Our school assemblies were a site of vain repetition. Little did I (or anyone else, I believe) derive, or remember, much of use. Nonetheless, on occasions words slipped out of the regular speakers, that segued from the tedious routine.
On one such occasion, while our principal was sermoning about good individual morality, and students, with not much of a choice at offer, listened silently, a parable was cited in the midst which caught my attention. Apparently, a child by the shore, repeatedly saw hundreds of fish washing up. He started picking them up, one by one, and throwing them back into the water.
As someone questioned the rationale of this intervention, as being in vain against the overwhelming odds of the monstrous flow, the child replied with stoic innocence, . Thankfully, I no longer have to attend those assemblies, and can no longer be ordered into silence. I afford the luxury of analyzing the story.
We clearly grasp the moral here – Do what you can do, and don’t worry about the results. In part, I agree with this maxim, and appreciate the fabled child. Nonetheless, we must also caution from a generalizing principle.
A (adult) person who cared enough about the washed-up fish, and was willing to look at the larger picture, would not have confined himself to ‘one fish at a time’. Besides the immediate help, he would have rendered some thought about the larger phenomena. Why do the fish wash up in the first place? What are the different levels of oceanic water?.