Change from the Inside Out

EIGHT

The Heart of the Effort

STEP 3. Build the Change

There’s a poem by A. A. Milne (of Winnie-the-Pooh fame) called “The Old Sailor.” In the poem a shipwrecked sailor thinks of all the things he needs to do to survive on the island where he has washed up: make shelter, keep himself clothed and fed, protect himself from possible attack, perhaps even escape. But in the end, he becomes overwhelmed, not knowing how or where to begin . . . and so becomes paralyzed by indecision. In the last stanza of the poem, Milne writes “And so in the end he did nothing at all / But basked on the shingle wrapped up in a shawl.”²⁵

This had a profound impact on me as a child (you notice I still remember it, all these years later); I never wanted to end up like ...