The events of Friday afternoon in Christchurch will forever change New Zealand. That sucks. It's an impossible sequence of events to get your head around. It doesn't make any sense and it's not the New Zealand we know and love.
Normal life is jolted into sharp perspective when something of this magnitude happens. What's important quickly rises to the top and its family and friends dominating your thoughts, along with those in Christchurch.
While I was trying to get my head around it and hoping to find some sense to share an explanation with my kids (and coming up blank – trying to explain that was near impossible) I saw a post on social media. It tackled the question head on and it has something of brilliance within it.
It advised to focus on the good rather than the bad. Hard to find in this scenario, but once I started to look I saw it; the heroes of an unspeakable act, the NZ police that acted fearlessly to end the saga, the ambos, the reporters, the hospital team, the concerned public and outpouring of support from all corners of New Zealand. All these people ran in to help our fellow Kiwis in their time of peril. That is heart warming. That is the real New Zealand character and spirit. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and other New Zealand politicians all hit the mark in the aftermath of an event they all wished never happened. I never thought the Black Power could move me, but that's exactly what their haka for the victims did to me.
And then there is Melbourne teenager William Connolly who delivered an appropriate response to the head of Queensland Senator Fraser Anning after he made racist remarks in the wake of the shooting. William spoke for Australia in that moment and strengthened the bond between us. A legend.
So I tell myself and my kids to watch the response, not the act itself. Right there you see why New Zealanders are such truly amazing people – all of us, from all our backgrounds, a vibrant fabric that won't be broken or unravelled by lunatic ideology.
See you at the beach ... Derek
PS Next week I'm off to Singapore to film with Rio 2106 Olympic gold medalist swimmer Joseph Schooling. He's an absolute legend and I'm pretty excited to be working with him. Might squeeze in some time at Uluwatu on the way home ...
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