Keith|Rānui
“Kia ora. Oh I’ve experienced anger quite constantly as I’ve been growing up.
I guess as you mature you tend to manage anger in, in a certain way, and I, I tend to look at anger now as, episodes of conflict, and how to manage those conflicts, and particularly managing it in a way where you articulate the situation and, and get a certain outcome through it. Anger is possibly a nasty sort of an emotion to have, and it takes you out of your train of thought, and can lead you into some escalated crisis.
Yeah, well there’s lot of ways to approach and manage conflict. I’ll use conflict rather than anger. I think anger’s a, it’s a product of conflict. So, I think we need more tolerance and acceptance, in differences, particularly different cultures, different traditions, people’s beliefs, religions, spirituality and all those things. The knowledge that we all look different, some of us, our skins are different colours, and we grew up in different environments; monsoons, heat, tropics, and of course Auckland with our four seasons in one day.
So, grew up in different environments, different surroundings, and we connect with that and connecting with others who are different to ourselves and tolerating those differences and accepting it. Acknowledge the values that each and every one of us have on this world, and how we are connected, and if we have that sort of mentality in mind, I guess we’ll have less conflict and more acceptance.
I’m a Māori of local descent in Auckland. I grew up in Māngere. The things, oh growing up in Māngere at that time in the early ‘70s, throughout the ‘70s and early ‘80s, was quite, a life with a lot of gangs, particularly Mongrel Mob and Black Power back then. You saw quite a lot of anger in our surroundings and environment back then. So, I grew up with a lot of that in my surroundings, and managed to navigate through it and come out the other end in, in a positive way as I best could.
My values, ever since I was a child I really valued our environment, really considered little critters and life that, that we share in our environment as something that we’re connected to. That we share and need to value, and which kind of led me into my career path that I have developed over the years, as regards to assisting out communities and environment. So, my background is, for the last 20-something odd years, yeah community development, people and environmental wellbeing. So, that’s a really huge passion of mine, and it guides me in how I manage anger and conflict as well.”
