Stories are how we hold memories and how we recall the past.
They are how we bring forth the learnings and understanding
of our standing, and our place in our today.
They show us who and how we are in the world.
They give us blueprints for the foundations
We need to build on from, or deconstruct.
Our stories are our holdings for tomorrow,
and are the runs of our step ladders to our future.
Without them we are empty,
we are lost.
They ground us and enable us to look beyond ourselves
to the fabric of who and what we are.
Within each word, each sentence, each line, we see the essence of how our whānau, how our communities, how our nation, react to each other, and the entities and environment that surround.
They show how we rise
and how we fall.
We need to record them,
hold them,
share them.
They show how our mauri (life force) interacted in situations and in our environment
They are where we embed our secrets
and lay out our fears.
They are the weaving of our worlds
and the inheritance,
the whare (house),
we leave behind.
So tell them,
tend to them,
and puri (retain) them.
As these precious taonga (treasures) are the greatest gifts we have
for ourselves and those to come.