My tattoo is called Marley and Moana. I didn’t plan to become the kind of man who tells his life story with ink.
For most of my teens and early adult years, I reckoned stories were something you earned only after you’d won. You kept your head down, you worked, you built, you proved yourself, and one day—if you were lucky—you’d look back and see a neat line of progress.
Then my first business went under, and my tidy line snapped. It wasn’t a dramatic Hollywood collapse. No slow-motion scenes, no orchestral music, just a steady tightening of reality until there was nowhere left to breathe.
I remember the moment my body understood before my mind did: a cold rush through my arms, a hard swallow, the sensation of standing on a floor that had stopped being solid. I’d been making ‘relatively good decisions’ right up until the day those decisions stopped working. That’s what shook me most. Not the loss itself, but the realisation that doing everything ‘right’ didn’t guarantee anything.
After the failure came the searching. It wasn’t spiritual at first. It was more like hunger to understand. Something in me prowled around my own life, sniffing the corners, looking for what I’d missed. I tried to fix it the way I knew how: a deep dive into all things mystical, psychological and philosophical. But the harder I grabbed, the more I knew that there was so much I misunderstood.
Eventually, stillness. And that’s when it happened—the shift I still struggle to explain without making it sound like a slogan. It felt like waking up in a room I’d been living in for years, suddenly noticing the window had always been open. I saw my own patterns with strange clarity. I noticed how often I’d been trying to force life to behave like a spreadsheet. I saw my fear dressed up as ambition, my insecurity dressed up as a work ethic.
I didn’t become a saint. I just became… aligned. For a while, everything flowed. I moved with a kind of ease I’d never had before. Decisions came cleanly. I could feel when something was right, and I could feel when it wasn’t, even if it looked good on paper. I didn’t have to bulldoze my way forward. I could sense the current and just ride it.
That was self-realisation for me: not some fireworks moment, more like remembering my own name after years of answering to other people’s expectations.
Then life did what life does. It gave me success. I built again. I entered the corporate world and did well—better than well. I learnt the language of meetings and metrics. I became valuable, reliable, and respected. I was good at it. That’s the dangerous part: it’s easier to fall asleep when you’re comfortable.
Over time, the alignment faded. Not vanished. Not lost. Just… quieter. Like the tide going out. The water was still there, somewhere, but it was no longer lapping at my feet. I could still function, still achieve, still deliver. I was self-actualised, competent, ‘successful’, all the external proof you could ask for. But inside, something felt strangely muted, as if I were watching my own life through glass.
I told myself it was normal. That this was adulthood. That the price of stability was a bit of dullness. But the truth was simpler: I was drifting. I hadn’t fallen off the path. I’d just stopped listening to the part of me that knew when the path had become too narrow.
By the time I turned 52, I was knackered from “being admired”living the dream” for a life that no longer felt like mine. So I did something people still struggle to understand. I opted out.
I sold everything. I cashed in shares. I walked away from the dream life others could see, because I couldn’t feel it anymore. It wasn’t a breakdown. It was a decision to stop pretending.
My wife, Eltje, did the same. She was cut from the same cloth. We stood for each other in our decision the way a good anchor stands: quietly, without drama, without trying to be the sea. We weren’t running away. We were answering something that’d been calling for years.
We started exploring South Pacific island states, thinking about starting a business —yes —but really, if I’m honest, looking for a place where I could hear ourselves again.
Some places were beautiful in the way postcards are beautiful. They smiled at us, offered us sunsets, and offered us the illusion that a change of scenery could solve everything. But I’d learnt to distrust quick comfort. Comfort can be a mask.
Then we reached Rarotonga. I still remember stepping out and feeling something settle in my chest, as if a part of me that had been braced for impact finally unclenched. The air was warm and alive. The ocean—Moana—wasn’t a backdrop. It was a presence. And the mountains rose from the centre of the island like green shoulders holding up the sky.
It didn’t feel like an escape. It felt like recognition.
We stayed. Four years. Long enough for the island to stop being an adventure and start being a teacher.
On Rarotonga, time behaved differently. It didn’t rush. It didn’t nag. It moved in cycles—tides, seasons, the steady return of the same birds across the same stretch of sky. The days weren’t empty, but they weren’t stuffed either. They had space.
And in that space, the stories inside me started to surface.
Not just the heroic ones. The petty ones. The afraid ones. The moments I’d dressed up as ‘professionalism’ when they were really just fear of not being enough. The moments I’d tended towards status over truth. The little betrayals of self that add up over decades.
It was on that island that I felt compelled to mark my life story in ink. I’d never had the urge before. Not once. Tattoos had always seemed like something other people did. People with a certain attitude, or a certain need to be seen. I didn’t judge it; it just wasn’t for me.
But the urge arrived anyway, and it wasn’t about being seen. It was about being true.
I wanted my skin to carry a map of what I’d lived and what I’d learnt. I wanted something that would remind me—not when life was easy, but when it was hard—who I was and what mattered.
That’s how Marley came into my life.
Marley is the manta ray—whai—the main symbol, the kaitiaki, the guardian that carries the whole story. I didn’t choose him because he looked impressive. I chose him because of the way he moves: wide and calm, powerful without frenzy. A manta doesn’t fight the ocean. It reads it. It glides through it with a kind of strength that doesn’t need to prove anything.
When I first sat down with the artist, Tama, he was French Polynesian. He wasn’t trying to sell me mystique. He listened, asked questions, and watched how I spoke when I wasn’t rehearsing. Then he started to draw, freehand.
The first needle touch felt like a gate opening. Not a painful one—though it bloody hurt—but a meaningful one. Like stepping across a threshold and knowing you can’t pretend you’re still on the other side.
Marley spread across my right shoulder, onto my chest, down my arm, and back across my upper back. The patterns inside him were intricate, layered like waves within waves.
There were repeating motifs—braid patterns, people patterns, spearheads, shark teeth. I didn’t understand every line on the first day. I didn’t need to. I understood the direction.
The braid—like a plait—spoke to connection, partnership, the binding of lives. That was Eltje and me: deeply connected, woven together with aroha—love that actually does something, love that holds.
The people patterns carried whānau and community. I’ve never been a solo hero, no matter how much my ego once wanted the story to read that way. There were always hands behind me, voices beside me, teachers and friends and family—some close, some distant—who shaped me.
The spearheads were about courage and direction. Not aggression. Not dominance. The kind of courage that faces a truth you’d rather avoid, the kind that chooses the difficult right over the easy applause.
The shark teeth—niho—were a source of protection and resilience. Boundaries. A reminder that softness doesn’t mean letting everything in. The ocean is generous, but it is not careless.
Within Marley’s body, the tiki appeared: a watchful presence, ancestral in feel, protective and alert. The tiki wasn’t there to frighten anyone. It was there to remind me that I’m accountable to something deeper than my current mood.
Then there was the turtle.
The turtle sits on my shoulder, too, and on its back is a heart. I wanted that heart there because it’s too easy to turn endurance into hardness. It’s too easy to survive and forget to love.
The turtle teaches a different lesson. It carries home within itself. It moves for a long time. It crosses oceans without panic. The heart says: love is not a side note; it is part of the structure. Family structure and love of one’s kids. It’s aroha as armour and compass.
Somewhere in the flow of the design, the dolphin appears, tied to Marley’s tail. The dolphin is guidance and companionship, a playful intelligence that knows how to travel without grinding the soul down. For years, I’d made travel and progress feel heavy. The dolphin reminded me that movement can be joyful, too. It highlighets the playful nature I carry with me.
On my back lives the squid—left flipped, like a shadow story. The squid is the deep mind. Adaptation. Intelligence under pressure. The part of me that learnt to disappear when things got scary, then reappear when it was safe. It’s not a judgment; it’s a truth. Squid ink is both defence and story: a cloud that hides you whilst you escape, but also a stain that proves you were there.
The fishhook also sits back there, flipped as well. The hook is provisioning, voyage, the audacity to pull something new from the sea. For me, it symbolised the moment I stopped living as if the world was fixed. I wasn’t trapped in one identity. I wasn’t required to finish the same story I’d started.
The whale tail is set within Marley’s right flipper. Whales travel vast distances and return. They carry memory. Their tail is propulsion and power, but it’s also a sign of depth. It reminds me that real strength isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s the ability to keep moving with steadiness when everything around you is chaotic.
The birds—manu—appeared too. Birds are perspective. They rise above the foam and see the pattern. When I’m lost in detail—emails, decisions, fears—birds remind me to lift my gaze. To ask: what’s the bigger story here? What’s the longer arc? I so love the sounds of birds. Gives me deep sense of connection and peace.
The black pearl sits as a symbol of wisdom formed by irritation and pressure. A pearl begins as a problem. Something foreign. Something that shouldn’t be there. Then time does its work, layer after layer, turning discomfort into beauty.
My early business failure was an irritation. So was the challenges in my corporate years. So was the moment I realised I’d built a life I didn’t want to live. But those irritations shaped me. They forced me to be honest. They formed a kind of wisdom I wouldn’t have chosen, but wouldn’t trade now that I have it.
Near the pearl is the seashell. The shell is listening. It’s the way the ocean taught me to be quiet enough to hear what was true. On the island, I learnt that not every answer comes from thinking harder. Some answers come from settling, from paying attention, from listening with something deeper than the mind.
So Marley was the first chapter of Ink: the guardian laid down across the shoulder, back, arm and chest. But tattoos, like lives, don’t always arrive all at once.
Over the years in the Cook Islands, another artist, Marven, inked the great wave across my chest: ngaru. Rainiera, the third artist ,added finer details around the wave and the gecko, like footnotes and flourishes, as if life keeps adding meaning to the same events.
The wave became the second anchor of my story. It’s bold, heavy, and deliberate. It curls inward, a spiral of motion that feels like returning. I’ve learnt that life isn’t a straight line. It is seasons. It’s one large upward spiral. It is falling out of alignment and finding your way back, again and again, each time with a slightly different understanding.
That’s the koru in spirit: the spiral that returns to origin without repeating it exactly. The idea that you can circle back and still be moving forward.
Inside the wave, the mountains appear. That’s Rarotonga in my chest. The reminder that stability can live inside motion. That you can be rooted and still explore. That land and sea are not enemies; they are part of the same breath.
And in the wave is the sun—rā—a light held within movement. I love that placement. The sun isn’t sitting above the wave like a perfect symbol of control. It’s held by the wave. That’s how life feels: clarity isn’t something you own forever. It’s something you carry through change, if you remember where your centre is.
The circles and dots around the design became time, stars, islands, and days. They’re the small units of life you forget to respect until you realise a lifetime is nothing but those small units, stacked.
There’s a star/flower motif too—beauty and guidance. A compass that doesn’t shout. Just a point of light, saying, quietly, keep going.
The gecko—mokomoko—appears as a smaller, sharper symbol. Geckos live on thresholds: walls, corners, the edges. They remind me to watch what I used to ignore. The small signals. The quiet discomfort. The subtle signs that I’m slipping back into old patterns.
If Marley is my guardian in the open sea, the gecko is my messenger in the home. The one who taps gently and says: ‘Pay attention. This matters.’
Then there are the flax leaves. Flax speaks to weaving, continuity, renewal. It’s the reminder that a good life is not just a series of bold decisions. It’s also the daily act of weaving the right things together: work and rest, ambition and humility, solitude and connection, dream and discipline.
The warrior sits in the design too. I don’t see him as a fighter. I see him as the part of me that stands firm without becoming rigid. The part that can hold a line without making enemies. The part that can say no without needing to prove a thing.
And the windsurfer and camera—those modern symbols—are my way of admitting something important: the story didn’t stop being sacred when it became contemporary.
The windsurfer is voyaging in a modern form, riding wind and water with skill rather than force. It’s a reminder that exploration is a living practice, not a museum piece.
The camera is a witness. A way of recording, of honouring what I learnt, of capturing moments not to show off, but to create art. On the island, I started to see my own life as material—raw, flawed, valuable. Something worth holding with care.
Some people call it aumakua—an ancestral guardian. Others would say kaitiaki. Different parts of the ocean family have different words, but the feeling is the same: you are not alone in the deeper sense. You are watched over—not controlled, not rescued from your own lessons, but accompanied.
That’s Marley, ultimately.
When I look at the manta on my shoulder, I remember the first time life cracked me open, and the light came in. I remember how alignment feels: not as constant bliss, but as integrity. The ability to live without constantly negotiating with myself.
When I look at the wave on my chest, I remember the years when I surfed one after the other in my quest for self-improvemnt, and how easy it is to confuse achievement with truth. The wave reminds me that life moves, and I can either fight it and exhaust myself, or learn to flow with it and stay centred.
Sometimes I stand in front of the mirror, and I don’t think about ‘meaning’ at all. I simply see the story as a whole: the guardian across my shoulder, the journey down my arm, the sea curling over my chest, the deep symbols on my back. It reads as my life reads: not linear, but coherent.
And on difficult days—days when the old habits creep back in, when I doubt the next step, when I start to plan my way out of a feeling instead of listening to it—I touch the ink lightly, and I remember:
I have already crossed the vast ocean once. I can cross again.
Because the point was never to arrive at a safe place and stay there forever. The point was to keep returning to myself—like the koru, spiralling, learning, rising without pretending I won’t ever dip again.
The tattoo doesn’t promise a perfect life. It promises an honest one.
It tells me that love is not a reward for success, it’s the way through the sea. That courage isn’t loud, it’s consistent. That protection isn’t armour you wear to avoid living, it’s boundaries that let you live well. That wisdom is often made from irritations you never asked for. That perspective matters. That family matters. That community matters. That memory matters. That play matters.
It tells me that the ocean is not my enemy. It’s my teacher.
And when I feel the old restlessness rise—the urge to control, to resist, to attach to my expectations—I picture Marley moving through the moana with those wide, calm wings, and I let my breath slow. I let the wave inside me do what waves do. I let the sun sit where it belongs: in the centre of motion.
Then I take the next small step.
Not because it’s dramatic.
Because it’s true.
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