Regaining hope

It's amazing how your life can change in simple moments. That your entire outlook can be changed by one person telling you that anything is possible. Yesterday was the final day of classes for this term, and it would be an understatement to say that this has been a difficult term for me. Personally I've been dealing with the end of a wonderful relationship, by my own choice and partly by the choice of my partner who had decided a long time ago that the relationship was over but had failed to tell me. Academically it's been difficult to remember why I'm going to school in the first place. I've lost a lot of my focus and the drive that ruled my life. In many of my classes there's been an attitude that our world is a lost cause, that there is no cure for the "evils" going on today (global warming, Iraq, oil shortages, AIDS, etc). It's difficult to remain optimistic for the future when even your teachers seem to have lost hope.

This term I had to take a History of Science course, and I happened to be able to take a course about the theory of evolution and the history of modern biology. It was all about how the theory came about and how it's changed since Darwin first introduced it. In yesterday's class, the last class of the term, my last class of the term, the professor, Dr. Farber, read from some comments that he had prepared for us. In them, he recalled Darwin, not as Darwin, but simply as Charles Darwin, before he became what we know him as now. He reminded us that Darwin was no exceptional genius, that he was a mediocre student and moderately wealthy man who could have chosen a life of hunting, dinner parties, and garden games if he had so chosen. But Charles had chosen another path for himself. He made the decision to work hard on solving a problem. And he did. And it changed the world.

Farber wanted us to remember that the actions of one person can change the world. That in each of us is the potential to do something great. We just have to make the decision to do something great. I really can't begin to express how much it meant to me to hear someone say that. Especially someone who so deeply believed it. He told us that the actions of one person make a difference. And that even if we may not see it, we may not see it right at this moment in time, we can make a difference in the world. All we have to do is try. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we all just believed enough to try? That if we just looked at who we are right at this moment and what we can do to make the world a better place, how would the world change?

I know it's hoaky to say it, but Farber changed my life. He's given me my hope back. Maybe I just needed to hear it again. But this morning when I took bottles to the store to be recycled there was a can-man who was uncrinkling cans so that he could get the returns on them. He needed those cans desperately, so I gave him my bottle return receipt, $4.20 in total. Maybe if we all just gave away our bottle receipts we could some real good. I think Farber would approve.