One lesson, a Year 8 student asked me if a single person can really have an impact on the world. This is how the conversation went.
Student. Sir, Do we really have an impact on the world?
M: You most certainly do. You just existing has an impact on those around you and the world. Even the universe is impacted in a way just by being here. Every atom in your body (and there are trillions and trillions and trillions) exerts gravitational forces, electrostatic forces and inter/ intra molecular forces on the atoms around it. Your gravitational force extends from you indefinitely (it just gets a weaker the further out it goes) and so even now you are having some small impact on atoms on the other side of the universe. You are pulling on the earth just as its pulling on you (its just much bigger and so you end up moving towards it). Not to mention, if you change your perspective, you have been around for 13.6 billion years.
The energy and atoms in your body have changed transformed from one form to another since the universe began, you have been the fabric of space-time. You have been nebulas and stars and the building blocks of planets. You have been one life form, then another, then another passing in and out of the earth and through food chains over the eons. You are the genetic combination of millions of human beings and all the pre-human species that have come before you. You are connected at the molecular-genetic level to the first life on earth, unbroken but ever changing. You are the very fabric of the universe all wrapped up into an amazing miracle of life that now, right here, represents all your ancestors from your parents, grandparents, great grandparents and so on all the way back to the beginning of time. And that’s just you being here. That’s even before you do anything, think anything or make a choice.
Every action or thought you have has a ripple effect on the fabric of the universe around you. Sometimes it’s a ripple, sometimes it’s a tidal wave. It’s the Sliding Doors and Butterfly effect all rolled into one. Every action you take will have a consequence which will impact someone else in either a positive or negative way. This will then impact their actions which will impact the actions of someone else and so on. You might say something to someone which inspires them to be nice to someone else which makes someone else get the confidence to try something new which leads to a new discovery that makes another person inspired to take that first leap off the planet…. All because you said something nice to someone one day.
Every action leads to a consequence which leads to another action which leads to other consequences in an endless cycle of action/reaction…. We are all connected on Earth and if we are all connected via 6 degrees of separation, then it’s easy to imagine one action, or thought from us can impact someone of the other side of the world. Then it’s only a case of imagination to think where that can lead. So to answer your question yes, from the atoms and energy that make you up to the actions you take, the thoughts you have and the decisions you make, you have an impact on the world. You might not notice the ripples. You might not even see the tidal wave but it’s happening every day, everywhere.
Yes you have an impact on the world. You have an impact on the universe. You matter, you are part of the universe, you are the universe, you are the result of everything the universe has done right up until now. Now you get to decide what happens next.