Newsletter January 2022
Number 2
“That's a drop in the ocean”
“You must not carry water to the sea”
“That doesn't help at all”
All three are typical Dutch expressions. You are probably familiar with these expressions (perhaps even a few more with roughly the same meaning) and you believe they contain a grain of truth.
If I let those expressions apply to our foundation, then you quickly come to the question: that small organization that Auxili-ja! is, could it really make a difference? I can assure you that if we thought we weren't making any difference, we would have given up long ago. We are all convinced that what we do (supporting small-scale projects worldwide that benefit the local population) does make sense. The fact that we are currently in "slumber mode" due to the many restrictive measures is a different story.
Doing nothing is not an option for us at all.
I had to think of this when I pulled the sheet of December 24 from Happinez's 2021 calander. Claire Nuer, a French coach, says the following:
Perhaps only one person's voice is missing to bring peace to the world.
At first I thought: “Wow, if that were only possible”. “If only that could become true.” But almost immediately I thought that this is an illusion, until I started reading the back of the calendar.
“Tell me what a snowflake weighs?” a great tit asked a pigeon. “Nothing more than nothing”, was the answer. “In that case, I have to tell you a wonderful story,” the great tit continues. “I was once sitting on the branch of a pine tree near the trunk when it started to snow. Not violent, not a raging blizzard, no just like in a dream, without any violence. Having nothing better to do, I began to count the snowflakes falling on the needles and twigs of my branch. I was right at number 3,741,952 when the 3,741,953rd snowflake fell on that branch. “Nothing more than nothing”, you say, but that branch broke off”. The dove, an authority on peace matters since the time of Noah, pondered the story for a while, and finally said to itself, "Perhaps there is only one man's voice missing to bring peace to the world."
