Steve | Highbury, Canterbury

“I suppose first thing that comes to mind is about 18 months ago a really close friend of mine died, and friends were piecing together the funeral proceedings, and working out, who was going to do music and photos and, and how it was all going to pan out, and everybody seemed to have a job except me.

I felt a little bit guilty, because I wasn’t contributing, or going to contribute, and then all of a sudden, someone goes well, who’s going to speak. Of course, all the hands go down, and I sort of thought, hmmm maybe this is my job. So, that’s what I ended up doing. I’ve never done it before. I’ve never had a close friend of mine die, but I thought, this is the time to step up, this is the time to be brave. I wrote screeds and screeds and screeds of notes, and re-wrote and re-wrote, and I suppose it was a really cathartic experience thinking of all the things that made the friendship a friendship, because I wrote them down numerous times. So when it came to the day, fortunately I had a friend who was sort of up at the front with me, which was great. I kind of launched into it, and I was probably the most relaxed and calmest, in a situation like that, that I could possibly imagine being. Lots of people said, hey well done, but I just thought, yeah I’ve actually done really well myself, I felt I really contributed to his memory, and helped his family as well the friends by doing that. I was nervous as hell. Just crapping myself. I was spraying Rescue Remedy. I think I must have used up a couple of bottles, preceding the speech but yeah that was me being brave.

I was born in Christchurch, moved to Timaru because my dad bought a business. So, he was a jeweller, and I ended up following in his footsteps, after a little bit of a debate about that. I trained at his business, did my apprenticeship and then travelled overseas for three years, came back, travelled with my girlfriend then, who became my wife, and continued running the business here. We have a couple of beautiful children as a result of that union, and I’ve probably spent a lot of my time incorporating travel with my work. I travel overseas a lot, to buy jewellery or gems. So I’ve actually relocated to the Oxford Building just down the road, and I like to trip around the country with friends, going to a lot of live music gigs especially festivals, or to ski nearby. We’re really spoilt for choice for recreational activities here. Skiing is my thing. Bit of paddle-boarding, and just finding like-minded souls to spend time with.

I think you discover something about yourself that you’ll never discover until you do that, until you really put a foot forward. I know everyone has their hesitation thinking that they’ll fail at something, but even if you do fail, there’s something to be learned in that, and you never grow as a person if you don’t put yourself out there. Sometimes you’re walking towards the fire, you’ll probably get burned, but if you don’t do it, you won’t learn a lesson either way. Maybe you don’t get burned. I think it’s fantastic for personal growth, to put yourself in uneasy situations, and then invariably sometimes you find that it’s actually a lot easier than you thought. Just that first step, just keeping up that momentum, it’s continually putting yourself into situations where you’re challenged, because you just start to develop more and more. You start to actually evolve as a person, and probably become quite different to who you would have been if you didn’t do that.

Do something that scares the shit out of you. Do something that really puts you in an uncomfortable space. You then create this reason to rise and to shine, and I think I found through life that chaos brings change, chaos creates momentum, momentum creates expansion. It just creates more richness and diversity in your life by doing the hard things, and if you walk away from it you’re walking away from evolving as a person. I don’t want to be judgemental, but you’re not going to gain as much by sitting back in the quiet space in the corner doing nothing, because your life will dribble by. If you’re lying on your deathbed, and you think, bugger here’s my big list of regrets. I don’t ever want to be in that situation. So, step towards the fire.”