you don't always see the whole path, just the next step

And sometimes the path leads you to places you never could have imagined! Sometimes what you’re pursuing is actually the catalyst for your higher purpose or mission to reveal itself to you.

We can’t fathom how our decisions today will affect the course of our lives. Of course there’s the obvious ones like how certain habits yield certain outcomes, but sometimes we don’t know how a “missed opportunity”, a “failure” or even a “big win” will influence not only us in the here and now, but life 1000 years from now.

Before we get too deep into it without the context lol yesss we’re heading into the Whiro (new moon) phases of the cycle which means…..

new theme, new pūrākau, new story.

I refer to this one often, especially when I speak or present as a way to prepare the soil in that mental real estate for the seeds that will be sown throughout the kōrero. Especially when the theme is something aspirational and about contribution back to collective.

This pūrākau also won for this cycle’s theme because it’s helping with current wānanga in my life as well, so here goes..

Ngahue was one of Kupe’s bros who joined him in the expedition to track down and kill Te Wheke a Ruamuturangi which ultimately lead them and their crew to Aotearoa. Ngahue then journeyed around Te Waipounamu (South Is.) where pounamu found him. He took some of it back to the homeland and this stone was used to fashion the adze heads that later carved the Te Arawa waka.

So real quick, if Ngahue didn’t feel like an octopus hunt that day a thousand years ago; there’d be no pounamu, so no toki to carve the waka, no vessel to bring the people here…

Te Arawa uri (descendants) might’ve still been Tahitian or Hawaiian

or whomever they were before they arrived to Aotearoa lol another interesting note too is that Te Arawa, formerly Ngāti Ohomairangi, are descendants of Ruamuturangi, so in a roundabout way — he’s also responsible for our tupuna (ancestors) finding a new home. But anyway, we’ve got a whole month to dive deep into this kōrero.

I’m willing to say Ngahue didn’t anticipate things would unfold as they did on that particular trip about a thousand years ago. The pursuit was of the octopus terrorising their fishing stocks; which ultimately lead him to NZ, to pounamu, to tāonga (treasures) that he took back to contribute to the betterment and advancement of his people.

In our own lives, sometimes the thing we’re so insistent on pursuing may instead be a catalyst for something greater?

Perhaps it equips us with what we need, or puts us in spaces for our own expressions of pounamu to find us.

If that’s the case, how would you open yourself up to that possibility? So that wherever the next step of the path takes you, you have some extra awareness to trust the process, trust whakapapa and let it guide you?

Tēnā tātou,

Hana.