Sometimes I pause, look at exactly what I'm working on, and am stunned by the sheer audacity of it all. Oftentimes when people ask me what I do for a living or what I learned in school, I'll reply "hacking the universe," and... well, it's true. I learned it from many people who are far better than it than I am, alongside many friends who are also becoming skilled at it in different ways, places, and disciplines than I. And it's not that we suddenly (or even gradually) gained superhuman powers... we're still ordinary people doing ordinary things.
But the ways and the places and the tiny shifts of intonation and timing with which we do these things - somehow, they add up to nudge and nudge and roll the world into a position where it might, might sometimes tip over into being a better place than it was before, a cascade of thousands and millions of little acts over time that sink in, sink deep, and make that transformation last. Everybody does these tiny things, but one of the qualities I value most about my friends and colleagues is that they're conscious of it. They live their lives with deliberate intent, so that these small actions they make do add up to make the change they'd like to see in the world.
I am so unbelievably lucky.