What I've Learnt From David Attenborough

October 29 2020

“Who is your role model?”

“Who do you think is a good leader?”

“Who do you perceive as influential?”

For a long time, I never knew how to answer these questions. Responding with, “my mum or dad” seemed too generic (although very much true because my parents rock!), but frankly, I was never worldly enough to come up with another answer.

Until recently.

I cannot pinpoint exactly when the turning point was, but my answer eventually became “David Attenborough”...every single time.

I have always found fascination in watching nature and animal documentaries. My favourite channels as a child were ‘Animal Planet’ and ‘Nat Geo Wild’. Forget ‘Mickey Mouse Clubhouse’ and ‘Bob the Builder’; shows like ‘Bondi Vet’ and ‘World’s Deadliest’ were utterly captivating to my curious little mind.

So it’s only fitting that I grew to adore David Attenborough’s productions. It wasn’t just his plethora of knowledge, eloquent, dreamy, soothing speech or the endless enthralling, dazzling and moving scenes captured by his camera and editing team that sucked me in; it was his genuine and earnest passion and love for nature that completely enveloped me and tore me away from real life, and truly showed me that he was a figure who really cared about enlightening and inspiring the rest of humanity.

And that is exactly what he has done, to this day.

I’m sure many of you have watched his latest release, ‘A Life on Our Planet’, and if you have not yet had a chance or given it any thought, I could not urge you enough to make some time for it. His key message to us all, at the incredulous age of 94, could not be clearer: we MUST start taking immediate and significant action to look after the planet and restore biodiversity, or else we are prone to face an imminently dire future, full of impending havoc from unpredictable natural disasters.

After watching this documentary, I felt very shaken, and proceeded to experience some sort of existential crisis. I found myself questioning humanity’s purpose on planet Earth, to the extent that I decided we were never even meant to exist. I was caught up in all of the damage and destruction us humans have wreaked on the natural world; a world that, pre-human life, was flourishing and thriving, with nature running its course. The alarming statistics from Attenborough’s production were flashing in my mind repeatedly, just as they had flashed on the screen, displaying the progressively dwindling amount of wildlife left on earth over the decades.

‘Why do we keep bringing children into the world, when they are just going to use up more of the earth’s resources?’

‘Humans are selfish, all we do is take from nature and never give back.’

‘Why did God put us in this world?’

These were some of the questions pulsing through my mind; my thoughts were so messy and panicked, that I found myself turning to my most reliable therapist: writing. I pulled out one of my few unused notebooks, opened to a fresh page, dated and titled it, and began to dot-point all of my thoughts in some sort of logical order. As expected, writing everything down allowed me a kind of cathartic release.

From veganism and farming and fishing restrictions, to sustainable living, using solely renewable energy and even a mandated number of children, I wrote down as many strategies that I could think of that could help pave the way to the restoration of the natural world.

Of course, nothing about this is straightforward or simple. I am very much aware that nothing can just be magically fixed overnight, and I am by no means an expert in any of this, nor do I even have any answers. But I do think that we need to be having more of these conversations. Conversations about our actions and choices, because our lives are inextricably linked and cyclical to nature; nature provides us with the means to live our life, and in turn, our actions and choices affect nature. The more we talk about the environment, the closer we will get to restoring biodiversity.

We need to stop focusing on instant gratification, and start thinking more about the long term consequences of our everyday actions. We were given this planet. Now let’s ensure it’s here to stay.