Open Letter to Pessimists

Dear Pessimist,

I know it’s not okay to push my ideas on other people. I know not everyone thinks the same, but lately, it’s been hard holding my tongue. Every once in awhile I run into you – in the street, at a party or in the gym and I’m amazed you’re still holding on. I wonder from where you get your energy.

This week, you came to visit me personally – Friday night, unannounced, over a few pints of beer and the bitter taste of our contrasting worldviews has not yet left me.

We started to talk about Haiti and you said, “Nobody can help Haiti. There is nothing we can do for them and just because I don’t want to travel down there and build a house for them doesn’t make me a bad person.”

“Well, you could donate money,” I suggested. And you jumped across the table – a much angrier reaction than I had anticipated.

“Haiti doesn’t need money,” you snarled. Well, maybe you didn’t snarl, but that’s the way I imagine it now. After it’s all said and done, I picture you more beast than human. “We can’t do anything for them. Their population is growing well beyond their resource capacity and it doesn’t help they live in an earthquake zone. The only thing we can do for Haiti is impose a one child rule like they did in China or other countries need to open their borders and accept all Haitian refugees. Money won’t do anything. Education will take too long – we don’t have time for that. Going down there personally just makes things worse. They need to move and they need to stop having babies. The money never gets where it’s supposed to go anyways.”

I attempted to politely disagree. “Regardless of the level of poverty, these are basic human rights. You can’t ask someone to stop having children and you can’t kick someone out of the only place they’ve ever known as home. You can educate them so that they realize on their own the benefits having less children and pursuing higher education, but you can’t force them to do so…Yes, that will take time, but it’s a better option than just flat out abandoning them and declaring all is lost. Why should we lose our empathy when objectives become too daunting?”

I was worried about my friend, who was sitting next to me. He wants to go work for an NGO in Africa this summer and there you were, offhandedly insulting his New Year’s resolution and damning the entire nation of Haiti. I didn’t want to lose him; I didn’t want to discourage him before he even began the long fight to do good. Thus, before you even had the time to make your rebuttal, I threw back my favorite piece of ammunition: starfish.

The starfish story is a story that was told to me by two of the most inspiring, little-known change-makers on earth, just after I went to the Third World for the first time and left feeling a little sick about the enormity of our “eradicate poverty” task. It goes a little something like this:

There once was a little boy who was walking along the beach when he came across thousands of starfish that had washed up on shore and were now dying under the hot, afternoon sun. Immediately, he began picking up the starfish and throwing them back into the water, one by one.

A short time later, an older man came by, saw what the little boy was doing, and shook his head. “Don’t waste your time,” he said. “There are so many starfish that you’re hardly going to make a difference.”

To which the little boy picked up another starfish, chucked it back in the water, and replied, “I bet you I made a difference to that one” and returned to his work.

You said nothing, but it was obvious you were not impressed. The bar grew quiet, our pints were empty, and we awkwardly turned to tamer conversation. I know I’ll run into you again, but it’s my hope that over the years it will be less and less because the story of the starfish will have spread and everyone will value the importance of making a difference to one just as much as to all of them.