Tipping Point?

I love it when I find links between the books I have read/am currently reading.


From Who Moved My Cheese?

'An organization can only change when enough people in it change.' 

From The Alchemist

'Everything in the Universe evolved. And for wise men, gold is the metal that evolved the furthest.

They forgot that lead, copper, and iron have their own Personal Legend to fulfill.

And anyone who interferes with the Personal Legend of another thing will never discover his own.

It's true that everything has its Personal Legend, but one day that Personal Legend will be realized.

So each thing has to transform itself into something better, and to acquire a new Personal Legend, until someday, the Soul of The World becomes one thing only.

This is why alchemy exists.

So that everyone will search for his treasure, find it, and then want to be better than he was in his former life.

Lead will play its role until the world has no further need for lead, and then lead will have to turn itself into gold.

That's what alchemists do.

They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.'

From By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

‘A scientist who studied monkeys on an island in Indonesia was able to teach a certain one to wash bananas in the river before eating them. Cleansed of sand and dirt, the food was more flavourful. The scientist who did this only because he was studying the learning capacity of monkeys did not imagine what would eventually happen. So he was surprised to see that the other monkeys on the island began to imitate the first one.

And then, one day, when a certain number of monkeys had learned to wash their bananas, the monkeys on all of the other islands in the archipelago began to do the same thing. What was most surprising, though, was that the other monkeys learned to do so without having had any contact with the island where the experiment had been conducted.’

He stopped. ‘Do you understand?’

‘No,’ I answered.

‘There are several similar scientific studies. The most common explanation is that when a certain number of people evolve, the entire human race begins to evolve. We don’t know how many people are needed but we know that’s how it works.’

It is as if there is a certain tipping point where after a certain number of people in the society learns something, the whole society evolves, too.


One of Mother Teresa's famous quotes suddenly comes to my mind. 


'We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.' 


Food for thought :)


Update (28/12/10):


'No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the flood.  Change starts with you.'