Following Your Passion

What makes you really angry? What causes you deep sadness? What do you fear? What touches your heart? That’s the best place to start practicing nonviolence. It takes a long, long time to bring about change. You have to be really passionate about the issue in order to stay with it long enough to have an impact.

You’re never too young to start caring. Many of the leaders in this book were following passions that they’d held since childhood. They had to wait until they were grown to join or start movements. But their early sense of injustice and their desire to do something about it became the foundation of their life’s work.

You’re never too young to get involved. In 1982, many people feared that the U.S. or the Soviet Union would launch a nuclear bomb. A 10-year-old girl from Maine named Samantha Smith was worried about the possibility of a war. She wrote a letter to Soviet President Yuri Andropov. “I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war,” she wrote. “Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you aren't please tell me how you are going to help to not have a war.”

President Andropov replied to her letter and invited Samantha to visit the Soviet Union. At a time when the governments of the two countries were bristling with threats, one young girl managed to make a human connection and start a conversation.