So what exactly is The New Zealand Way of Life?
A comfortable home? A job? Holidays? Family bach? Walking in the bush, along the shore or along the riverbank. A good education, Working hard, Owning your own home – being looked after when you’re old? Everyone getting a fair go? The New Zealand way of life?
Yeah right.
Its a nice picture to hang on the wall but look around…there’s a few very dark shadows over this rosy glow. Nothing new. They’ve always been there.
Families, individuals, sleeping in cars, on footpaths? People high on booze or drugs driving dangerously? Families clogging up Emergency waiting rooms because they haven’t got medical insurance and they can’t afford to pay doctor’s fees? People with mental health problems unable to get an appointment?
There’s a majority of us who will never be among that small group who own their own home, let alone a family bach. People who work at two jobs so they can pay the rent, feed themselves and their kids and feel lucky to be one of the ones who actually get a statutory holiday off work but forget having a bach, hell, forget the holiday.
The ones who exist – you can’t call it living – on benefits (now there’s a word)… or the kindness of strangers? The New Zealand way of life? Of course.
How do we explain that we have one of the highest domestic abuse stats in the western world? Oh that’s just the New Zealand way of life? The fact that some landlords have to have a law passed before they’ll make their rental properties warm? The New Zealand way of life? For some, certainly.
What about the racism? How it operates in employment interviews, among supermarket security guards, on the streets? In schools. Alive and flourishing that’s for sure. The survey that came out today with children’s voices talking about bullying at school, cyber bullying and all that goes with that. And sexism is alive and well.we know that.
There is no one New Zealand way of life, there are a million of them. 4.7 million in 2017, so more now. We each know which New Zealand way of life we fit into. Its a matter of luck a lot of the time. We can look at family circumstances, point to examples of those who’ve experienced huge hardship and yet achieved success in their lives, whatever that means, but for every one in the boat, there’s a thousand or more others who are slowly sinking because there are no lifebelts.
Even if you’ve been lucky enough to get and hold a job, worked hard, saved what you can, bad luck happens. Unexpected illness, the place where you work closes down and you’re unable to get another job, or you work at three jobs and still only earn enough to pay the rent, electricity, put food on the table, clothes on the children, no money left over for a holiday. A bach at the beach? Forget it,Those who achieve this imaginary New Zealand way of life are a small minority and in any population figures over the years, they always have been.
We can’t even say we’re all kind because clearly we’re not. But I can say with certainty that the rose-coloured glasses being worn by some commentators should be taken off and given a clean or maybe get a new pair with clear glass.
In the multi-cultured New Zealand way of life, some of us have dreams that will come true while the large majority of us will get some of what we dream, the rest will get the short straw.
Some of us will lead happy and fulfilled lives, some of us will not. Some of us will be hampered by disability, either physical or mental, some of us will experience racist comments and behaviour and some of us will suffer because we’re women. Whatever the ragbag of opportunities, good or bad or a mix, forget the myth of everyone getting ‘a fair go’ – they don’t. They never have.
However and hallelujah, the New Zealand way of life also includes me writing busks, you and me talking about books, poetry, recipes. Asking how each other is, noticing if someone needs help, giving it. We make cakes or casseroles, we wipe a kid’s nose, we say ‘If you hit that kid again I’m calling the cops.’ When we hear a college kid call another kid ‘you homo freak’ we yell out and say ‘what the hell do you mean?’ These kind of things are the little lights (‘I seen the little light’) we send to each other across the fence, social media, or down the street. They don’t include baches or idyllic holidays, or fantasies of everyone getting a good go, but these little lights, my friends, are the glue that holds this country together.
We just have to remember that while this is our way of life, it is definitely not be the way of life everyone in this country experiences. We have to remember that there are at least 4.7 million New Zealand ways of life and ours is only one of them.
