I wanted to write my last column for 2022 on something to help people moving forward. I don’t have all the answers. No-one really has any answers when it comes to mental health when you think about it. We’re all making this shit up as we go along, trying to find the best way to paddle through life. Sure we can scan the brain, this bit does this, and this bit does that. But we still don’t fully know why my Facebook memory of dreaming of gremlins dragging me off the bed while I was high on oxys made me smile this morning. Or why as soon as someone tells me not to do something, the first thing I want to do is whatever that thing is. Don’t think of an orange. 

I was having an argument with someone the other day about whether the urge to screw other people over for our own benefit is a part of human nature. I honestly believe that it is human nature to want to do good things. I genuinely do. I am privileged but I have also seen horrible things, and gone through a raft of traumas. I don’t often feel like I belong anywhere. I’ve seen people beaten unconscious. Watched people self-destruct in horrendous ways. Toddlers left to sleep on spacie machines. But I firmly believe it’s not in our nature to do that. It’s these crazy systems and power structures that create that environment for bad shit to happen. That’s what we need to change, instead of attacking each other. We may disagree on what a good life looks like, but I can confidently say we all want a good life. None of us chose to be on earth, we chose to stay but we didn’t choose to exist. So why not try and help each other, if it was in our nature to destroy each other for our own individual benefit, we’d long be extinct. We never would have achieved what we have. An eye for an eye leaves the world blind and all that crap (I’ve moved from Stranger Things to House of the Dragon now). The world is fucked up and we’ve done a lot of things to speed that up or even cause it, but the adaptability of humankind is insane. The crazy places people choose to live, and do live despite everything saying it’s wrong, is impressive. The harshest, messed up environments. I mean, take Wellington for example. 

Even if it was in human nature to screw each other over, that belief gets us nowhere. If we’re all trying to counter attack before we’ve been attacked – we’re exhausted. I may be naïve but let’s give it a go. Because hope is what keeps us going. I’ve always been fascinated by the story of Pandora’s Box. The last creature to escape the box was Hope. It’s always made me wonder…is Hope a curse like all the others? Does it keep us going through the darkness to fight all those other curses, a fail-safe in case Pandora opened the box? Or is it cruel folly, Hope just another curse to torture us and keep us going when really we should give up? Again either way, I’d like to think it’s the former. I honestly believe it’s true, but even if it’s not, let’s just believe it anyway and make things better. Hope is what keeps you going in your darkest moments. None of us want a shitty life. People want a good life but bad shit happens because we don’t change the systems we’ve constructed. There is no Socratic Paradox.

After all, if only some of us win, then none of us win.

Take care of yourself, take care of others, and aroha will see us through.

Ka tū tonu koe i roto i te aroha

Ka kite ano.