KAPAI: Time to love and laugh

If you were to go on to the internet and punch into the Google search engine the name Glencore you would come up with the world's largest commodity trading company, which turned over $115 billion _ yes billion _ last year.
The big boss of Glencore is a man called Willy Strothotte and I was his personal butler back in my last life as a voyager du monde. I started work for Willy as a "boat nigger" with a dozen Antiguan Rastafarians in Florida, who all worshipped the world of Bob Marley.
Together we buffed up Willy's waka, a magnificent 132-foot speedboat he bought for his son's 16th Xmas birthday. Anyways when Willy found out I had trained as a five-star steward back in Aotearoa he hired me as his on-board butler and off we sailed through the Caribbean and then across the Atlantic to their private jetty in the French Riviera.
There we commuted back and forth to their Swiss mansion in Zug, a tax exile haven just out of Zurich. Willy had 12 cars and I had the putter bomb one of them to run around in _ a brand new Ferrari Testarossa, so for a while life was a garden for me in Willy's world and I was digging it.
Picture it _ a mad Maori with a pocket full of pinga driving a ruby red racer around the streets of Switzerland _ had it all going on eh Cuz?
But then I quickly realised Willy was a sad man and nobody knows what it's like to be a sad man behind blue eyes. So I tied up the Testarossa, farewelled the Ferrari and the fat pay cheques and headed off for life's next adventure.
So where am I heading with this story, you are asking by now? Money when it is collected in obscene amounts does not make a man happy and that $30 million toy that Willy brought for his son at Xmas time created far less happiness than the Christmas I have just had with 30 or so tamariki out at our family marae, Tutereinga.
In fact I would rate it as the best Christmas ever because money was not the currency of happiness, time was. We had three days of plenty of time to do plenty of fun things, and the rewards came in the plenty of smiles on the faces of the parents who took the time to make it happen.
We did fun things together that cost nothing and our kids were safely tucked away in the arms of their tupuna who watched over them from the walls of the wharenui, and I reckon they were as jazzed as we were. I guess the message for Willy comes in the song If I Only Had Time and the Beatles lyrics "money can't buy me love" for himself and his son.
So where to from here and what lies up ahead in the distance for the days of our lives in 2006?
For me it is the same answer as the lesson I have learned from last week's Xmas at Tutereinga Marae. Time.
I want to spend more time with the people that matter most and a lot less with those that take and give nothing in return. When I see the rewards of spending time with our tamariki it is an investment that only a blinkered billionaire would not buy shares in.
And if the purple petals from the blessing tree outside the Te Puna school grants me my wishes I will see these three things listed below happen in and around me for 2006.
Raising the drinking age back to 20 _ how much more carnage must we endure before we wake up and put the handbrake on these chariots of fire?
Continuing the Culturally Cool renaissance of our Indigenous heritage.
As I was walking into this internet caf to scribe my column I ran into an old friend who'd walked many miles with me on our walk of life, him a whitey and me a bit of a browny.
And as he walked on by after a brief korero this morning, he farewelled me in perfect Maori and it warmed me to my soul. Kia ora to you my bro Potsy, race relations is a simple as your salutation.
And lastly it is the same wish that Willy would have wished for if only he had time and if only he knew how.
May the long time sun shine upon us all, may we surround each other in laughter and love and may we all take the time to listen and learn, from each other and from ourselves.
Happy New Year and Happy 66th wedding anniversary Koro Tukapa and Nanny Hinemotu over on Matakana Island where time is a treasure that money can never buy.
Pai marire tommy@indigenius.org