harvesting dreams is a concentrated effort.

Who’d have thought, the end of 2020.

I hope you gave something good to it, got some good from it and have more good left in ya for what tomorrow might bring.

I’m on the ‘this year’s passed by so fast’ waka (canoe), as well as the ‘sooo much has happened this year’, as well as the ‘far out! this time last year, who’d have thought your life would unfold the way it has?’ and probably a few other waka to be fair.. and still I’m grateful for all the tides, waves, currents, smooth sailing and swells they all got caught in.

However you feel about the Gregorian new year — I like how it allows for reflection to take stock on the year and use it as some kind of reference point for growth, progress, process and otherwise.

In a few conversations today, we talked dreams.

More specifically, goals, but dreams has more of a ring to it I think. “What are your goals for next year?” “How did your goals this year turn out” “What kind of support do you need to help achieve your goals?” All that good stuff.

I had one goal this year, well I had one goal at the start of this year — to plant a garden. Which I did ! during lockdown.. I planted it, it provided kai (food) for the whānau, produced a whole lotta lessons for me and everything else that happened or didn’t happen this year was a bonus.

Sure, I had other things I wanted to do, projects I was focused on but getting this garden up and operational was my main. It wasn’t just about the kai, or the physical act of working the garden — we’ve been on this blog business for almost four years now, surely we know by now it’s never about the physical thing but everything it encompasses as well.

Having a garden would mean I’d have to stay home to look after it > so less travel = fewer contracts for mahi > figure out how to make money at home etc. as well as all the metaphors that come with gardening and working the land that transfer so easily to any kind of growth.

In August I moved to Ōtautahi, so the garden is being looked after by māmā now, it’s thriving by the way, she knows her stuff. Ha anyway, I achieved that goal (to a degree, don’t talk to mum about it lol) and I’d like to share with you which has helped me reframe how I approach dreams, from my favourite rap I learned last year, RNP by Cordae ft. Anderson Paak,

“yeah, I had to ball hard to harvest these dreams”

The more I listened to this verse (I’m the finds a song I like and replays it over and over again until I learn it, especially if it’s a rap, guy), the more this line started to hit deeper and deeper and resonate with me.

I’d never heard dreams described this way before. Not explicitly anyway. When people talk about dreams, usually there’s a sense of wonder, possibility and magic involved to bring them to life. Dreams DGAF! They’re audacious, bold and they fan that flame deep within us.

Whether we take action or not is another matter, but the dreams and hopes we have, the ideal situations, the best selves or best lives are woven from smaller acts of something a little more tangible.

When dreams are articulated as something to be harvested, to be worked at and tended to with care and intention — a reframing starts to happen and you see how the wonder, the infinite possibility,

the magic…. is actually the result of concentrated effort.

Our most basic creation whakapapa tells us this too, “Mai i Te Kore, ki Te Pō, ki Te Ao Mārama” from the realm of potential and dreams, to the darkness and unknown, to the world of light and physical manifestation.

It’s a matter of concentrated effort to bring whatever those dreams or goals you might have to life. Sometimes life might surprise you and bring you something beyond anything you could ever dream and sometimes it might take a while to reframe and readjust your perspective to see how the threads you’re working with is the concentrated effort required to put the pieces in place, or shift pieces out of place for dreams to take root and grow.

All the best to you and the dreams you’re about to harvest or in the middle of harvesting.

Ngā mihi o te wā ki a tātou,

Hana.

*If you’re not a fan of this New Year’s, maybe use how it’s halfway-ish to Matariki (one sign of the Māori new year), 10 months til my birthday, another 12 days until work starts back up again for us in the office — whatever metric you want to use, do that.