05/10/2021
Words from our Founder, Tony Hodder
My daughter's death changed my life. The direction of my life changed, as I has to live with the consequences of a systematic hospital error. I was faced with the challenge of trying to regain purpose and find a way to live my life to the fullest, which until this moment I had been very good at.
My daughter's death became the catalyst of my journey. In the beginning, I self-sabotaged and ripped myself apart internally as I suffered immensely. In my suffering, I withdrew and looked within to rediscover myself and my purpose which would become Wingman. Wingman was a new understanding for me and showed me that everything works in self-reflection. I delved into understanding emotional suffering and how to create and manifest it. I found myself with a pivoting question - why was I choosing to continue to suffer after a great deal of time?
It's hard to be self-aware and realise that you are actually choosing to suffer and that your brain is in a constant state of mental anguish to cause you to feel that something is happening to you, but in reality, it's actually something you are continuing to choose to let happen to you.
Life gives us the illusion that one thing of value happens to us at once, however this is indeed an illusion as humans we are systematic thinkers but in reality, multiple things of value are happening at the same time. We have limited consciousness, meaning we all have limited focus.
So we identified the one thing of value that is obvious to everyone and we forget that time is a concept that we now need to be real as you have to process more than one thing to clear those feelings of mental frustration. Death is the final part of the journey for the person who has passed away, but the feelings are still there for the living to process them before moving forward and back into the concept of time to be ok and appreciate what was lost.
Culture is something that is made up of multiple values that extends firstly into family values to then align within our community values and then society values of our country values that unite us all. We have the feeling of being a part of something bigger that we appreciate, choosing to identify where we come from and make part of our self-identity belong to something bigger. One thing I’ve always appreciated about my homeland is the sense of belonging to and appreciating our culture even if you are not directly related to being a Maori. For myself, being Tongan and half European in New Zealand only means that I'm privileged to be a part of more culture that connects us all to be a Kiwi. The sad part that I have learned about our homeland, is we all appreciate it more when we leave it. I found more Kiwis connected in Australia who appreciates being Kiwi than living in New Zealand to appreciate being a Kiwi. The sad part about this is a perception, the truth is in life we are always defined by our circumstances, so once we live back home in NZ we all struggle together within our suffering of a social system that doesn't give us access to more equality of life towards all your values of life experiences that you can have in Australia that changes your circumstances with the facts of having more money to explore your valued connections and relationship to appreciate life.
Everything of value ends, at the same time, something of value begins. As the end and the beginning are always simultaneously happening in the now of the present, my purpose with Wingman is to prove this in multiple ways that the purpose of our existence, is to appreciate our journeys throughout the present and at the same time always appreciate the experience of the past. Wingman encourages us to learn how to adapt and adjust our future for when s**t happens in your now by learning the value of what, why, and how this is needed for you to find or adjust your path of purpose to matter or not to matter as that is your choice to continue to suffer alone. None of us wants this and we can spend our whole life standing still within our suffering or ripping ourselves apart due to the belief 'something bad has happened to me' instead of understanding 'I'm actually now choosing to continue to allow this negative impact define me'. When you discover that you can actually change the negative into positive, you create time for yourself to heal so that you can keep moving forward with purpose. Everything in your life always begins with you and ends with how you choose to respond to how you perceived what happened. The major point of focus that you need to comprehend is how much time do you want to waste choosing to suffer when you have the power to redirect that suffering and save time to allow yourself to heal and appreciate life.
