I’m not sure when, but at some point in my late childhood, I stopped answering the question of “What do you want to do when you get older?” with a career. No longer could I give a simple answer of “astronaut,” “paleontologist,” or “CIA agent,” as I did for the years of my earlier childhood; my interests became too vast and diluted to have a simple answer. Instead, I started answering the question with what effect I wanted to have on the world, rather than with which channel I wanted to achieve that change through.
By thinking about the effect rather than the avenue, I was able to come up with some decent answers: successful, wealthy, healthy, and impactful to name a few. By far, however, the answer that shaped me the most was an answer I gave to my dad while discussing the topic. I claimed I wanted to “rumble the world.”
Unsure of what “rumbling the world” entailed of, in hindsight, my father may have been concerned about what I planned to do, but I saw his question of “what does that mean?” only in genuine interest at the time. My explanation was that I wanted to make a change so large that it left the world different from what it was before; I wanted to make a change so large that it was felt throughout all of Earth (dream big, right?).
While I don’t blame myself for dreaming big (I still do), I do find that I had a crucial misunderstanding of change. In my mind, change only existed in the form of large-scale, world-rumbling events: the invention of fire, the wheel, the iPhone, and other things that changed our daily lives completely. While this is a form of change, I now know it’s not the only form of change, and often not one that people can strive for and accomplish, but rather one that happens by chance.
The other option for change is not a rumble, but rather a ripple. The analogy of a pebble in water causing a great disturbance is often used to deter any small acts of disobedience and negative change, referring to the ripples as unseen damages of one’s actions. However, the same can be said for small acts of positive change, with the ripples serving as unseen, compounding effects of one small act toward positive change. These ripples, though starting small, may compound and reach the bank, completely changing the landscape of the waters over time.
In addition to redefining change, I redefined my perspective of “the world.” Previously, “the world” referred to the collective of humanity – something material. I now view “the world” as something much smaller: one person. For within each individual is a separate, wholly unique system that exists as their world. With multiple encounters each day in which I participate in someone else’s world, I no longer have to change every world in order to change the world; I only have to change one.
With the terms surrounding my original goal of “rumbling the world” to result in a drastic, material change of the entire world, I left a lot up to chance, and could easily get frustrated when that possibility felt out of reach or not within my control. Now, I have a chance every day to, not rumble, but ripple the world, through small interactions with others. If I cast a single pebble into the waters of someone else’s world, the resulting ripples are my way of creating change, although I may never see where the ripples, themselves, travel, or what change they eventually make upon the landscape of those waters.
“We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.”
~ Marian Wright Edleman
If you’re now thinking I’ve given up on my initial dream of such a large-scale change, you must not know me well enough (read some more of my posts for a clearer image). I, very much, would be honored and love to be part of such a drastic change to improve the quality of humanity. However, such a drastic change is not something within my direct control. So, for the time being, I focus on what I can control: changing the world one pebble at a time. Although, with enough pebbles and enough ripples, even a flood is possible.
“Pleasant words are a honeycomb, Sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” Proverbs 16:24, NASB
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