Be the Change

Be the change you want to see in the world. –Gandhi

I saw the most amazing thing yesterday. I was trying to cross a very busy four lane street. Traffic was zipping by very fast. Although I was standing at a pedestrian crosswalk, there were no lights and the signs were partly obscured by trees. Cars and trucks flashed by without even slowing down.

For those of you who do not live in pedestrian friendly places, the law here says that traffic must stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk. And for the most part, drivers here are very courteous and careful about yielding to pedestrians. However, the street I was trying to cross has few pedestrians, and it is in a business/light industrial area with long stretches of no traffic lights and lots of big trucks in a hurry. It looked like I was in for a long wait.

Then, lo and behold, a small blue car in the lane closest to me, slowed down and stopped. A few cars in the next lane sped by, but then a driver saw the blue car and stopped, too. I waved a thank you and stepped into the street, but cars and trucks going the opposite direction were still streaming by. I paused and started to step back on the sidewalk. Then a driver of a huge semi barreling along in the other direction hit the brakes. I watched in awe as the monstrous truck shuddered to a loud stop inches into the crosswalk. I waved nervously and felt very tiny as I stepped in front of its menacing grill. I peered around the far side of the truck to be sure that the cars in the furthest lane had stopped, too. They had. I scampered to the sidewalk and breathed a sigh of relief as I heard the traffic resume behind me.

All this because the driver of a small blue car saw what was happening and did the right thing. One driver on a street with hundreds of drivers zooming by in disregard of a pedestrian at a crosswalk, stopped. And waited quietly...until other drivers saw and followed his good example. Even the driver of the enormous semi, a truck on the move with a mission and momentum, a truck very difficult to stop, stopped. And waited for a single pedestrian to cross the street.

I thought about this all afternoon. Isn’t that exactly what Gandhi was talking about? One person, any one of us, by doing the right thing, even when no one else is, can make a difference.

Bishop Desmond Tutu told the story of a woman who wrote him a letter during the dark days before apartheid ended in South Africa. She said she wished she could do more to help, but all she could do was pray. She knew her little prayer didn’t mean much, but she just wanted him to know of her support. He wrote her back, saying who knows, maybe her prayer would be the very one that ended apartheid.

Maybe it was.