Baby Steps

When babies learn how to walk they make all kinds of mistakes.

I don't remember making mistakes when I learned how to walk but I do remember our boys making walking-mistakes when they were about a year old. And, I know this is common because I have seen every one of my friends' and relatives' babies do it.

Sometimes babies' little legs give out and they fall straight down, onto their little behinds. Sometimes they trip over the smallest of obstacles. Sometimes their little feet just slip right out from under them...and down they go. Sometimes their little hands cling to things like tables, they walk a bit while they are holding on then fall down as soon as they let go of the tables.

Babies fall down a lot.

And while that is going on people applaud them...especially parents and grandparents and other close relatives. They don't mind it at all when babies make all those baby-step mistakes. In fact, many of them seem to derive great joy from these experiences. Often, people carry on in celebration of the failed baby steps...encouraging all the babies to keep on taking more and more baby steps.

I suspect this is a world-wide phenomenon...a baby-step pandemic.

Why?

Why do people put up with let alone derive great joy out of all these baby-step errors?

Perhaps, the answer lies in a 200 year old quote from William Drayton, American politician and author:

"Change starts when someone sees the next step."

Maybe people see the baby's next step?

Maybe, when people see that next step it is a fine step?

Maybe people always see a fine next step?

Maybe it doesn't matter if the baby makes a mistake...it is always a fine step?

Maybe babies, who illustrate to us just how challenging a baby step can be, help interested people see Change before it happens?