

We’ve confined our dreams to a prison so deep in our subconscious, we’ve forgotten how to dream!

We’re busy just trying to survive, wrestling with the demons right in front of us* that dreaming definitely isn’t on the ‘essentials’ list…

But we are dreamers.

We’re innovators, scientists, gardeners, teachers, warriors, voyagers, engineers and all the rest beyond and in between. The capacity to fish land up from the sea, to see the goal in our minds before we’ve accomplished it, to break the confinements of our own thinking about what’s possible…. this has already been done by those who’ve come before us, now it’s our turn.

Confinement built the capacity in te ira atua to first: separate their parents, and second: survive in their new environment… what will confinement bring out of you?

Ngā manaakitanga,

Hana.

*some as a result of systematic oppression and colonisation, but more on this another time, another post…