living our truth — our responsibility

As much of an advocate I am for being self-determining, asserting your rangatiratanga and not being dictated to by others, I know it can be hard to shut out external noise on who we are, what we’re up to etc.

No doubt you’ve been told or you’ve said to someone else, “don’t worry about what people think,” or “who cares what they say...”  but we’ve been conditioned to care! we’ve been taught to be ‘ourselves’ but, not too much… you know, only show the world the fun, shiny, appealing parts that aren’t too disruptive that don’t make people too uncomfortable… You fit into this box so you should act like this, this and this… ooh what a world we live in.

I’ve found myself in a few situations lately where I’ve had to make a decision and in that process I observed my thoughts, ‘ohh people will probably think…….. so and so’s gonna be……..’ and instantaneously I caught myself, ‘whoa Hana what’s going on… Since when did you have so many seats on the decision making committee for your life?’ haha and that was that and I made the decisions I wanted to make in the first place.

Not without the help of karakia of course, here’s a line from one I’ve shared often by Houmaitawhiti,

‘koi whakarongo ki te kōrero iti’

deafen your mind and ears to things insignificant

In the same way we’ve been conditioned to care about other people’s opinions and play down or hide away parts of ourselves for the comfort of others, we can condition ourselves to be stronger and more courageous in our pursuit of living into our truth.

That is our responsibility.

Tēnā tātou,

Hana.