It is with great pleasure that I’m writing to you today from a place of average to good health. After nearly two weeks of being incapacitated with the flu, I’m finally able to sit up straight and pay attention to what's happening around me. While I wouldn’t wish that level of sickness on anyone and am deeply regretting not getting immunised this year, there is a new and intensive level of gratitude for the most mundane and normal of things in the aftermath.
For example, this morning I had a cup of Melbourne Breakfast tea where I could actually register hints of vanilla. Getting my sense of taste back has turned eating a mandarin into a spiritual experience. By not having access to these simple pleasures, they now feel like the most amazing life events. Being able to make it through the day without a throbbing headache has been wonderful. I even got into the class room this week and taught a couple of prototyping classes which all went really well, although I think my new nasally tone exaggerates my New Zealand accent because no-one could understand what I was talking about when I mentioned X-Tool (our laser cutting software). What’s Eggs-Tool they asked?
Life is returning to normal which is so incredibly precious. Being content with the ‘everyday’ or average is one of my most valuable assets. It’s made me appreciate how important the simple things are like sitting down together as a family for dinner. Eating together is something that we do at least two times a day and it is one of things I look forward to the most. Being able to taste the food I’m eating makes it even better!
Coincidentally I’ve been reading ‘The Dreaming Path’ by Paul Callaghan with Uncle Paul Gordon which is essentially a self-help/leadership book that is inspired by indigenous culture. It draws heavily on the ‘old ways’ and talks about the dreaming path (as the title suggests) which is always there for anyone who wants to listen. Aboriginal spirituality is an incredible source of contentment and well being. Its wisdom is tens of thousands of years old and is anchored in our responsibility, both individually and collectively, to care for our place and everything in our place. There is no hierarchy - everything has a story to share if we take the time to listen. Rocks, water, animals, people, land, trees, the sky… everything.
Storytelling is critical to sharing this knowledge and begins as soon as a child is born. Stories are shared and repeated throughout childhood as oral stories, dance, song or art. As young people transition through puberty, they should know hundreds of stories that carry with them morals and lessons readying them for adulthood.
I’ve also been reading The Last Daughter by Brenda Matthews who is an indigenous woman who was taken from her family in the earlier 1970s. From the age of 2 to 7 she lived with a white family who believed her biological parents were unable to care for her - they weren’t. The government just took their kids for no reason. Other than this being the most horrendous crime ever, it interrupted the flow of culture and knowledge through the sharing of those stories and Brenda spends most of the book reflecting on her struggle to connect with a culture that she felt so disconnected from.
Not having access to her people severed the connection to culture for Brenda. Her white family were kind and loving but then she felt like she couldn’t talk about them when she was sent back to her biological parents. The internal conflict has taken 40 odd years to confront and understand. Being able to share her story was so difficult because she has so much shame around it but as she slowly started to tell it, in person at first, then wrote a book about it, she can reclaim that story, her story, and turn it into an insight and perspective that everyone should read.
I worry today that we’ve confused ‘sharing content’ with ‘purposeful storytelling’. As a group of people, we’re more connected than ever but this digital type of connection feels shallow and fragile. It’s not strong enough to carry the lessons that we need to be sharing with each other. Flicking through Instagram and seeing what your friends are up to (if they are up to anything at all because last time I looked, my feed was all ads) isn’t a meaningful connection.
You reading this blog is a meaningful connection.
I feel very privileged that I have the energy and capacity to write for a few hours every week and share it with you all. I made a joke at work that I see my life as ‘stories’ - Good news or a good story if you will, but I honestly do. We’re all writing our own story whether you're typing it out every friday or not, is happening right now. The decisions we make and how we respond to life’s events are creating the narrative. Sometimes it feels like we have little impact on what’s happening around us but the truth is that we do. We are the authors.
We need to slow down. We need to take time to listen. Listen to each other and listen to the world around us. Being super sick has made me realise that I can pull out of society for two weeks and rejoin with little consequence. Taking the time to rest and recover gave me the chance to pull back from my own expectations of myself. Reading the Dreaming Path at this time of reemergance feels poignant. I’m reading what I need to hear right now.
We need to spend more time sharing stories with each other. Proper stories. We need to do more than ‘like’ a photo as a means of connecting to the people we care about. It’s going to require a resetting of priorities but it's the very least we can do. Personally I want to spend more time talking with the kids. They LOVE when we tell them stories about our lives. Silly little stories that don’t feel that important are requested again and again.
We have ‘no devices’ during the school term and the kids just park themselves at the kitchen bench and we talk shit for that sweet hour between afterschool care and dinner. Normally that would be spent playing Nintendo or watching Netflix. Now it's spent talking about when Matt and I were kids doing silly shit like tying my cousin up in a tree (so sorry April) or how we met at the pub or what Aunty Vick’s wedding was like. If we create the space, they will lean in and listen.
