the power of pebbles

About a year ago, this random app showed up on my phone. I think my sister bought it and it automatically loaded onto all of the phones connected to the iCloud account, but that's beside the point. Regardless of how it got there, I now get motivational quotes sent to my phone every few hours. Every once in a while an African Proverb shows up that always makes me chuckle, "If you think you are too small to make a difference, you have never spent the night with a mosquito".

Hey, it's me, here to tell you that none of these pictures make any sense with the words next to them. But hey, here's a picture of me in Elbasan.

Yesterday was the first day that I struggled in Albania. Before anyone jumps to any conclusions, I'm not sick, I haven't got a craving for Chick-Fil-A, and I'm not missing my own bed. What I am is frustrated. I'm frustrated with the way that we view, or perhaps more the ways in which we confine, progress. I think we often point to moments in history that mark systematic change as moments of progress, but I would argue that these are not moments of progress. Rather, these huge successes are just monuments to the millions of tiny moments of progress that happened to pave the way for systematic change. After all, Rosa Parks said, "No", and what an incredible tiny moment of progress it was in the fight for equal rights.

So the other day I went out for a run in the rain. Mamaja ime told me not to, but watching the sunset over the mountains in the rain just seemed like something out of a movie that I really wanted to be a part of. So out I went, in the rain. It was cold, but it was totally worth it.

So to give you a bit of context for this anecdote that I promise will make sense if you bear with me, you should know a bit about my community and a bit about myself. I only run on the main road because I am so incredibly directionally challenged. The main road is actually a highway that is brand new in the last few years. Said road does not have a shoulder, so basically I run on the highway for a few miles, then turn around and double back to get home. SHHH, DON'T TELL MY MOM. So, I'm running along the highway and see this giant piece of pavement that's propped up on one side. I hurdle over it like I'm an Olympian because I'm still trying to play my part in the non-movie that's happening in the rainy sunset, and I realize it's propped up on this tiny pebble. I started to wonder how this pebble got placed in such a predicament that it was now wholly responsible for holding all but the very edge of the large piece of pavement off the ground. Now, in retrospect, I should've been thinking, wow, what kind of driver got so close to the edge of the road going fast and crazy enough to knock such a large piece of pavement loose and fling it this far away? Then subsequently gone home and mapped out a different running route that didn't include a highway, but that's neither here nor there.

Have you ever thought about the power of a pebble? A single pebble, when it stays strong, can literally hold up a mountain.

Hey! Me again, here to tell ya that there are rocks in this picture so it kind of applies.

One thing that I have consistently struggled with is the feeling of not being enough. Maybe better explained as the fear of not having my life and what I do matter to more than just myself and the few people around me. I think this fear, or at least variations of it, are present in a huge portion of society. It keeps us from taking risks, leaping with faith, and chasing our dreams. In smaller terms, the fear turns into resignation, or even sometimes anger, and causes us to look for excuses not to do things like vote or slam a fist on the table in the face of injustice. It's a feeling of hopelessness in the face of something so massive, so much bigger than any single one of us, that making a difference just seems impossible.

However, I think it's also important to remember that things like happiness and change are just on the other side of fear. If it weren't for single people like Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucretia Mott, the world around us would look very different. Why? Because the shift of a pebble is enough to move a mountain. That single pebble has the power to cause a rockslide, and so do you. We stand here today with an opportunity, a duty, to shift pebbles, because we are standing on the shoulders of giants who came before us, and we can make a difference.