One Step at a Time

Life is known to be tedious and difficult, it’s only passage of life is one sinuous route from start to finish, and sometimes we lose focus on what is possible. In the narrative essay, A South African Storm by Allison Howard presents a thesis that both the Lord of The Rings’ most notable wizard and Allison’s essay have in common.

 Allison’s thesis conveys the idea that even small and infinitesimal actions may change the course of someone’s history, “If I lose a hold on my instincts here, I’ll fail myself and I’ll fail to achieve those tiny things that matter so much. It’s simple and it’s small; and it’s everything.” The sentence closes with a quote from Gandhi indicating that no matter the position of power one may be in, the contribution — no matter how small — is unequivocally important to progression and change.

Gandalf presents similarities in the instance of Allison Howard’s thesis, “Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay… small acts of kindness and love. ” Presenting that power, most notably the ‘small everyday deeds of ordinary folk’ can affect change and progression.

An example of text to world/self examples:

In Allison Howard’s narrative essay, we discover that conventionalism — when unexpected and unrealized — can become a bad thing, ” Convention compels us to do so many things that don’t make any sense at all. Convention misinforms our instincts. And in a larger sense, it is convention that propels Afrikaner culture anachronistically into the future.” Presenting that in the author’s philosophy, conventional habits often take over instinctual behavior. It is the conventional habits of that we often carry around with us no matter where we are, just as she was the only lady who entered the car of the man since she was the only white woman around. She realized what she was doing is wrong, so in the correction to her mistake, she decided to walk with the Afrikaners just as they would. She realizes that this is not going to make a big difference but to the lives of those Venda women it’s a subtle sign of respect, and maybe change.  Therefore, sometimes it only requires little effort to contribute to people, society, or change. The power lies not in the rich and influential, but in those willing; Whereby, to ‘walk in the rain.’