Monday 3rd July, 2023
I love the story of the Starfish, you might have heard it:
Early one morning an old man was walking along a beach when he saw thousands of starfish lying on the sand, and a boy, picking them up, one by one and throwing them into the ocean.
“What are you doing?” asked the old man. The boy replied “The tide has washed all these starfish onto the beach, if they are still out of the water when the sun is high in the sky later, they will burn and die”
The old man said “but there’s thousands of them, you can’t possibly hope to make a difference” Slowly the boy bent down, gently picked up a starfish and threw it into the sea. With a smile he said “I did to that one”
When we look around at the state of the world, at the battles we’re fighting, it can be easy to become overwhelmed, to feel small and powerless, to wonder if there’s any point trying, or to put too much pressure on ourselves to do everything.
But you don’t have to change the world, you only need to change your little corner of the world. You can only do what you can do, and the world only needs you to do what you can do.
Imagine if everyone, the whole human collective of which you are a part, set about changing one teeny tiny patch of this world, set about making life better for one other human. Wouldn’t that be wonderful.
And maybe, as you set about making that little patch of earth you inhabit a little more beautiful, you’ll encourage someone else to do the same.
