Be the Hummingbird

Believe the magic you make matters

Photo by Jeremy Hynes on Unsplash

Friends, it’s been an unbelievably heavy week for the world, and an incredibly tough week for me personally. I hope that you are taking good care of yourself, and of each other, wherever you may be. I’m doing my best to catch my breath and fill my tender heart with scraps of joy and connection wherever I can find them, in hopes of grounding myself more deeply in the present moment, and ultimately, being of more meaningful service to my loved ones, my circles of impact, and ultimately, the global community, in whatever small ways I can.

In the spirit of seeking the small things we can do to bring healing to ourselves, our communities, and the world, I am sharing a chapter from my book, The Perpetual Visitor: A Field Guide for Everyday Artists in this week’s newsletter. This chapter was inspired by the late remarkable Kenyan environmentalist and women’s rights activist, Wangari Maathai, and her brilliant story of the hummingbird. In this tale, Maathai encourages us to, when faced with impossible circumstances, not give up on the small but infinitely potent powers that we each possess to affect change in the world. This parable kindled my heart when I first heard it in 2011, and I hope it alights in yours, as well.

As always, I’d love to hear if anything feels particularly resonant for you, and please take tender care of your heart during these troubling times. I’ll look forward to sending you some more mail next week!

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"I will be a hummingbird; I will do the best I can." 

~Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai, the late environmental and women's rights activist from Kenya who spent her life advocating for change, became the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.  As the founder of the Green Belt Movement, Maathai inspired men and women alike across Kenya to plant millions of trees and build a grassroots movement literally from the ground up. 

While studying for my graduate degree in Theatre Education at Emerson College in 2011, I took a Human Rights in Theatre course.  For one of our first assignments, we had to choose an activist to research and present to the rest of the class. I initially chose Wangari Maathai because she was a women’s rights activist, but the more I learned about her and her belief in our ability as human beings to engage in small acts of courage and activism that have enormous ripple effects on the world around us, the more I fell in love with her spirit and mission. 

In my research online, I came across Maathai’s telling of the story of the hummingbird. This discovery was well timed for me. Like many students, I felt like I was pushing myself to go harder, to do more, and to be more creative. At the same time, I was not giving myself enough credit for the things I was already doing. I was resentful of my lack of infinite energy and frustrated that I wanted to do so much more than I was doing but was only one person doing the best she could. This cycle felt like a loop that I knew was unhealthy but that I also didn’t know how to escape from. 

In the film Dirt! The Movie, Wangari Maathai tells the story of the hummingbird:

“We are constantly being bombarded by problems that we face and sometimes we can get completely overwhelmed.

The story of the hummingbird is about this huge forest being consumed by a fire.

All the animals in the forest come out and they are transfixed as they watch the forest burning and they feel very overwhelmed, very powerless, except this little hummingbird. It says, ‘I’m going to do something about the fire!’ So it flies to the nearest stream and takes a drop of water. It puts it on the fire, and goes up and down, up and down, up and down, as fast as it can.

In the meantime all the other animals, much bigger animals like the elephant with a big trunk that could bring much more water, they are standing there helpless. And they are saying to the hummingbird, ‘What do you think you can do? You are too little. This fire is too big. Your wings are too little and your beak is so small that you can only bring a small drop of water at a time.’

But as they continue to discourage it, it turns to them without wasting any time and it tells them, ‘I am doing the best I can.’

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.”

I felt like Maathai was speaking right to my heart. I have often beat myself up because of my struggle to believe that what I am doing is enough and that it matters. The story of the hummingbird made me realize that I wasn’t alone in this belief; don’t we all have a tendency to be too hard on ourselves and to give ourselves too little credit for the amazing acts of compassion, creativity, and kindness we are doing every single day? I am not alone in this feeling, and neither are you.

By the same token, if the hummingbird could make a difference one drop at a time, why couldn’t I? Why can’t you? We can all do our best, and in fact, that is all we can do. It’s all we have control over. How could it even be possible to do more than our best? Notice that Maathai tells us us to do the best we can, not the best that has ever been done by anybody, anywhere. This is a small shift in semantics, but a seismic shift in how we can learn to approach our creative work in the world. 

I can choose to look at the things I have made through two different lenses: recognition and impact. It’s true that no play I have ever written has been recognized as Best Play at the Tony Awards.