One Small Hope Drop: Inspired by Wangari Maathai and the Hummingbird, by Nadia Daniels-Moehle. 2019. Ink on paper.
Growing up in this overbearing and constantly shifting world, I’ve somehow been able to retain hope. Not a complacent hope, the kind that waits for the future to take care of things. But the kind of hope that moves towards the future, a simple kind of hope, a hope in the now.
In the grand scheme of things, we are small creatures. In the grand scheme of things, our individual acts might not amount to much. This smallness is, in fact, where my hope comes from: if we can do the best we can in the now, no matter how small, that is the hope for the future. And it’s achievable.
Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai instilled this simple hope in me with the story of a hummingbird.
When I was little, I marveled at the hummingbird, its courage uplifting. As I grew up, as I grow up, I realized that it takes courage to act and it takes even more courage to hope, and we can find this courage one task, one drop of water at a time.
In the words of Wangari herself:
“And that to me is what all of us should do. We should always be like a hummingbird. I may be insignificant, but I certainly don’t want to be like the animals watching the planet goes down the drain. I will be a hummingbird, I will do the best I can.”
227 days done, 138 to go.