For Jane - Musings and Meditations
- filipvk
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of a difference you want to make.”
Jane Goodall (1934-2025)
“One individual alone cannot possibly make a difference.
It is individual efforts, collectively, that make a noticeable difference.
All the difference in the world.”
Jane Goodall (1934-2025)
Dear friends,
The first two quotes at the top of homepage of the A Biosphere Project website are from two very special women, each of whom has made an enormous contribution in their own way to the evolution of our collective consciousness regarding our relationship with our only home, Mother Earth, our biosphere.
The first quote is from Joanna Macy: “You are not a separate being. You belong to the living body of the Earth. You are the Earth becoming conscious of itself.”
The second quote is from Jane Goodall: “You cannot live a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you must decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
On October 1, less than three months after Joanna Macy left us, Jane Goodall also passed away, at the age of 91.
I recently wrote a short 'musing' in honor of Joanna Macy, which you can read here.
In my opinion, Jane Goodall is much better known to the general public in our part of the world than Joanna Macy. So I won't bore you with another lengthy eulogy about her; enough have already appeared in recent weeks. I trust that you are familiar with Jane Goodall and her work.
Let me just say that people like Jane Goodall and Joanna Macy remain a daily source of support and inspiration to me. Both were acutely aware of the seriousness of the ecological crises we face, but both always emphasized hope, agency, trust, and resilience, even or especially when the situation seems almost hopeless. And both framed their activism within a broader spiritual view of life, of what it means to be human, of what each of us can mean in the transitions to come. Both also emphasized that hope is a verb, and that “active hope” requires commitment and engagement from all of us.
I would also like to share two short videos with Jane Goodall.
The first video is a short biographical interview by CBS dating from four years ago, which I liked among the many interviews that can be found on YouTube because it provides a lot of relevant information about her life in a short time, in a way that also shows some aspects of Jane's life that I was not yet aware of, such as the fact that she had not pursued higher education when she began her famous decades-long study of chimpanzees in Tanzania. She had no degree in biology or any other higher education qualification, and was therefore an amateur in the best sense of the word, i.e., someone who loves what she does with all her heart. History has seen many amateurs (people without a completed education or degree in their field of activity) who have changed a field forever, such as Albert Einstein, Ervin László, Pablo Picasso, and Auguste Rodin. And the fact that she had not pursued higher education was precisely one of the reasons why paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey chose Jane to start the study in Tanzania. He wanted someone who would approach the research with an ‘open, unbiased mind’. This touches on an important aspect of how science works, and why our scientific institutions often lack the openness to take into consideration with that ‘unbiased mind’ new data that does not fit with what we think we know about the world.
One detail in the interview that struck me and kind of made me chuckle: the fact that Jane always (or at least often) keeps a small bottle of whiskey handy, from which she occasionally takes a sip during interviews “because whiskey lubricates the vocal cords so well.” See, things like that make an icon human again. And I like that, maybe because I also love good whiskey.
The second is a ten-minute video in which Jane explains why she became vegan and why it is so important for the planet and our future that we stop eating meat from industrial agriculture, especially beef but, by extension, preferably all other types of meat as well.
A message that I have already conveyed in the blog post ‘Very Important Message to All’ and a message that I will repeat often, as the importance of stopping eating meat (and preferably also fish from industrial fisheries) cannot be overemphasized, and is probably the most decisive contribution that each of us can immediately make to preserving our biosphere for future generations and for all other life forms with which we share the planet. I will not list all the arguments here, but you can listen to Jane and read or reread my previous post on the subject.
For those who have a Netflix subscription, there is an interview with her in the very first edition of ‘Famous Last Words’. This interview was recorded just a few months ago.
The concept of ‘Famous Last Words’ on Netflix is interesting: the interview is only broadcast after the interviewee has passed away. Hence the title.
This means that the people being interviewed may perhaps talk more openly about certain things than in other interviews: after all, they will no longer be around to face any negative reactions. Among other things, Jane Goodall talks very openly about her belief that consciousness survives death and reincarnates, and she recounts how she was visited by her deceased second husband.
The aforementioned whiskey was also present, and once again she explained with a mischievous look why she likes to have whiskey on hand during interviews.
At the end of Famous Last Words, each interviewee can also address a message to the audience, knowing that this message will only reach the audience after he or she has passed away.
Jane Goodall's “last words” were impressive and poignant, to say the least.
Enjoy Jane Goodall's wise words and be inspired by her message, which she literally spread until her death (she worked hard and gave interviews until the very end, the last one just a week before she passed away): "You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of a difference you want to make."
May many more Janes and Joannas rise up to continue the work, and may we all become much more aware of our power and our impact.
Thank you for reading and watching, and until the next episode,
All the best to you,
Filip
