Chris Breitenberg (Photo: Mike Brown)“You talk a lot about Gandhi’s message, ‘be the change you want to see in the world’, but what are you actually doing about it? How is that actually affecting your life?”

The words stopped me cold. It was last summer when a good friend put it to me straight. I talk a lot about this message—change starts with me—but it had been some time since I’d really sat down to think about it.

The next morning, I decided to take the challenge into my quiet time. Within seconds, a clear thought came to my mind. You see, the world I want to see is one without walls. But as I thought about it, I realized that I had been building my own.

My family is full of opinionated people, none more so than my grandfather. As a boy, I learned much from his knowledge of news and politics. But as I got older, I started to form opinions very different from his. While this first led to some educational exchanges, the conversations eventually soured.

And so the wall was built. It seemed our relationship boiled down to who could win the argument or make the most incendiary remark. Eventually, I didn’t care to see my grandfather anymore. I had grown bitter and resentful towards him.

So my friend’s challenge yielded a result. A thought came clear to me: “Write and apologize for holding this grudge.” It was a shocking thought. Why should I apologize? He was the one who started it all in the first place. I swore I wouldn’t write the letter.

But the thought stuck with me for months. That’s when another friend came along. He persisted in his encouragement that I write the letter. Finally, five months after the initial thought, I wrote briefly: “Grandfather, I’ve been holding a bad feeling in my heart towards you. I hope that you can forgive me and that we can rebuild our relationship.” His response came a month later, via email no less (he’s not as antiquated as I might like to think). He accepted my apology. He also apologized to me, saying that he had never intended to hurt me nor had he even known that I had been suffering.

But then something very unexpected happened. He wrote about his life and how it had hardened him and how at one point he had lost the capacity to love at all. He wrote of his family’s suffering during the Great Depression. He wrote of difficult relationships in his family growing up. About his time as a soldier in WWII; he went to Europe with 250 men and returned home as one of 6 survivors. He’d been shot twice.

At the end of the letter, humanity had been restored. I’d forgotten my grandfather as a human with his own burdens and wounds. I’d been so consumed with my own feelings that I’d never considered his! My small extension of trust had been returned with an immense wave of willingness—to regain what had been lost and much more, to create something new that would grow and gain in strength.

We don’t ever want to see ourselves as the perpetrators of what we don’t like in the world. But sometimes it takes a good friend or a long honest reflection on our actions to see where we really are and to be real with ourselves. And once we’ve seen it and faced up to it, to believe in the power of a small and simple movement in the right direction. And to know that one courageous step can change everything.

Chris Breitenberg, from Virginia Beach, is a coordinator of Action for Life, an IofC youth training program based at Asia Plateau, India. He will join a team with IofC president Rajmohan Gandhi on his world tour, starting in South Africa in March.

Note: Individuals of many cultures, nationalities, religions, and beliefs are actively involved with Initiatives of Change. These commentaries represent the views of the writer and not necessarily those of Initiatives of Change as a whole.