Scared?

That’s legitimate.

I know some powerful people. I’m lucky. I don’t know them as figures to be frightened of and nor do I know them as people who have all the answers.

I know them as people who have had the courage to dream and the balls to put it all out there. Guess what? It isn’t going so well right now.

Those who know me know that I have little time for the rich. The way wealth distorts people is abhorrent to me. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to fret about paying the bills. That is corrosive and makes us less than we can be. But wealth is an indulgence that also distorts.

My happy place is where everyone has enough to live a good life and have something to spare where they can choose to use that to do something worthwhile with it.

Maybe it’s the arts, maybe it’s politics, maybe it’s the homeless, maybe it’s the mentally disabled. I don’t care what it is. What matters is that it isn’t about you. What matters? Give. Give of yourself. Money, time – fill in the blank. Whatever isn’t easy for you, give that.

Personally, I’m prone to anxiety and depression. I’m lucky enough that it doesn’t define everything about me but it informs who I am every minute of every day. For that I thank my beautiful and very wise wife.

I can tell you that if the position was reversed I doubt that I would be so lovely. But I can tell you this. Since lockdown, I have found that the staunchest of people have become more open and amenable to my talk about feelings, emotions and fragility.

Something has happened and there is a window open right now. Before we get back to a BAU that as far as I can tell, no-one actually wants, lets work out what matters and create a new reality that is supportive of both you and our poor, sore, ailing world.

We might be on the brink of extinction. Whoops. Then again, we might not be, but either way, shouldn’t we consider being a little more respectful? If so, who should we be more respectful of? If we are good middle class liberals, it might be The Environment, Maori, the waterways, bla, bla, bla…

I’m no radical. I’m the father of children I love. I want a world they can live in that is as benign as the one I grew up in. I’m no better than anyone else of my generation but I know this. If I cling to my “right” to use as much water as I do now; if I vote against the right for dignified death and getting thugs and gangs out of cannabis production and distribution, I am consigning my kids future to the same shit as my world and I am super conscious that there is so much less time available and so much less luxury of ignorance.

I care what my daughter thinks of me now and I accept that at 13 that is not much, but I so care about the world she inhabits long after she starts getting sentimental about her dead Dad.

While the reins are in our hands and before it’s too late, what can we “grown ups” do? Worth a thought.