How many people does I take to turn the tiller of our troubled world toward the light? Might a single act of kindness or generosity alter the course of a human life? In Les Miserables, Victor Hugo relates how one act of enlightened kindness—the Bishop of Digne makes a gift to the hero, Jean Valjean, of the candlesticks he had stolen and dismisses the gendarme. This single enlightened action transforms Jean Valjean’s life forever, as well as the lives of every other character in this great novel.
The anthropologist Margaret Mead once remarked in a now famous quote:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Although some writers point out that all the great civil right movements and social revolutions have involved millions of people, who’s to say that beneficial change cannot begin, as Albert Camus observed, with a gentle stirring of doves wings?:
“Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that this hope lies in a nation; others, in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. As a result, there shines forth fleetingly the ever threatened truth that each and every man, on the foundation of his own suffering and joys, builds for all.”
I believe a sea change can begin and be nourished, as it has in science and many fields, with the quality of questions we ask—personal questions, children’s questions, humorous questions, leaders’ questions, universal questions– and also in the quality of listening we give to these questions. Imagine a great tsunami of these questions, ever deepening, connecting us to all that is bright and hopeful in the world.
What connects our questions and the Wisdom we collectively derive from our questions to the external world are countless unheralded acts of Paying Forward. It will take very few of these tender mercies—perhaps 10% of a community, even 3% if inspired leaders become involved. These are the faint flutter of wings that together can become our humanity’s Ode to Joy, as happened spontaneously one day in this small German town. It is our noble chance.