you have the solution, you know what to do - but what's the point without action?

Coming in heavy with the title, I know. Said with love. Always….

But we all know this situation, right? At varying degrees, different contexts and it’ll weigh on us different wherever we are in our lives — but I’m positive that at one point or another you’ve found yourself in a position where you know what to do, you’ve got the answer to whatever problem is laughing at ya and that’s about as far as you get with it.

What’s keeping you from taking action? You get so close just to pull the handbrake and stall, maybe even convince yourself out of the whole pursuit altogether?

We know the problems but don’t act to change them..

We get the diagnosis, but approach the treatment as optional.. We identify the problems but they remain unsolved.. is it an unwillingness to try?

Or an unwillingness to fail, perhaps? We don’t want the rejection, for our best to be deemed not good enough.. I mean, if we aren’t gonna be amazing at it first try, why bother?!

Is it this distaste for uncertainty that is keeping us from taking action and doing what we need to ‘live our best lives.’ Is it complacency? Or maybe it’s ‘someone else’s responsibility’, or a complex, systemic problem and any attempts on an individual level to dissolve it don’t actually make a difference at the root cause… or something else altogether.

We can look to the separation pūrākau (story) of Rangi and Papa (heaven and earth) to help us out.

For aeons, te ira atua (the gods) were stuck in between their parents and that was all they ever knew. there was no alternative, no ‘what if’ things could be different. that’s it! Until, it wasn’t… until Uepoto discovered space and expanse beyond the parents and a new world of possibilities was born, literally.

They quarrelled to and fro about what to do, equating to some of the later phases of Te Pō (the darkness, confusion, unknown) before deciding on the separation and dawn of Te Ao Mārama (world of light).

NOT EVERYONE WANTED THE SEPARATION. Some atua were quite content with how things were, why go explore the unknown where they can stay in the comfort of certainty and what they knew?

— because nothing grows there.

“You are what you do and you become what you’ve done but who you can and will become lies in who you are next”* so if you choose not to take a peek to see what’s out there or step into that unknown, to take action on the solutions, there’s no next phase.

There’s no expression of transitioning from te pō to ao mārama in your life because you remain in the darkness. in the unrealised, in the almost but not quite. which is an important phase of creation but we cannot stay there. it’s against our nature and contradicts who we are, as whakapapa in action.

It’s not even about failure or certainty, it’s about how we express whakapapa at any given point in time. we live that pūrākau and all the others every day and maybe tapping into that and harnessing it will help us reach beyond our comfort zone to take action and affect change.

Tēnā tātou,

Hana.

*I wrote this in my notes a year ago but with no reference to where I heard it or who said it. If you know, please let me know so I can add it in.