You people saving whales,
giving your thanks to our seas;
my respect to the ones in the forest,
standing up for our old trees.
Them giving food to the hungry,
giving hope to the needy,
giving life to a baby,
giving care for free;
there is freedom around us,
we have everything we need,
I will care for you,
because you care for me.
We all have opinions,
some of them get through,
but there's better people,
with more good to do.
What I have could be a message,
or just some words from my heart,
my respect to the ones making changes,
for other lives they'll give their own.
- Better People, Xavier Rudd
I watched this film last night. It actually won the Best Documentary Feature for 2009 at the Oscars, but I had not heard about it until it was shown on TV this evening. It's certainly clear why the film was honoured, The Cove is quite simply courageous film making at its best; and the message it carries is hauntingly pierce.
About the annual dolphin slaughter that takes place in a hidden cove at Taiji, Japan; the film contains some of the most distressing scenes I have seen. I couldn't stop the tears from falling, and I couldn't believe that we, collectively, allow this happen - not just once - but annually. It made me feel sick.
That is the problem, you see. Now I have seen this, I am no longer ignorant. Up until 2 hours ago I didn't know this took place. I could be excused in ignorance. But now I know, if I do nothing, then it becomes a choice; and if I choose to do nothing, then I become complicit in allowing it to continue.
But what can I do? What can one person do which would make a significant difference? Particularly one little me? Often these questions overwhelm me and I allow myself to scurry back to my safe warm existance with a false sense of acceptance. I convince myself, by cataloguing all the reasons why I couldn't do anything, then it was ok to do nothing. After all, I don't have a huge disposable income to donate, I suck at fundraising, hell I don't even have that many friends on Facebook!
Excuses! Let's face it, I was just making it easy for myself. Sure, they are all truths, but maybe I should be looking at what I can do instead of what I can't. Besides, it doesn't matter if what I do doesn't make a visible difference, because ultimately it is simply a question of doing something or doing nothing; the rest is rightly up to something a lot bigger than my human self.
Well I can't do nothing, so I'm going to do something, and for the first time ever I mass invited my small group of Facebook buddies to "join this cause". I tweeted my kind handful of followers. And yes, I'm blogging it here. Sure, if I start thinking about what impact my teeny tiny speck of dust in the world of social networking can have, I wouldn't bother. But it's not about that. It's about doing something. Anything.