Can 1 person really make a difference?

Wednesday, 9th September 10.00 AM.

You will have heard of John Francis, by now. He’s the guy who gave up talking and walked for 22 years as a silent protest against the damage we humans are doing to our environment. It was triggered by an oil spillage in the San Francisco bay Area in 1972. John gave an inspirational talk to everyone on board the Stad Amsterdam two nights ago, telling his tale of how a silent, spontaneous personal protest helped him learn to walk a new path.

It’s extraordinary to think that a 26-year old half Afro, half Native-American hippie could simply walk out of his village one day in 1972 and spend the next 22 years out on the road. Along the way he took a master’s degree in environmental studies and a PhD on oil slicks (all whilst maintaining his silence). Then, having inspired so may people, he was invited to become a UN Ambassador for the Environment – that was after he took up talking again, 17 years after first giving it up.

A Hollywood movie studio is now on the cusp of turning John’s humble story into a major league film. Planet Walker, the film’s working name and the title of John’s book, means John, with his wife and family, will be spending the next year accompanying the film crew and advising them on the shoot.

Charles Darwin was another person who single-handedly made a big difference. What ramifications were made by the six-year voyage of an unsettled 22-year old who ran away from establishing a conventional career in either medicine or the church! Only thanks to his single-minded courage and curiosity did humanity wake up to a new level of consciousness in which the true place of humans in nature finally began to reveal itself. Still, 150 years after his theories were first published, the relevance of Darin’s awakening continues to play out.

So when people say – Ahh well, what can one person possibly do to make a difference to the problems of the world today? – it is really just a cover for inaction, a moral comfort blanket. What difference can I possibly make? is a false logic. Human history is pock-marked with examples of single people whose lives have profoundly diverted the rivers of fate from Jesus Christ to Genghis Khan.

John and Charles also belong to that list of people – as, potentially, do all of us – if only we have the courage to realize that single-mindedness can potentially conquer all. Stubbornly to say, while sitting on the sidelines with a shrug of the shoulders, that today’s issues are such that no one person can possibly make a difference flies in the face of history, and pitifully puffs out a person’s potential to be the change.