The Best Way to Change the World

This past week my dad and I watched a delightful movie, Akeelah and the Bee. On one level it is the story of how an eleven-year-old girl from a tough section of Los Angeles is able to win the national spelling bee. On a far deeper level it is about how one small girl by changing her own life, changes the lives of everybody she touches.

I am writing a similar story right now. Tentatively entitled Friday's Daughter, it is about a woman who has deferred her own life for years to take care of family members, and who always gave in to her older sisters because they were more powerful than she. Teensie wishes she could change her sisters. She discovers that when she changes herself, her sisters change to accomodate the new Teensie.

Years ago I was in a church where an old man, Walter, was very ill. Walter was also obnoxious. He had selected five members of the church, including me, to call day in and day out with demands. He needed a notebook and pens. He needed cigarettes. He needed somebody to take him here or there. Because we were "nice" people who felt sorry for Walter, we generally obeyed his summons, but every one of us resented it.

One morning the five of us met for breakfast and after a Walter gripe session, we decided to change our strategy. We couldn't change Walter, but we could change ourselves. Instead of simply responding to Walter's demands, we decided to institute "an offense of love." Don't football coaches say that the best defense is a strong offense? We started calling Walter. We invited him to our children's birthday parties and our family dinners. We cleared out his apartment when he had to move into a nursing home. We were with him when he died. At his funeral, we all admitted that we had come to love Walter, ornery though he could be. And we noted in amazement that as we had changed the way we related to Walter, he had become more lovable.

Have you got a story about how changing yourself resulted in an unexpected change in somebody else? Would you share it with us?