This past weekend, I went out to eat at a restaurant two days in a row! After not going to a restaurant for more than a year, it was a stunning experience. I am sure most of you are having similar experiences as well. Isn’t it amazing to even be having these conversations when a year ago the future looked grim and frightening? We in America are so fortunate to have the vaccines, available for free and to virtually everyone 12 years old and up. I feel an immense amount of gratitude to be where we are today, especially when we hear about other countries still struggling with frightening numbers of COVID outbreaks and an inability to get the vaccines.
I recently listened to a program on National Public Radio, The Daily, about Katalin Karikó, the Hungarian woman who discovered and figured out the messenger RNA technology used in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines. It literally came down to this one woman to get the mRNA vaccines to all of us.
Karikó has been working on an mRNA vaccine since the early 1970s. She believed in what she was doing and the science behind it, even when no one else did. She kept working on moving her project forward until the day when she was able to change the world.
Think about that! She made it possible for me to go out to dinner with friends last weekend. And to take a young friend to the zoo this week. And for all of us to go back to riding in horse shows, visiting our beautiful national parks, returning to work in offices, traveling on airplanes for vacations… the list back to “normalcy” is long, and she made it happen for each of us.
What that story tells me is how important our individual efforts are for the big picture. It reminds me of the famous quote by Margaret Mead:
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever does.
What Mead is arguing here is that real change does not come from the top down; it come from the ground up. Perhaps the whole world has just seen evidence of that exact thing happening as we worked together for a solution and cure for COVID. Individuals like Katalin Karikó were essential to finding our way out of the pandemic.
To me, the takeaway each of us needs to remember is that our actions and choices as individuals DO matter—whether that’s conserving water, teaching good horsemanship skills to others, using fewer chemicals around our properties, or any other good thing. We are doing things to make the world a better place and, someday, it will all add up to become positive change.
Keep getting vaccinated and encourage those around you to do the same.
Alayne
