Nicholas – Onehunga.
“Five years ago I had a very bad addiction, and I’ve been rescued by my son who’s a tattooist in Onehunga, and I’ve been clean for five years. So it’s been a really good ride.
[Children are] the most precious things we can ever have, and whether they’re grandchildren or your own children, it’s important that we put the right seeds in them so that as they grow as human beings they learn to appreciate not only their community but the planet and the universe. Yeah, children teach us that we need to be patient with them at times, and that we all have lives, and their lives are precious just as ours, and we need to make sure that by the time they’re our age that we’ve given them enough so that they can excel and appreciate life for what it is.
I come from Napier, and, like I said, I’m a bit of a roamer. I’ve been all over the country. I’ve been over to Australia, but my addiction started simply because of the people around me. They say peer pressure is not an issue; it really is at times, and I had a good job and a good life, but the addiction came into my life, and then from there, there was a spiralling drop to a point where I was basically homeless and soulless. At that time I decided I needed to change and through prayer and good luck, [and] my son, [who] came to me and brought me up here and I’ve been here ever since, and it’s been an amazing experience to be honest with you.
Auckland this time around for me has been a very good location. My grandchildren have been very important in who I am and what I am today. You get a second chance with your grandchildren that you kind of didn’t have with your children in that you’re learning on your feet.
My mother and father didn’t teach us much when it came to what you need to be, to be responsible as parents, and it wasn’t their fault; it was just circumstances, but a lot of it I learned on my feet. All my children are adults now. I have many grandchildren, and they’re my safeguard against me going to other places that I don’t need to go to anymore. They are kind of like the best thing that could have ever happened to me to be honest with you, my grandchildren, and I can’t picture a world without them in my lives anymore, they’re that special to me.
A grandparent in these days is very important, because we have one parent families. We have families that are dysfunctional, some aren’t, but the key to understanding life is that we all have a role to play, and for me being a father I thought it would be the end of caring and loving and being responsible, but becoming a grandfather actually heightened and made me more aware of my responsibilities as not only a role model for my grandchildren, but as someone that can be there for them 24/7.
Especially my granddaughters. We live in a world where women and young women are at risk from a very male-dominated society. So me and my family are all about giving our grandchildren knights; people that they can relate to and trust and know that regardless of the situations that they’re in or what they’ve created in their lives, they’ve always got someone that they can come to in order to help them, to uplift them and to just love them and make sure that they’re fine.
Well, you know, I grew up in a man’s world and back then a lot of stuff you didn’t talk about, you didn’t really want to talk about, because the mantra in my day was whatever happened behind closed doors stayed behind closed doors. We have an open community and an open sort of policy now when it comes to what is happening in our communities, and being a man, we’re responsible for a lot of the situations that are now being created for our society, and I guess it’s about just enhancing what a man can do, not only for his family but also for his community and also for his country and for the universe. To be a good man is a very hard thing, but it’s the goal that we all need to achieve in order to benefit from what’s coming.
There’s a lot things that we all could do to benefit humanity within our own communities. The best thing I think we could be is open-minded; to accept what’s out there, and to embrace it rather than challenge it, and to be aware that the connections between each other goes back to the microscopic level. We’re not connecting at a physical level, and I guess it’s about being more open to dialogue with each other, understanding each other, and not judging who we are or what we are, but actually embracing the differences that are in our community and then celebrating it, and we have a unique country.
We’re isolated from the rest of the world, which is first and foremost one of our best ever qualities we could ever have, that we’re not part of the world per se. We live down the bottom of the world, but in order to really embrace, we need to embrace each other at an open and honest level, and forget about judgements, forget about our socio-economic statuses, but appreciate and understand that each of us are living a journey, and that the best thing we can do for each other is to appreciate support and basically love one another, man.”
