I’m just wondering how many of you who’ve been overseas these past couple of weeks, maybe for school holidays or just a winter escape, whether you’ve come back refreshed and feeling better.

Was it the elixir you needed? Did it revitalize your soul? Has it washed away the pall of gloom over most of us at the moment?

I ask because I’ve heard mixed reports. Some say it was everything they needed and just the serotonin boost they’d been missing. Others say it was almost too much, because coming back to cold and wintry old NZ has been a bit of a down buzz and anticlimactic.

Others say it’s still a bit of a cluster travelling internationally at the moment, because although they’re not doing masks and they’re over the Covid obsession, there’s still a lack of resources, staff, the airports are chaotic, it’s a gamble whether or not your bags turn up and there are too many queues.

The experience is not quite back to its heyday.

So as someone who’s yet to leave the border, I’m curious. Because I feel like what we all need right now is some hope.

Some optimism, some light relief. We need to exhale. The angst and uncertainty and stress of the past two years is weighing heavily on everyone, being shut up and shut in feels claustrophobic, so does getting out help?

Because, my hope is that that’s not the only elixir. We shouldn’t need to leave our own country to lift the malaise, and yet I’m not sure how else we do it. Do we just have to head offshore for a reset and an attitude adjustment? Be around happy people for a while and see what that feels like?

My son who’s bailed off overseas says it’s a seismic shift in mood to be around happy people who’re not bogged down with fear and anxiety. He says it’s intoxicating and puts into perspective just how much of a funk NZ is in.

And as parents we do try to encourage our kids to chase their dreams don’t we and find enjoyment in life and always look for silver linings. But what do we do when increasingly their answer is – well I need to leave New Zealand in order to do that.

Kids are smart, they’re not blind. They see the rise in crime, the senseless violence, the looseness of a society unplugged. They see how many kids are not turning up to school anymore. Less than half by the way, if you missed those truancy stats, less than half of students are showing up regularly for school these days. It’s an appalling stat.

But kids are also cognisant of how much change there is going on around them. They see the social engineering, they feel the creep of change into their curriculums, and they see where it’s going.

They know mediocrity’s getting rewarded over and above achievement. They see diversity being played around like a political football. In fact success is less likely to be rewarded these days, the intensity of division and tribalism seems to have Tall Poppy syndrome at a peak.

So what do we do to turn this ship around? Because my concern is that we’ve gone so far down this doom and gloom rabbit hole, we’ve lost sight of how to get out.