I don't have a 4.0 GPA. My walls are covered with my own sketches instead of framed certificates. Instead of medals around my neck I have a pretty diamond necklace. I carry my laptop around more often than I carry sick children in refugee camps. I spend more money on food than on the Church. I am not a very special individual and I probably will never amount to anything much. I will never grace the cover of any magazine and will do more harm to this world than good. I was born insignificant to the greater good of humanity and will die the same way. For years I thought that this was the worst possible way to die but now I am completely and utterly happy with the idea that I am nothing and will be nothing.
Let's get to it:
We have been trained to believe that we are each unique individuals. We are '1 in a million!' which is most egregious quote to ever grace the planet because that means there are 7000 people exactly like you. As a child, our parents would tell us that we could be whatever we wanted to be. Astronaut? Sure, you can work for NASA, son. President? Go ahead and join the Model United Nations first. Astrophysicist? Chase after that dream, kid, nothing is impossible!
But we all have our limitations, and most of the time we just can't do certain things. I'm pretty sure after nearly failing pre-calc during high school that I could never be the next Stephen Hawking. I am also sure that I cannot be the next Michelangelo because my painting techniques rival that of a 10 year-old. I am exceptionally ordinary and throughout my life I have been striving to be the former. I thought I could be exceptional but I just haven't been trying hard enough.
I kept asking myself questions about my existence and why I was even born if I couldn't tell the difference between an A# and a Gb. I asked God why I was put on this planet if I am mentally incapable of finding the cure for cancer. I believed I was useless because I could not improve the world and I hated myself for being incompetent as a human being.
But as time went on and my life continued to be uneventful, I stumbled across two beautiful quotes that changed my outlook on life.
The first is in John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, a tale of two cancer-ridden teenagers.
We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can't stop pissing on fire hydrants...I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. She knows the truth; We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we're not likely to do either.
Here's the second story.
One day, a man was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer.
As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.
He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?"
The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean."
"I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.
To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."
Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"
At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, "It made a difference for that one."
All my life I believed that I could and should be saving all the starfish on the beach. I thought that my existence had a bigger purpose. I should not be sitting on my bed munching on Chinese prawn crackers because I should be out there changing the world. But even Mother Theresa did not touch a village in Guam, and Jane Goodall cannot rescue every orangutan in the world. They did as much as they could do, and that's enough. So why did I, a lowly teenager from Jakarta think that I could somehow revolutionize humanity?
Because I felt like I owed it to the world. She had birthed me and I felt like I should give back. I thought that by being the next Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King Jr. that I would die peacefully. But as I matured and realized that I am no more than a slab of meat just like 7 billion other people, my dreams of saving the world from chaos diminished.
Instead, I focused on saving a person. I focused on the idea that I might exist for the success of others. That I might be the one to give birth to the next Einstein. Or that I was born to stop one person from committing suicide. But if I don't, and I die a lonely death, I'm fine with that too.
I no longer strive to save the world, because I cannot throw all the starfish back into the ocean. But I now strive to save as many starfish as I can. I may not go far in life as to become the leader of Unicef, but not everyone can, and not everyone should. Sometimes all we can do is help the people around us and that's enough. Saving 5 million lives is magnificent, but so is saving the life of one person. Because the person we save might just be the person to save 10 million others.
If you can't feed a hundred people, then just feed one. -Mother Theresa
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