Soon it was getting towards that time. The guy I was talking to engaged this other guy who was sitting across the table from us who was staring intensely at a TV mounted on the wall above the bar. The TV was playing silently a news item about Syria. We started to talk about the news item and I gathered that he worked in some form of humanitarian/foreign aid-type job. I made a comment about how I thought it wasn’t good that China & Russia were abstaining from a Security Council vote on action against Syria. This turned out to be the wrong thing to say, Intense Guy turns on me asking pointedly why I think they should have voted. It was a good question, previously I hadn’t considered it how it could be a negative thing. So I say Well, you know, it sends a message. Intense Guy says that the vote they abstained on included agreeing to sanctions and also, if it came to it, NATO action. Gamely I decided to try & continue the conversation by saying that actions like that sounded like a good thing. Whoops, this drew the dismissive ire of Intense Guy, he forcefully asked me how I knew those things would help. Management-consulting Guy tried to make peace. But I had to go and gratefully made an exit.

Sitting on the train home I reflected on how I was feeling. Yeah, I was feeling a bit ignorant about international affairs. And a bit resentful of being made to feel stupid. But I was also feeling uneasy, Intense Guy’s attitude had been very familiar. You see, for a long time I was the intense guy. I still probably am the intense guy to a great extent. For years I would turn the most casual of conversations into accusatory debates where I would seek to hang the problems of the world on some poor person’s innocent lack of information, or their misunderstanding, or maybe their ignorance. I thought, foolishly, that what I was doing was fighting the good fight of truth, justice & ideology on the ground. In retrospect it had a much more to do with my own guilt, insecurity and ego.

And now the tables had turned, the shoe was on the other foot. I thought about how I was feeling and realised that making people feel defensive, wrong and stupid is ultimately unlikely to work. And might even make that person even more likely to retreat to their points of view and stereotypes. And even then that is not enough, it is also really important to remember that capital-T truth is a multi-faceted shades-of-grey beast and unlikely to be in the possession of one person (or one judgemental man, in my case).

I sympathise with Intense Guy. I know what that feels like, you want people to understand, you want them to have, I don’t know, read journal articles and subscribed to humanitarian email updates. I don’t even know how you’re supposed to do know What’s Really Going On In Syria. I don’t know what is happening there, and who the real villains are. Some days I don’t recycle, I don’t read the Terms and Conditions. And now I realise that actually treating people with grace & dignity is probably more likely to lead to them listening to you.

As a New Zealander I have never really understood what it means to be from New Zealand. Of course, if you asked me when I lived in New Zealand I might have told you things about Maori culture, or our anti-nuclear stance. But I didn’t really know. I knew we were a young nation and I wasn’t sure that was something to be proud of.

The thing was I grew up on the North Shore of Auckland City where the only Maori culture I knew were some of the friends I had at school at Glenfield Primary, and the kids from South Auckland who threateningly admired my shoes whenever we played against them in basketball. And I knew we were anti-nuclear, but no-one I knew had come up with that idea.

When I went overseas I knew I’d be kind of homesick, miss my family, my friends, my church, that sort of thing. And then one night in London I watched Home, Land & Sea by Trinity Roots. And I missed home. I mean, I missed home. A deep down feeling that hurts in a way that isn’t physical. I cried into my pillow. I felt embarassed about crying into my pillow, so I tried to muffle it so my flatmate in the room next door wouldn’t hear.

What I hadn’t expected was a feeling that made me want to bury my fingers in the soil of home. To run down to water on a hot summer’s day at Omaha Beach. I wanted to turn on the TV and find John & Hilary pulling some terrified humble Kiwi up on stage to ask them if they wanted the Money Or The Bag. To listen to the warm chuckle of a Maori fella. I suddenly wanted all of it back again.

There is a moment in this live version of Home, Land & Sea, at about 4 minutes, 44 seconds that gets me every time. The toi-toi, the waters, the hills. There is nowhere like it in the world. I realise now it is the earth in which my roots run down into. Its colours, flavours & sounds run through my veins. It is a meaningful, permanent, inscrutable part of who I am. And that’s true.

Source: YouTube

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