If Not…

It began with a small blackberry bush. Just a slender, spiked vine growing by the roadside at the western entrance to my town. At first, it was barely visible. Something you could easily pass by without notice. But I saw it. And I knew what it meant. Blackberry.

A plant that is both patient and persistent, and one that does not ask for permission.

And I knew all too well the damage it could do. The way it creeps, takes hold and spreads. How quickly one small bush can become a thicket. And how much harder it is to undo once its roots settle deep into the earth.

And yet, I did nothing.

I told myself I would stop one day. Pull it out. Do my small part for the land and for the community. But days passed, then weeks. Each time I drove by, I noticed it. Each time, I thought the same thought.

I should do something about that.

But I didn’t.

Perhaps someone else would. A council worker. Another concerned passerby. I softened my inaction with quiet reasoning. It wasn’t my responsibility. It was only one bush.

And so it grew.

Until one day, I stopped. Took a shovel, a pair of gloves and some dogged determination. It was after all, a blackberry bush. And I set about removing it.

What could have been a simple act months earlier had become something far more demanding. The roots had taken hold. Its resilience borne out in the thorns that had multiplied. The work now was far harder than it needed to be if only I had acted earlier.

Standing there looking at my blisters, I realised something I have not forgotten since.

Inaction has a way of growing too.

There is an old truth in this. That what we delay, we deepen. That the space between knowing and doing is where most of life’s problems take root. As the modern stoics so often remind us, the obstacle is not what stands before us, but what we choose to do about it.

Or not.

Because the truth is, the world is full of blackberry bushes.

Some grow in soil. Others in systems, in habits and in silence. In the quiet spaces where something calls for action and is met instead with hesitation or excuses.

And like that roadside bush, they rarely remain small for long.

The causes we care about. The injustices we see. The opportunities to act with courage, compassion and conviction. They are often not grand or sweeping moments. More often, they are small, inconvenient or easy to defer.

Until they are not.

For those of us who advocate for animals, we know this well. Change does not come from waiting for the right time, the right conditions or even the right person. It comes from someone choosing to act, even when the act feels small.

Especially then.

Because every moment of action interrupts the spread of something that would otherwise grow. And every moment of inaction allows it.

So perhaps the question is not whether we are capable.

But whether we are willing.

“If not you, then who? If not now, when?”

So choose your shovel.