things that spread

Fear

Ideas

Love

A virus

Anger

Your butt as you get older.

I happen to love a good virus/bacteria/germ story. The movie Outbreak is one of my favorites. A whole town quarantined to keep a virus, contracted from a monkey, from spreading around the world. Here’s this guy with the monkey virus in a movie theater, coughing and sneezing, infecting everyone in the theater. They all go home, unaware, and very sick. They infect their families and so forth and within 24 hours, practically the whole town is sick. All because of one person.

The novel, The Stand is one of my favorites. I especially love the small chapter in the beginning when the author tells how the virus spread…John Doe, who is already sick, eats at a diner where he infects everyone else, including a very gregarious salesman who is on his way to sales convention, a teacher - who goes back to school and infects her classroom who go on to infect every other student and teacher in the school who go on to infect their families and friends, a preacher on his way to a 3 day tent revival, etc…I was fascinated by that. Just one person with a virus…

Last month I read a book called The Hunger Games. The idea was pretty good...

Somewhere in the future, for reasons we don’t know, North American has been divided into 12 districts plus “the capitol”. The people who live in “the capitol”, live the life of luxury while the people who live in the districts are poor, starving, and forced to produce whatever it is their district specializes in. One district mines coal, another plants and harvests fruit, one produces textiles, etc. All of which goes to the capitol. Each year, a boy and a girl are chosen randomly from each district to participate in The Hunger Games. It’s a fight to the death for those 24, televised nationally by the capitol, and the survivor wins a nice home and a lifetime of food and clothing for themselves and their families.

OK, so here’s our protagonist and the boy from her district, the only two left at the end of the hunger games, which is a good thing because this year there gets to be 2 winners. Only the capitol reneges at the end and they are going to be forced to try and kill the other. Rather than doing that, she decides to die on her own terms and not the capitols. They grab some poison berries and just as they’re about to eat them, the capitol gives in and lets them both live. A funny thing happens in the districts after that. Even though there is no source of communication between the districts, (other than what the capitol lets them see) they all see her action to eat the berries as defiance and a very public rebellious move against the capitol. This teenage girl was ready to sacrifice herself rather than let the capitol control her. All across the nation there is a silent and secret revolution about to begin. That idea was so interesting to me. All it took was one girl. One girl who didn’t want to kill her friend. One girl who’s only real thought was, screw you! Just one person.

Imagine it. Just one person is all it takes.

No, I'm not trying to promote rebellion or revolution, although both appeal to me. I was more interested in the ONE factor. You as a single person/spirit/human/entity affect the world in ways you'll never know. Doesn't that blow you away?!