Small Things That Change Our World

Sometimes it’s the smallest things that can change the world.

Here’s an example: In June 1812, Napoleon marched on Russia with an army of 600,000. By December, that number had fallen to 10,000 as the remnants of his force retreated from Moscow. Napoleon’s downfall followed. Why did this happen?

One theory is described in the book, Napoleon’s Buttons: 17 Molecules That Changed the World. Buttons? Yes, the buttons that held together everything from officers’ greatcoats to the jackets and trousers of the foot soldiers were made of tin. And tin disintegrates into a gray powder when temperatures fall.

So picture this:  soldiers grasping their clothes in the freezing weather when they should be grasping their weapons. Napoleon’s influence disintegrated along with the buttons.

True or not, the authors Penny LeCouteur and Jay Burreson were inspired by this story of to explore connections between something as small as a molecule and momentous events in human history.

Take nutmeg...a spice we can buy easily in the supermarket and keep in our kitchen cupboards to spice up our foods. But it wasn’t always so. A small bag with nutmeg around the neck was highly desired in the middle ages to ward off the Black Death, the plague that devastated Europe for centuries.

Superstition? As it turns out, nutmeg contains a natural pesticide, isoeugenol, which could have repelled fleas. We now know the bubonic plague was transmitted by infected rats through the bites of fleas.

And because the Dutch, who were successful spice traders, wrested a nutmeg monopoly from Great Britain by trading Manhattan for the tropical island of Run, we have New York instead of New Amsterdam.

The authors cite many examples of human demand for specific molecules as the stimulus for great changes: spices and voyages of discovery; cotton, sugar and the huge slave trade; salt, salt taxes and revolutions, ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and new prosperity from successful trading voyages, antibiotics and the prevention of millions of deaths, and many others.

So I started thinking. What small things that we do every day can have momentous effects on our personal lives?  I immediately thought back to my 21st birthday, when I was going to register to vote. My mother, who was a Republican, said: “Register as a Democrat. You never know.”  At that time my father, also a Republican, was managing a toy factory and one of his foremen was influential in the Democratic Party. He knew all the bigwigs.

A few years later I joined the Foreign Service and was assigned to Dakar, Senegal. I really didn’t want to go there. I wanted to go to Europe. On a Friday I called my father. What can "so and so" do, I wailed. The next Monday, Personnel called me:  I was now assigned to Brussels, Belgium. I called my father. “Don’t do anything. I got Brussels.”

Father said: “The call went out Friday night.”

Later, I discovered Lyndon B. Johnson written in parentheses  on my personnel card. So I owe my husband, who I met at the American Embassy in Brussels, and our two beautiful children, to L.B.J. And to my Mom, for suggesting I register as a Democrat.

That’s not exactly a molecule story, but a story of a small action that brought huge change to my personal life.

Another event, not so small, was my diagnosis of breast cancer that spurred my spiritual journey.  A small event evolving from this larger event was driving by this Center and seeing the sign, Church of Religious Science. “How can religion be scientific?” I mused. I came one Sunday to find out, and never left.

And so it is.