Over the summer, I heard the parable of the hummingbird, a story popularized by environmental and political activist Wangari Maathai. In the version told in the Shipibo tradition, there’s a huge forest fire, and almost all the animals feel helpless watching their homes burn down. The only animal that doesn’t get paralyzed is the hummingbird, who holds a few drops of water in its beak at a time. It flies back and forth and back and forth, adding its small beak’s worth of water as quickly as it can.
The jaguars and other creatures in the forest don’t understand why the hummingbird would bother doing this. “Your beak is so tiny,” they say. “You are so weak. You’re not going to put the fire out.” The hummingbird is unbothered by their statements. “I’m just doing what I can,” it says before continuing to store more water. Eventually, the gods hear of the hummingbird’s efforts and are moved by its efforts. They send a huge storm down over the forest, and the fire gets put out.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this story recently. Asking myself “What can I do right now?” or “what are all the options here, and have I yet to exhaust them?” has greatly reduced my anxiety. It allows me to cut through my rabbit hole of worries about all the ways I might fuck up — What if I can’t figure out renter’s insurance and then can’t get my leased approved and become homeless forever? What if I ask Emily to give feedback on my essay, and she says no, and then my Substack never gets more readers? What if I don’t figure out this code, and then all the people at my workplace are mad at me, and then I get fired and am unemployable? — and focus on the actually important question: what can I do right now?
Beyond helping with anxiety and helping mitigate unnecessary despair, I think the mindset of the hummingbird allows us to live in the world we wish to see. (Blah blah blah are you gonna quote Gandhi now Valerie?) It’s incredibly easy to shit on small efforts — What do you mean, you’re going to post two Tiktoks a day? Why? Being a creator isn’t scalable! — and incredibly difficult to consistently stick to small efforts.
I think about this in the context of one of my own side goals, Being a Social Person and Hosting Cool Events and Actually Interacting with Other Human Beings TM. In an ideal life, I’d host cheese tastings and organ eating meetings once a week, but currently I’ll be lucky to host small scale meetups once every two months. It’s not what I want, but I’m doing what I can.
Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something.