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The Great Little

Small efforts are the hinges upon which the doors of success turn. Wildlife is all around us, but it is little known and unexplored.

We often don’t make the association between the beautiful wildflowers that erupt among us from what we perceive as weeds in our garden. We should, because to do otherwise would be like admiring butterflies and birds, but hating caterpillars and spiders. Life squeezing up through cracks in the sidewalks and paving. A small insignificant seed that blows from somewhere to find a firm foothold on our manmade facade is a mini eco-system.

Because we live in a consumer economy where the cash value of things has become their primary value, it is difficult to imagine another mode of thought. The goal is security, to be part of this big powerful machine, to be protected by it and to feel stronger. It is not easy to present to ourselves a whole, that has not been made up by so many changes and contrasts. The environment is merely a reflection of what is in us and if the environment is to change, we must change. Are we leaving behind us a success of resonant creativity or impoverishment and decline?

As government endorsements and private funds towards a greener future diminish and costs increase, we perceive our own small efforts towards conserving nature as of diminishing importance and our own endeavours as negligible. It is with this loss of hope in a sceptical age that we underestimate and devalue our own small contributions.

Every small effort that is made towards a greener future is provisional. In cultivating the successful garden of life, we should handle with the utmost of care the small and seemingly insignificant. Even so called “weeds” need to flourish.

Sincerely,

Helena Fourie Groenewald