Kia ora Whaanau!
Kaahore ahau ka taea te koorero maaori... So English I am going to speak, but I'm not exactly speaking...
But I am...
I was born in Kawakawa, and named by my grandmother after my great great grandmother (middle name; Moengaroa). I lived in Auckland and went to kohanga reo until I was 5, then moved to Perth, Australia.
Hence the reason why I do not know how to fully speak Te Reo Maaori.
From moving to Perth, I went to a collective 8 schools during my lifetime. I didn't really mind at the time, because I was a very social gal, so I made friends no matter what school I went to, but looking back at it now, I sort of wish I stayed at one school. This was because when my friends would talk bout their childhood, they were all there together, and I didn't have this luxury of knowing someone for a long period of time. But it has shaped me into the person I am today.
It has been my dream since I was a young child to help in someway preserve our native whenua. I first wanted to be a Geologist for a mining company that my father worked for, then I wanted to become a Marine Biologist, Veterinarian and now a D.O.C Ranger. Speaking of being young, I also wanted to become an author and produced numerous online novels. After reading it to me fellow peers out in class, and after laughs and snorts, I have found the courage to show you a snippet of the mind of a 12 year old; --------------------------->
I am currently studying as a year 13 student at Bay of Islands College with my aspiration of becoming a Department of Conservation Ranger. I love helping our planet and the people on it, so I have done numerous voluntary work from being a model for a St. Johns Op Shop fashion show to a part-time voluntary work for Project Island Song. My aspiration as I said above was to become a D.O.C Ranger, so in order to pursue my dream I will be studying at the Southern Institute of Technology doing a Bachelors of Environmental Management for 3 years then doing a
Trainee Ranger Kaitiaki Whenua Course with D.O.C. So, in 4 years I will come out with;
- My Qualification, Bachelors of Environmental Management
- My Work Experience, Trainee Ranger Kaitiaki Whenua
- And My Volunteer work, Project Island Song.
Boom, straight in! Well that is what I have imagined...
Why did I choose to continue with Math? Icame to New Zealand in 2016, start of term 3 and I was struggling with Mats a lot, even at my previous schools. I always compare my grades to others and got myself down, but until I moved to New Zealand and met Mr. Markin, my view about comparing myself to others changed. He helped push me to get my grades back on track, and helped me get Merit in my Math External that was the highlight of my life and push me to continue with Math, not matter how hard it was, I knew that if I pushed myself to do it, I could definitely achieve it.
I don't want to blabber on about my past life, because that was then and I live in the now. So, I will leave you with a small poem I wrote in 2018;
We are broken records stuck on repeat playing ‘be the same, then you will fit in’ every other day of our lives. Deception has tied a rope around our brain and is suffocating it of air. He is a manipulative mysterious man who hides in the shadows of our deepest darkest places. There are many factors that contribute to why social media is highly manipulative and persuasive for young adults living in the twenty-first century. Due to the fact there is a growing desperation and desire to be admired for our lies, we are categorizing people by their appearance, where it has become accustomed to alter our qualities to please society but we are not aided by the use of technology, but technology is not to blame it is one's way of taking advantage of it.
Where society has set unrealistic standards for everyone, because our appearance is what we have been made for. We rely upon others for our survival by surrounding ourselves with Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to increase our chances of being ‘liked’. We alter our appearance to make us feel as though we belong, because individuality is non-existent. We limit who we consider as our friends, because that girl that does not have a pretty face does not have a pretty personality. We are not born to criticize but are hardwired to believe that first impressions are everything, but how are you supposed to get to know someone, with one initial glance? Society has downloaded into our software about what is wrong and what is right, what looks right and what looks wrong. We build our views based on the first impression on how we think they should act because that software is portraying expectations on their appearance. Because that girl with the glasses and braces is a nerd, or that boy drinking 5 liters of water everyday is healthy. We automatically assume that someone is something based solely on their appearance, and when you try to think differently the man in the dark pulls on the rope to tighten around your brain and starts to sharpen the knife of greed until you stop thinking.
We are driven by social standards on a rugged road built for disasters. Where there is a need to challenge the current systems to educate our society of culture, environment, science and art. To create change and establish awareness that perfect is a word made up to make people believe ‘having all required or desirable qualities and characteristics,’ [1] are what we need to live. Our foundation of beauty standards are built upon imperfections and impurities with the framework made up of layers of makeup, and the walls made of paper to shield in our world of ‘perfection’. Where we have given permission to our lies to be in front of the camera and made the truth take the photo. Because society has inputted microchips in generations upon generations, which means there is no apparent end this is cruel cycle of judgement. We care more about the likes on a photo than our expectations of life. To the point where we invest in being the same, and being different or unique is ridiculed. We fear to be different, because fear is simple. Where it can create a complex and crippling reality that we do not desire to live in, on the grounds that once you've seen it, it is something you can not forget. Where fear begins with revealing the truth and ends with life.
Because our lives will only ever always be built on virtual expectations, where he who lives in our darkest deepest places continues to tighten the rope for as long as we believe that ‘perfect’ is a word.
Technology is not to blame. We use technology. We drain her blood for us to drink, and with every drop it is filled with one part hate and two parts pain. We do not believe what we are told about how ‘perfect is just a word’ because we are updated everyday to think otherwise. We control technology to create facade of ourselves to make people believe we are ‘perfect’ and ‘worth it’. Society had based our beauty on the amount of ‘likes’ we get on a photo, which has created this hunger deep down in our brain. We have surrounded ourselves with people who depend on technology to satisfy their greed, by posting everyday to consume that hunger for ‘likes’, but we can not ever be satisfied. It is not technology that is broken, but our minds because that chip society inputted into our brains and that rope that is forever tightening, is slowly killing us. Society has given everyone a piece of technology when they are born, so when we are growing up, we are growing up with a piece of perfection to eat off. Our minds are forever being upgraded to be better than what we were, but not differently, we are being updated to be the same. We use a shield welded of lies to protect ourselves from the truth, for the sake of knowing the truth. We have been condemned by the man in the dark to sharpen our knife, that we have built from our everlasting greed that travels from our heart to our brain.
This is until we grasp the knife of greed, reveal the shield of lies and cut that rope then we are free but until then, we are permanently cemented to a chair listening to the same broken record over and over again… ‘be the same, then you will fit in’, ‘be the same, then you will fit in’. We live our lives thinking deception is our knight in shining armor, saving us from the flames of judgement. But our lives should be more to do with self-confidence and less to do with pain, because you were not brought into this world to be something, but to write your own path and live your own life and that perception they have, is just something made up. Because they were wrong… Because as Abraham Lincoln once said, “ the best way to predict the future is to create it.”
