Pera Barrett: Letters to my daughter and son that I think are worth sharing with the world. The life lessons I’ve learned and want to pass on, the cover everything from resilience, to handling stress, the New Zealand political system, happiness, productivity, grief and depression – pretty much whatever lessons life throws my way. I write them down before I forget.
Might we make our own luck? Not mine. Not yours. But ours? Growing up, I thought the kids from rich families were the lucky ones. I imagined all the extra opportunities for success they’d have. Friends in high places and the belief they belong there, intergenerational money to pay away the day-to-day pressures. I was …
Swap the first vowel in your name with the letter u. If the first vowel in your name is u, swap it with the letter a. Now, imagine you’re sitting in class on your first day at a new school. You wait as the teacher reads the roll. You’re ready for your chance to chime …
We probably believe in very different things. Who or what created the earth. What happens when we die. Those are some pretty fundamental beliefs that most of us know we can co-exist with. We have different beliefs about what’s going on around us ALL THE TIME. We look at the same world through our different …
Every passenger seems to know something about what might be causing the strange noise in my car. They’re not mechanics, so I don’t listen to them. I’ll go to my cousin Raymond. He’s been studying and working on engineering and cars for decades. He knows more than me about cars and I trust his knowledge. …
It’s easy to judge an individual based on what we think their choices were. Especially if you’ve never heard the cries of a frustrated child struggling with a boulder that nobody else sees. Especially if you’ve forgotten about the lever you carried since birth.
“Why are we listening to this monkey language?” Said the racists in Paraparaumu standing next to our tamariki.
It’s not just pride in overcoming that anxiety when I kōrero Māori. It’s hope for the future and respect for the past. Every time I stumble slowly over te reo Māori instead of the language caned into my Nana, it’s for her. My words pay respect to the price she paid for the chance to speak our tongue, going back. Those words reach out in hope for you and maybe your tamariki and uri, to feel that connection and place in the world, going forward.
If you watched George Floyd’s death earlier this year, or the riots and thought how lucky we are to live in Aotearoa where we don’t have systemic racism, you’re in the privileged position of not being subjected to it.
As we were driving from Otaki a few months back, a swarm of Mongrel Mob bikers roared past us. Kāhu, you stared wide-eyed as you do at every motorbike. I watched because I’ve been told all my life that the physical power they carry is strength – wide shoulders, tough fists, and leather – and that I should look up to strength. Society tells boys like you especially, Kāhu, that being a man means being strong: don’t cry, be brave, fight, never back down.
Life is fragile, and how it plays out for any of us is mostly a game of chance.