The lessons that change us most can come from the strangest places.
When I was younger, I read the Crank series by Ellen Hopkins, which was inspired by her daughter’s addiction to methamphetamine and the devastation that followed.
Those books changed me.
Ellen Hopkins heavily influenced the way I write poetry, but her work gave me something far more important than an appreciation for words. It taught me how one choice, one moment, or one wrong turn can follow a person for the rest of their life.
But it also taught me the opposite.
It showed me that sharing what we have survived can reach into the life of a stranger and alter its course. Ellen Hopkins took something painful from her own family and placed it into the world. Somewhere far away, a young girl she would never meet picked up that story, carried its message with her, and became a different person because of it.
That girl was me.
I think we sometimes become so overwhelmed by the size of the world’s suffering that we convince ourselves our small acts cannot possibly matter. We are only individual people, tiny specks in a universe larger than we can comprehend. What difference could one kind gesture, one honest story, or one person possibly make?
But we do not have to change the entire world to change someone’s world.
One act of kindness could alter the direction of a person’s life.
One word of encouragement could be the reason someone puts the rope away.
One person believing in them could become the beginning of everything they someday believe about themselves.
Most of us will never know how far our kindness travels. We may never see the life that continued because we stopped to listen, the courage that grew because we offered reassurance, or the person who chose to keep going because we reminded them they were not alone.
Protect your heart, yes. Not everyone is ready to receive what you have to give, and you should not destroy yourself trying to save everyone.
But when someone is within your reach, do not assume that what you offer is too small to matter.