I was in a taxi in Wellington a couple of weeks ago and got yarning to the driver. Or he actually got yarning to me, as I sat back and listen to his life story.

I may get some details wrong here, but it went something like this. 

He was born in Ethiopia and when he was 8, his entire family was killed in a war there. 

He entered some form of convent and trained to become a monk. 

When he was about 13, he left there and wound up in Sudan, a country at that time at war with itself. 

He didn’t go into details, but said it was horrible. 

I shudder to think of what this guy’s definition of horrible is. He then had to get out of there and wound up in Libya. 

There he was arrested as an illegal immigrant and put in prison. 

His job was to find someone who would front up with US$10,000 to secure his release. 

This was an impossible task for someone with no family and nothing to his name. 

To encourage him to find a solution to this impossible task, the authorities gave him three months to find the cash, or he would be executed. 

They gave him access to the internet and, getting perilously close to the three-month timeline, he found a pastor from that convent long ago in Ethiopia who had travelled to the West and was in a position, with the aid of a parish, to help. 

My driver then found himself in Egypt where he was kept alive by the kindness of others because, as an illegal immigrant, he couldn’t work.

Eventually, he found another friend from the convent who sponsored him to come to Auckland. 

He found love there but that went disastrously wrong, so he packed his bags one night and moved to Wellington. 

And here’s the thing. He was smiling as he told his heartbreaking story. 

His face was alive with happiness as he recounted his horrors because of where he is now and the life he now leads. 

He said Wellington and New Zealand are paradise, because they are peaceful.

I thought of this man as I stood grinning like a five-year-old at the Blossom Festival fireworks on Friday night. 

I was surrounded by children squealing with delight at the booms and flashes and thought of those little ones around the world who will right now be screaming in terror from similar sights and sounds in places like Gaza, Ukraine, Lebanon and others. 

Children who, by the lottery of life, would be cowering from deadly shell-fire now marvelling at pyrotechnics.

I have noticed in myself over the last eight years of being mayor that I have become less tolerant, possibly even intolerant, of people who come to me with what they think are big issues but in the scheme of things, just simply don’t matter. 

The common complaint of too many road cones being used jumps to mind, or this week a group complaining about a tiny detail in a civic plan that didn’t meet their approval. 

These people need to get some perspective about just how incredibly lucky, how unbelievably blessed we are to live in this place, and at this time. 

Of all the times in history and all the places in the world, we are amongst the most fortunate people to ever have lived and to right now be in Central Otago, Aotearoa, New Zealand. 

I tell myself that every day. It seems tremendously ungrateful to me not to.