Desmond Tutu referred to this old quote in the 2010 documentary, "I Am."
To be honest, I just decided to watch the documentary tonight on Netflix because I finished the show I have been wasting my time on for the past few weeks and just needed another excuse to put off packing. But, it's amazing how incredibly productive these seemingly unproductive decisions can turn out to be!
I'm going to just put this out there right away: please watch this documentary. 20 minutes into watching it, I knew I wanted to write something about it. But now that it's over, I still don't really know what to write - just that it's beautiful, and hits the goals and mission of this blog to a T.
For starters, it was the project of director Tom Shadyac.
(Yeah, that didn't mean anything to me at first either...)
Tom is the man behind Jim Carrey's butt talking in Ace Ventura, he directed my personal favorite in Evan Almighty, and, well, is responsible for this. When I found out his background in the intro, I was a little skeptical... But his personal transformation that was showcased throughout this documentary - and how seriously he took it - is outstanding. I could talk about it, but I want you to watch it, so I'm not going to. Sorry.
Secondly, as easily as it could be written off as one of those "hippie, feel good" documentaries after reading its description, or hearing hippie-feel-gooders like me talk about it, but it has so much focus on SCIENCE. The minute I knew I was hooked on the message of this project was after I heard one of the interviewees - a scientist, mind you - refer to Charles Darwin's "The Descent of Man." He pointed out that Darwin mentions the idea of "the survival of the fittest" only 2 times, whereas he refers to "love" 95 times. Darwin has so much focus on the SCIENCE that human nature is about cooperation and connectedness, yet our society wants to highlight "the survival of the fittest" because of our tendency for competition, and greed. Isn't that incredible? Again, not talking about it any more. Watch.
OK, so, I guess my decision of not leaking too much info so that readers will watch the documentary is not very conducive to my plan of writing about it. But that's OK. I wanted to make sure that it was highlighted even in the tiniest bit because it rings so true to the things I've been talking about on here: how we are to work together as a society to see change, how we need to acknowledge that violence is not going to produce it, and that change can begin even through the smallest of actions.
Desmond Tutu followed the elephant quote with this, which is what hit my heart the sweetest, and what I'd like to leave you all with tonight:
"And so... you can't do anything about global poverty. But yes, you can do something about... this guy...
Thanks for the simple reminder, Mr. Tutu.
[On a side note, I really need to get myself to South Africa one of these days...]
