my starfish.

So I have a little starfish tattooed on the inside of my right wrist. It’s pretty dang cute and it is a reminder of the starfish story (which I recommend you looking up if you’re not familiar with… literally type “starfish story” into Google and it will come up), which I heard via my big sister at the tender and impressionable age of fourteen. People can tell me all day long that it is cheesy and/or cliché, but sometimes even cheesy and cliché things are fucking glorious. I mean, seriously, how do you think it got overused? Cause everyone loved it. Overused or not, it still holds value… so back up off my adorable tattoo.

Anyways, every so often I am frustrated when I look at my baby starfish because, well, touching one person just isn’t enough. When the world seems to suck as much as it so often seems to suck, touching one life is not enough. So then what? Where do I plot myself in this oscillation between being overwhelmed by wanting to change the world and the realization that I am only human and settling for just one?

For me, I suppose it’s NOT just one, but one at a time. Today, I will worry about this one and when I feel satisfied, I will worry about that one. The first is no more or less important than the second. The first needs no more or less attention or love, I merely happened upon it and I will try to see it through. I will align my life worrying about one thing at a time, instead of falling into numbness or fearful paralysis at the sheer magnitude of injustice. As I said at sixteen, I will just save the world, one starfish at a time.