FOR MY PEOPLE THE ART OF POSITIVE THINKING

Te Ao Hou, June 1961, Page 23

Rowley Habib, a gifted young Maori short story writer and poet, here considers a problem that worries many people. FOR MY PEOPLE THE ART OF POSITIVE THINKING by ROWLEY HABIB I open my soul in this manner because I strongly suspect that there are many Maoris going about with their crosses on their shoulders as I once did. It is my hope that this article will be of help or use to them. One of my Problems, probably my biggest, was that I was a Maori. I was of a dark race. Throughout my life, by way of mouth or by reading, I had come to regard myself, along with most other dark races of the world, as inferior to the European. It became a misery to me. It affected almost everything I did. It was like some aggressive body in me that pounded and tore away until all grew out of proportion; turning me into a nervous and fear-ridden wreck; of use neither to God nor man. I suffered for it, as everyone else close to me did. Through almost three years I went about with my cross on my shoulder, a living misery painful to everyone around me. Until at last I could sink no further. I had struck rock bottom, there was nowhere else to go. I could only go back the way I had come. But that meant going back to a life I had come to despise. A life, to me, that was full of disillusionment, of hatred and poison, of jealousy and misery. But I had no choice. Death did not seem to hold the answers, although I had courted the idea. So it was a question of: “go back along the path you have come. Go back into the life you have left behind.” I told myself that other people were surviving in it. Why not I? After weeks, then, of idle indecision I began to stir myself. Gradually, with much effort, I began to lift myself out of the sloth of my self-made misery. I began to take the first heavy steps back. (I prefer to call them forward, now.) They were nervous steps. Full of hesitancy and indecision, ready to retreat at the first obstacle that presented itself before me, be it only a harsh word. But I began to look for my strengths. It was around this time that I began to form a simple code of life. It is one that has come down through the ages: the code of survival. I told myself that I had as much right to be upon this earth as any living man. That I was born by the Grace of God and not by the wish of my fellow men. I began to look then at my life upon earth as something sacred, something not to be abused. I began to look about, seeing how I could live my life to the fullest. Enjoying it but at the same time being good. I accepted the fact that I was a Maori. That nothing on this earth, nothing in my life could change that fact. I was born a Maori and I would always be a Maori until I died whether I liked it or not. But now, instead of bemoaning what I thought was once a handicap, I began to look to the better side of Maori inheritance. I realized then that most of my talents were only there because I was a Maori. I began to appreciate my inherited Maori until now I feel humbled in appreciation of it. And over the last year I have become indebted to it, jealous and proud of it. I feel sure that I owe my ability to sing to my Maori inheritance, my ability to dance, to be above average in most sports I take up. The flair for humour and gaiety that is inhorn in me is only there because I am a Maori. The ability to enjoy myself, I feel, so much more than my Pakeha friends. All this, and more, I owe to my Maori origin. My present position then is this: I am jealously proud of my Maori inheritance, fond almost to the point of agony at times. Being proud of my race I then want to be of service to them. I can be this by being an example in my everyday living. By not doing anything that will bring shame on my race. By making the way easier for those Maoris that follow me wherever I go. Be it in a job or at a lodgings where I have stayed. In this alone I feel that a person is being of service to God and his fellow men. I can then find my strengths: not disregarding the weaknesses, but trying to strengthen them, and if necessary accepting them without much concern. Remembering that every man has his weaknesses—that I have arrived at an all-time pinnacle in my life. I like to add as an epilogue that, true, we as Maoris have to fight harder for what is rightly our due. Our struggle is that much harder than our Pakeha brothers'. But surely if the goal is harder to obtain the rewards at the end will be much richer.