I was busy working on another song when this irreverent little songling arrived in my mind and refused to be ignored. I had no choice, I had to write it down in the margins. And so, Thinking of a Starfish was born…
Please enjoy this week’s episode of Getting Naked With Nate and, if you anything I’ve said moves you, leave thoughts, questions and feedback in the comments below. Hearing from you is my second favourite thing about this whole podcast!
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“Once, on ancient Earth, there was a human boy walking along a beach. There had just been a storm, and starfish had been scattered along the sands. The boy knew the fish would die, so he began to fling the fish to the sea. But every time he threw a starfish, another would wash ashore. “An old Earth man happened along and saw what the child was doing. He called out, ‘Boy, what are you doing?’ ” ‘Saving the starfish!’ replied the boy. ” ‘But your attempts are useless, child! Every time you save one, another one returns, often the same one! You can’t save them all, so why bother trying? Why does it matter, anyway?’ called the old man. “The boy thought about this for a while, a starfish in his hand; he answered, “Well, it matters to this one.” And then he flung the starfish into the welcoming sea.”
― Loren Eiseley, The Star Thrower
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Links and Things
- Books
- Buy Loren Eiseley’s book: The Star Thrower
- Movies
- Watch this documentary: How to let go of the world and love the things that climate can’t change
- Links
- Download this song plus heaps of other music when you become a patron
- Pay What You Want for this song here
- Wikipedia article about Loren Eiseley’s version of the story
Thanks for being my starfish superhero!
your troubadour
Nate
PS: Thanks for listening, and remember to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes if you think these ideas should reach more people (also you’ll be notified about new episodes)
Featured image by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
Loved the podcast, Nate. As for thoughts, what popped into my head is how people use “pyramid schemes” for nefarious ends, and how mathematically it can be shown that you’ll quickly run out of people on the planet. I then thought of the “pay it forward” story, and imagined how beautiful it would be to have a pyramid scheme of being kind and doing something nice for someone else. Soon enough, we would run out of humans who are not being kind and doing nice things for others.
In that light, I would like to share a specific story that is quite literally happening right now. I decided to buy an extra ticket to an Ivan Coyote show and give it away to someone who needs it, perhaps a stranger. A woman on twitter mentioned that she didn’t need the ticket, because she already had a ticket, but appreciated what I was doing. She was flying in from 1500 km away, and her first time visiting my province (in Canada). It turns out her seat will be right next to ours. We’re now planning a tour of our city for her.
Once again, awesome!
I write a blog post for a small encouragement website called teamwalkandtalk.com and someone left a comment on yesterday’s blog post and I was so excited, so that’s my #starfishsuperhero moment!!
As always, keep up your #starfishsuperhero moment because you do make a difference in my life!!!
Ah, I love those moments! Thanks for sharing!