Give Me an Inch, and I'll Take an Inch

I am probably as guilty as the next person in sometimes feeling that I don't accomplish enough in my advocacy efforts. Books, articles and other media bombard us with stories about how individual activists have changed the world through heroic efforts. Sometimes this is a good thing, as it inspires us to do more. Other times, it serves to depress us, as most of us do not have the time, energy or money to devote ourselves to activism full-time, and thus, can never accomplish those heroic feats.

Very often though, what appears to be a big jump is actually the accumulation of many small steps. When an ordinance passes, or a local school unveils a vegan friendly lunch menu, or a corporation agrees to stop testing on animals, we often view that as a discrete event and give credit to one or a few individuals. But these changes never take place in a vacuum, and we sometimes need to look at the big picture that made the change possible.

Social change almost always precedes by small steps. While we see the big changes, we often miss the details; the person who talked to his neighbor about why they should support a spay/neuter ordinance, the student who asked for a vegan lunch, or the person who stopped buying cosmetics from the corporation that tests on animals. It is these small steps that make what only appears to be the big jump possible.

People sometimes ask me how many people I expect to convert to veganism, and my standard response is, “just one.” Of course, there is always one more out there, and if we keep working on just that one, eventually we will get to everyone. To climb the mountain seems overwhelming, and it is the wrong place to focus. What most of us need to think about is what small step we can take today that will move us forward even an inch. Over time, all the inches that move will add-up. Looking back someday, we will see how that one conversation we started, that one e-mail we sent, or how that one pamphlet we handed out has moved us miles.