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Starfish in the Short Run
Starfish
Short Run in the By Harvey W. Austin, MD
Bottom line, I am a predicamentalist. (Pree dick uh ment uh list — It’s got a rhythm to it.)
By this, I mean, in contrast to most people’s belief that we have a worldwide set of problems to be solved, I believe we now live within a worldwide predicament. A predicament, by my definition, has no solution. It simply is. And our worldwide predicament is a big IS, indeed. This (likely human engineered) flu-like bug is very real and threatens to result in the extermination of many, many humans.
Being an either/or kind of guy, I had assumed that if I, as an individual… or even as part of a group … couldn’t solve some big problem, there was no point to trying.
I would do nothing.
Unconsciously, I assumed I would simply go on living my life in in a slowly diminishing ‘business-as-usual’ kind of way. At the same time, consciously, I would remain joyful, enthusiastic and saying ‘yes’ to whatever showed up. I would do only what truly pleased me to do.
If it pleased me to write of the predicament, I would do that. And I have.
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Also, I have advocated that others do what they love doing. And if it is being an activist, by all means do that. But don’t do it out of a sense of obligation. And don’t do it out of a sense that it will “make a difference”. I often speak my favorite metaphor,
“If you say it is yours to re-arrange the deck chairs of the Titanic … re-arrange the heck out of them!” It was OK for me to tell others that. But I didn’t always self-apply it. Until I read a long-forgotten piece that abruptly opened up a third possibility.
At the beach, the boy picked up tide-stranded starfish, one by one, and threw each back into the ocean.
His mother says to him, “You know, sweetheart, in the long run, that’s not really going to make any difference”.
Ah, a third path: The Path of Short Run.
Or, perhaps, the Path of the StarfishThrower. Maybe I will make that gesture!
Like that child, I find myself looking at what is in front of me that might make a • perhaps relieving a little suffering here, or a worry there • listening to one person in despair • giving ten bucks here, twenty there to support others who support others • perhaps something as small as carrying out the trash without being asked • smoothing her pillow • giving mindful attention
This seems like the path of kindness, the path of compassion, doesn’t it? Maybe we could even think of it as the Elder path. Where the wise ones walk day to day, treading lightly.
Starfish-boy has gotten to me. In a sense, I am starfish-boy. The short run does matter while we’re here.
Perhaps you, with me, might also take the path of the Starfish-Thrower?
