when the world as you know it gets torn apart, what do you do?

Someone you care a lot about passes away or leaves in some form. You lose your job. You take the leap of faith and it doesn’t pull through, you miss the landing. Covid happens. Your livelihood and sense of identity is ripped out from under you.

Ka aha koe? What do you do?

Or ‘what will you do?’ This was a line my pāps used to say a lot. I’ve probably mentioned it before, but people would say ‘if he was anymore laid back, he’d be horizontal’ haha he was ngāwari, easy going and calm..

He was the ultimate creative problem solver and discipline enforcer and when I reflect on how he served up punishment to my cousins, friends, brothers and I for being hōhā, not listening or not doing what we were told.. his methods always encouraged a sense of self-reflection, self-determination, meditation and taking responsibility for our behaviour — without us even realising it!

We’d get sent out to stand on this tree stump in our backyard and told to count to a random number. Without fault, 100% strike rate, everyone who got sent out there, and by the way, everyone he sent out did as they were told, they left huffing and puffing like little angry smurfs and came back almost as laid back as dad was. Then he’d always came back to us with that question, ‘ka aha koe?’ I didn’t know it at the time, but

he was getting us to recognise our ability to respond, our capacity to decide how to engage, how to conduct ourselves.

When the world as we knew it felt like it was being torn apart, what would we do? How would we behave? Sometimes you don’t feel like there’s an option. You feel helpless, powerless or even hopeless, like everything’s outta your control. Especially when any of the circumstances mentioned at the start of the post, or a number of other situations happen.

But we know that the light is always the end of the creation cycle; after darkness, chaos, confusion, disruption, after the world as we know it has been torn apart. i.e. Mai i Te Kore, ki Te Pō, ki Te Ao Mārama.. like when Ranginui and Papatūānuku (astral and physical, old and new, heaven and earth, Sky Father and Mother Earth) were separated by Tāne (atua of the forest, pursuit of knowledge).,

Their world had literally been torn apart and what was once certain and absolute was now a realm of infinite possibility.

They set out to explore their new surroundings and formed collaborations to affect change and achieve feats they never could have by themselves. For instance, Tāne calling on Tāwhirimātea (atua of the winds) to help him defeat Whiro (atua of disease, misfortune) and Te Aitanga a Pēpeke (Whiro’s predator army) to retrieve the baskets of knowledge that later allowed for the creation of humankind.

Hearts breaking, worlds ending, minds blowing, destruction.. it’s all part of creation. It’s in our whakapapa. Therefore the answers for how to navigate these situations must also lie in the blueprints. Or at least act as a guide to lead us in the right direction and when we consider, the breakdown and potential interpretation of

Uru - te - ngangana: the entering into the light.

We can appreciate his role as mātāmua even more.

He was the eldest of te ira atua and just going off his name here, it seems as if as the eldest, he leads that transition from old to new, dark to light, unknown or confusion to enlightenment. So we could look to Urutengangana and my pāpā to help us as we contemplate that question, when the world as we know it is torn apart, what do we do?

We enter into the light.

This should be obvious lol #whakapapa, it’s part of the cycle. But maybe this is where pāp’s advice comes in and we consider that we enter into that light (enlightenment, healing, prosperity, abundance — whatever light symbolises or represents to you) by taking time to self-reflect and self-assess, developing self-determination, meditating and learning to take responsibility for our behaviour and calling on others/coming together to create something greater than we ever could, alone by ourselves.

The blueprint to navigate our own worlds collapsing, imploding or destructing is woven into Rangi and Papa’s separation and the pūrākau (stories) that follow in the sequence. The potential to overcome and persevere is already in our DNA, because te ira atua and

our tupuna have endured their version of the challenges we face today, their own worlds ending in some way.

So as versions of you die, as old habits weaken, as the world as you know it gets torn apart, ka aha koe? What will you do?

Tēnā tātou,

Hana.