A young woman I know who lives in North Carolina considers herself an ardent environmental activist. She belongs to the Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society, works for an organization that runs therapeutic wilderness programs for teens, and spends her weekends hiking in the mountains near her home. By her own admission she is also “a little bit obsessive” about recycling. On nights when she goes out to the local bar with her friends, she saves her empty beer bottles and brings them back home to her own recycling bin. She’s seen the alley out in back of the bar, where smelly, broken bottles are strewn all around the dumpster, and she’s sure they’re destined for the landfill. That upsets her. People should be recycling, not throwing things away. Sometimes she feels foolish for what her friends call her overzealous activism. She doubts that her actions will make much difference in the long run. And then she wonders why she even bothers.
A common assumption is that an action, to be worthwhile, must result in a measurable outcome. In some fields, like medicine, that requirement makes sense. However, in spiritual practice and acts of conscience, the insistence on measuring loses meaning. And when major shifts of consciousness capture whole populations, and people start behaving in significantly different ways, measuring is as futile as trying to identify individual droplets of water in a wave rushing to shore.
Every day, life offers us crossroads large and small, where we must choose either to act with integrity and courage or to take the easy path others are taking. What we choose may have no meaning at all to the world at large and it means the world to our own unique being, which has its own inner compass we feel compelled to follow. So everything and nothing depends on Kelly taking her beer bottles home for recycling. By doing so she bestows on her life and her relationship with the world the greatest possible value. And when we make beauty for a wounded place, even if no one ever sees or knows what we have done, we are taking a bold, strong action that gives our individual lives integrity and import.