Obviously Leunig doesn’t sing in a choir or he’d know that there are 8 types of ordinary happiness. But doubtless he wasn’t trying for an exhaustive list. And this isn’t going to be a discussion about happiness. That’s a huge subject with all kinds of rabbit holes down which we could descend. This is about ordinariness and maybe a little bit about the accidental contentment there might be in being ordinary.

As part of the online te reo Māori course I’ve been doing this year (through the Open Polytechnic of NZ - I can’t recommend it highly enough), I’ve been doing my kōrero tuakiri - that’s what you do if you’re a through-and-through pākehā, with no ancestral maunga, awa, marae or waka. I started the process feeling utterly bereft and adrift in the world. I didn’t feel as though I came from anywhere in particular, and in lots of ways I didn’t. I felt envious of other students who could construct their pepeha and locate themselves somewhere in Aotearoa and beyond to the waka that brought their people here.

We travelled around a lot when we were kids, and my siblings and I always thought that that was why we didn’t feel particularly at home anywhere. So having to construct a kōrero tuakiri amplified that sense of disconnection at first. But as I worked through it, I started to have a sense of connection to “place” that I haven’t ever really had before. It turns out that like most pākehā New Zealanders, my forbears were scattered throughout the UK and Ireland (Cornwall, Isle of Wight, Ireland and Scotland turned out to be the places I discovered the strongest connections with). The various branches had been wherever they were for generations, knowing exactly who they were. Until the second half of the 19th Century, when they got onto various ridiculously small boats and made their dangerous journeys.

And once they got here - as my sister put it - there was just a big free-for-all. Imagine the mash-up of accents there must’ve been in those early years. My lot came from all over the UK and Ireland, so they would’ve spoken with all kinds of regional accents. But nothing posh, as far as I can tell.

Nobody was an earl or a duke, nobody was famous, and nobody was particularly educated or accomplished. They were dairy maids, tin miners, coal miners, turnip growers, farmers, grocers, a smattering of ministers of religion of various denominations, and a few soldiers. It looks like my lineage - apart from one or two real ratbags - is absolutely ordinary; mostly people whose lives were hard enough to drive them to take such risks and accept such losses.

I noticed that I felt a bit put out about the lack of illustrious personages - I see stories of other people who research their families and manage to trace themselves back to prince or lord somebody-or-other. Not us. I don’t know why it feels as though it matters, and it has made me think hard about what it is that makes us grasp for specialness. But it occurred to me a long time ago that if we’re all special, then none of us is. Or, as fictional LA detective Harry Bosch says, either everybody matters or nobody matters.

An article by Tainui Stevens talks (https://e-tangata.co.nz/reo/asking-the-right-questions/) about 3 essential identity questions:

Nō hea koe? Where are you from?

Nā wai koe? Who are you of?

Mā wai koe? For whom do you exist?

A kind of contentment has gradually emerged for me from thinking deeply about those questions, a sense of settling into my tiny place in my small branch of the human family. These are not questions about accomplishment or specialness, and they don’t exclude striving, learning and working. We all come and go, and we all belong.