We must be the change we wish to see in the world. –Mahatma Gandhi

Jane and I were teachers. We came to that work along two different paths that, in retrospect, were eerily similar. After college, I worked in retail, worked as a file clerk, tried my hand at freelance writing. For a time I was jobless, taking whatever day labor I could find. Eventually, I went back to school, got my teaching certificate–but could still not find regular employment. I substituted in Newton and in Brookline on and off for over a year before I finally found a full-time job teaching in Gilford, NH.

When Jane left school, she found work at Morton Hospital in Taunton as a lab tech. She drew blood, did urine tests, looked at samples under a microscope. One night she was on alone when she encountered a problem with a blood test that needed to be done for a pregnant woman. There was no one she could ask. She eventually figured it out, but decided she did not like the feeling of helplessness she’d had because her training didn’t cover what she felt it should have. She was a biologist and a chemist–not a lab technician–by training. The test was one lab techs learned in school in classes she never had. She wondered how many other things she did not know that she should–and whether someday her ignorance would get someone killed.

She went back to school and got her teaching certificate–and immediately found a job in Westport. That was one of the differences between being a science major and an English major in those days: there was always a greater demand for science teachers.

Our approaches to what teaching was about , however, could not have been more similar. Teaching was not giving kids long columns of things to memorize: it was about teaching them to think and to analyze–and then to communicate those thoughts and analyses to others. We both believed that when people could think and analyze and communicate, the world would be changed in significant and positive ways. We dedicated our lives to that ideal–and in the process had an impact on the lives of dozens, perhaps hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives.

Jane was the change she wanted to see in the world. There can be no more fitting monument to her life than for each of us to go forth and do likewise.

So as you celebrate this weekend, take a moment to envision the world, not as it is, but as it could be: a world without want, a world of true freedom and equality, a world with less disease and less suffering. Then think about the small things you can do to bring that world into being.

And in the new year, begin to do them where you are: work to end hunger in your city, your town; work to end homelessness in your city, your town; work for equal rights; work to preserve freedom; choose a disease and work to cure it; visit the sick; help a stranger; teach a child.

To quote George Washington Carver: “Put down your buckets where you are.”