23/11/2020
It can be overwhelming; seeing how our planet is suffering. I understand that it can feel hopeless at times, that is seems that nothing you can do will make that much of a difference.
I spent last weekend picking up nurdles* on Muizenberg beach and a man came up to me and said what I was doing was pointless, it would take years to pick them all up.
I felt this sense of hopelessness but then I remembered a story, by Peter Straube, that I had been told as a child.
You may have heard this one:
Once upon a time, there was an old man who used to walk on the beach every morning. ☀️
Early one morning, he was walking along the shore after a big storm had passed ⛈ and found the beach littered with starfish.
Off in the distance, the old man noticed a small boy approaching. As the boy walked, the man could see that he was occasionally bending down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea. The boy came closer still and the man called out, “Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?”
The young boy paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,” the youth replied. “When the sun gets high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.”
The old man replied, “But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.”
The boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean.
Then he turned, smiled and said, “It made a difference to that one!”
I want to tell you that what you do, however small or large, it makes a difference!
*Nurdles are tiny beads of virgin plastic that are melted down and injection moulded to make a variety of new plastic products. They easily make their way into the food chain when fish and other filter-feeding marine creatures mistake them for eggs and miniature jellyfish 🐙
“We need YOUR help to clean up the nurdles and quantify how bad this pollution event is! Please go down to your local beach and collect as many nurdles as you can!” — a call to action from
