The 2848th Drop

Once upon a time there was a woman with a leaky faucet.  drip....drip....drip.... the drops fell consistently and endlessly.  The plumber wouldn't be there to fix it for another 30 minutes, and she didn't want to waste water, so she put a cup underneath the faucet.  drip....drip....drip.... the drops didn't seem to be amounting to much.  But she had nothing better to do, so she counted the drops.  drip...one...drip...two...drip... 2847 drips later, the plumber showed up to fix her leak.  She pulled the cup out of the sink to give him room to work.

She now had a cup full of water.  Time to celebrate.

As she looked at her cup of water and thought about how many drops of water it took to fill it.  Their combined effort made a great way to quench her thirst.  Together they made something great that no one drop could have done by themselves.

"Sounds like life," she muttered to herself, "we're not much good as individuals unless we work together."

The plumber overheard her musing.  "Pardon?" 

She motioned to the dripping faucet and then to the cup of water in her hand.  "This cup has 2827 drops of water in it," she explained and quickly waved away his bemused expression.  "But it doesn't really make a difference if there is 2826 drops or 2828.  It's the combined effort that makes the drink."  

The plumber nodded thoughtfully.  He looked at the leaky faucet and then looked back to the woman.  "No, they wouldn't make a difference because it's just ordinary water.  But one drop can make a big difference in that glass."  

She looked at him quizzically, "What do you mean?  One more drop wouldn't make a big difference at all, even if it was the purest bottled water that you could find.  It still would be only one drop."  

A slight smile tugged at his lips.  "Wait right here," he said and he went back out to his car.  He returned with a grocery bag.  Without a word of explanation, he reached in and pulled out a little box.  And in that box was a little dropper filled with a blue liquid. "May I?" he asked with his hand extended.  The woman handed him the glass of water which he then set on the table.  

He lifted the dropper up and let one drop of blue food coloring fall into the glass.  It swirled down through the water, a startling contrast of solid blue amid the clear white.  The plumber quietly went back to work, letting the food dye speak for him.

The water was still the same volume, the one drop didn't change that aspect of it.  But in a few minutes, without any effort on anyone's part, the entire glass of water was tinted a light blue.

It was the 2848th drop, and with it, everything changed.

"There is power in the individual," he spoke as he worked.  "One person can make a difference.  The key is, they must rise from the ordinary and conventional, and become something greater.  When they master that, they can change everything."

The woman picked up her glass of 2848 drops with a smile.  Ordinary water had just become extraordinary to her, in more ways than just the color.  The plumber stood, the faucet fixed.  She shook his hand in gratitude.  

"Thank you."

He nodded with understanding in his eyes, picked up his grocery bag, and left.

The woman sipped at her blue-tinted water.  With a thoughtful look at the drink, she drank the rest of it, set the empty glass in the sink, and hurried out the door.  

It was time to do something more.