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If you haven’t yet watched ABC’s “Kevin (Probably) Saves the World”, stop everything and check it out. I added it to my lengthy DVR list out of curiosity. I knew of Jason Ritter from “Parenthood”, a favorite of mine, so I thought I would see what the fuss was about with this new show. I came away from the first viewing charmed, hopeful, and challenged.
That might seem like a strange combination to you, but let me explain. The show is charming. It’s about this total screw-up who goes to live with his widowed sister and his niece, and figures out that he is divinely chosen to save the world. He’s supposed to do all of these good deeds to help and inspire others, and if he listens to the Universe, he’ll (probably) save the world. It’s funny and quirky and hits all the right notes, so I rate it as charming.
But it also leaves me hopeful. Kevin may be a total screw-up, but he also tries his best to do what’s right. He doesn’t always succeed. In fact, sometimes he only helps people after a massive comedy of errors. But he keeps trying.
It makes him feel good, it makes other people feel good, and it has this ripple effect in his life, as good acts often do. It leaves me hopeful that someone thought about writing a show entirely about random acts of kindness and the impact that they have.
But that’s where it got challenging for me. I watch it, and it leaves me thinking about my own impact—on others, and on the planet. It challenges me to do better. Yes, it’s charming, and it leaves me with all of this hope in humanity. But it’s also a challenge for those of us who see its charms to question what it is we’re doing in life, and if we could do a little more to make a difference.
You’re probably thinking that I’ve been seriously over-thinking this plot, and I’ll grant you that. But I have this belief system. You see, I think individuals make a difference. Whether we’re talking about voting (don’t get me started on the electoral college), or the environment, or even rape culture, I think every person can have an impact.
It’s all about trying, and we’re either people who are trying or we aren’t. There’s no in-between. And I get that sometimes we try, and sometimes we don’t, but I believe with all of my heart that if every individual did what they were capable of doing, it would make an enormous impact.
Here are a few examples:
The environment: Every person could practice reduce/reuse/recycle. If every household recycled everything that they could, it would make a difference. Most goods are packaged in recyclable material, and yet these materials go right in the trash for many households. On a larger scale, we can look at straws. That’s right, I said straws. Plastic straws have a huge, negative environmental impact. If everyone who read those words stopped using disposable straws, it would make a difference. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, “know better, do better.”
When we learn that something is harmful, we should make changes. It’s not enough that we were raised that way, and it didn’t hurt us (that we know of). It matters that we all do our part to contribute to a healthier environment.
Voting: Again, I will not address the electoral college, but I will say that if every adult of voting age and eligibility were to vote, it would make an impact. So many of our citizens in the United States have a voice that they aren’t using. If only 50–60% of the citizens are voting, that’s an awful lot of people with opinions that aren’t being heard. And that’s just the presidential election. What about the smaller, local elections and the special elections that are held?
Across the board with politics, individuals can make a difference. They can write, phone, fax, and even email their representatives on various matters and have their opinion tallied.
Social issues: Whether we’re talking racism or rape culture or what-have-you, if we all took these issues seriously and did what we could, it would make a difference. This means that we don’t sit silently and listen to micro-aggressions or hate speech.
I remember being on a bus headed out for a cruise. It was just me and my two children, and we were headed to the port. The driver was of Middle Eastern descent with an accent. The bus was filled with a number of elderly white people on their way to a reunion cruise. It’s hard to forgive myself for sitting silently while they made loud comments about how they couldn’t even get an English-speaking bus driver (he spoke perfect English).
They made a number of racist, rude, and disrespectful comments, and I stayed silent because I was in shock, because I was outnumbered, and because they had all been so helpful to me with my two small children—and I didn’t want to make waves. That day, I didn’t do what I could do, and I wish I had spoken up.
There are so many times in life where we stay silent when we shouldn’t, or we laugh in discomfort at the joke that was inappropriate. When we learn to use our voices to speak up for others and even for ourselves, we can make a difference. I truly believe that so much social progress could happen at an individual level if we just made it a point to speak up.
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We think that what we do doesn’t really matter. It’s how we can walk by trash on the ground and think that it’s someone else’s job to pick it up. Or how we can throw packaging in the trash because recycling this one thing won’t make that much of a difference. Or we don’t say anything to that one friend or family member about something they said because it’s just how they are, or how they were raised. We roll our eyes and move on.
We think our small actions don’t have an impact, but the truth is that the world needs us to care about those small things. It needs us to be the humans who believe so much in the power of the individual to create change that we love harder, speak out more, and perform random acts of kindness, because we know it’s important.
We’re human, and we’re going to make mistakes. But I think that if we all did our best each day, we would see so much change. Our best might vary day to day. Sometimes, we’ll mess up and have to ask others to forgive us. Other times, we’ll need to forgive others.
But if we all make an effort to take better care of ourselves, each other, and the planet we’re living on, we (probably) can save the world. I think it’s worth a try. We just have to believe that our own efforts, however small, are necessary and important. Then, once we believe it, we do what we can.
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This post was originally published on medium.com, and is republished here with the author’s permission.
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Photo credit: Getty Images