The Last Word

By Shay Thom | Posted: Tuesday June 5, 2018

Last year, during the term 3 holidays, I had the amazing opportunity to go to Outward Bound in Anakiwa, just north of Picton.

This course provided a variety of different outdoor activities that involved pushing yourself to your absolute limits. However, that is not what I am here to talk to you about today. Today I am going to talk about one of the unique activities that they run within the course known as the SOLO experience and one of the lessons that I was able to gain from it. The SOLO experience is where you are dropped into the bush with a 2m by 2m tarpaulin for shelter, a sleeping mat, sleeping bag and an 8L Resene paint bucket that would act as my toilet and was not allowed to come back empty.

You are then left for two days and two nights to fend for yourself in this unknown terrain. For food you are given 2 carrots, 2 apples, scroggin and two biscuits along with a few bottles of water. Before we left for this unique experience my instructor named Watson brought the group together and left us with the last words, “Only boring people get bored”. At first I cast this idea aside and did not give it much thought. However, at around the 32-hour mark, cold and dark in the bush, left with only my thoughts to keep me company, I found myself sitting under my tarpaulin in the pouring rain. It was at this point where I found myself with absolutely nothing to do and I had to face the facts and accept defeat that yes, I was a boring person.

Despite my disappointment in coming to this realisation, it allowed me to come to the conclusion that it is the interesting and unique people who consist of my friends, family and loved ones who allow me to avoid the boring state that I had got myself into. Without them I’d simply just be another boring person in the bush. You don’t realise how much you value these people in your life until you have sat in the pouring rain under a small tarpaulin for 48 hours.

It is the small pleasure of these peoples’ company that I couldn’t live without so I set myself the goal there and then that I would appreciate them more and respect how much they do for me.

I believe this should be a goal for all of us so I therefore set every one of you a challenge. Go home tonight and cook your parents a nice dinner so they can put their feet up when they get home from work. Help your Grandad clean out the shed one weekend. Take your girlfriend out on a date or go catch up with the lads this weekend. It’s all these people we should be putting at the top of the list but are often forgotten in the sense that they are taken for granted. Most of these people have been there for us our whole lives so I think it’s only fair that we show our appreciation and give a little something back.

As per tradition I will finish with a quote.

“Appreciate the little things in life, because they add up to everything.”