I'm going to start this magazine with a personal article about a story my father told me. My dad himself is not an activist, but the story that he told me has an activist feel to it. The funny thing about this story is he told it to me after saying that being vegetarian was a pointless choice to save animals. After the end of it I told him the story was more in my favor. He just laughed and said "I know." The story goes like so...
There is a beach in South America that millions of starfish wash up on the beach from the high tide every fall. The tide rolls out so quickly that 90% of the starfish are left out to dry out on the beach. From the heat and lack of water they are left to die. One man goes out onto this beach every day and throws the starfish one by one back out into the sea. He does this every day till the last day of fall. The last day another man walks onto this beach and yells at the man throwing "Why are you doing that?"
The man throwing the starfish into turns and says "What?"
The other says "Look around you. There are thousands maybe millions of starfish wiped out onto this beach. What do you think throwing maybe only a few hundred into the sea makes a difference, when all the others will die?"
The man throwing the starfish picks up one and throws it like a frisbee out into the sea. As he does this, he points out to where it lands, far beyond the strength of any tide and says "Made a difference for that one."
The man picks up another, looks at the other man, and does the same thing to another starfish. "Made a difference for that one."
I'm not sure if you have heard this story. But the point is that it doesn't take that much to make a difference, even if it just a small one.
So I say we all go to this beach and start throwing these starfish back. Because as one we make a small difference, but little by little as more people come to help, we can change the world.
-Taylor Duffus
See, I like this story a lot. I've been vegan for about two and a half years now and I'm faced with the question of, "Do you really think you can make a difference?" or I am told, "You know you aren't effecting anything," and my response is basically the same idea, just not as eloquently put. It's like if a person is trapped under a car and the car needs to be picked up, if one person helps only so much can be done, but if people from the sidelines stop sitting and judging how one person can't pick up the car and they come and help out the person can be saved. Some people can be stubborn, but whatever the reason for not going vegan and helping out, it really doesn't matter; they aren't doing it and they're contributing to the problem. It's hard to convert people and you see people do it all aggressively and that's just not the way to do it. If you are preaching compassion, do it with compassion.
ReplyDeleteIt's all a mess
-Amir