16 days to go...

Vietnamese wisdom holds that if you want to change things, you should take many small steps. At least that is what I was told several years ago. It is possible that this wisdom has itself changed by now.

Change can also be achieved in dramatic style, in one big step. Like the NASA woman astronaut who is reported to have attacked a rival for the charms of the man she liked. Her pictures in court are now in world wide circulation. A sad story, a negative result.

I find it more difficult to think of cases where dramatic change have produced something positive in one big step. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech? Gandhi’s salt march? Several bloodless revolutions around the world? Such events opened the door for positive changes, but they still required many small steps to deliver on their promise.

I think the Vietnamese were right. Most positive changes seem to be the result of many small steps. And in Hanoi, the positive changes of Vietnamese-style economic development are clear to see. The difference with 1988, when I visited this charming city for the first time, are like night and day. The indomitable efforts of the Vietnamese people, step by step, have clearly paid off.

With pictures of death and destruction continuing to dominate the world news day after day, I find it uplifting to see in this city that humanity could make things better, even when they started out from difficult conditions like here in Viet Nam.

Perhaps it is equally true that when societies focus more attention on violence and problems, these keep multiplying, and produce more of the same.

Focusing on positive change is best. And I think that this is not an artificial way of dealing with life, although many of the authors’ smiles on American self-help books strike me as plastic.

In the Kinokuniya bookstore I visited in Jakarta a few days ago, the self-help books section is named “self enrichment”. I thought that title was just right.

Self enrichment in the positive sense, both personally and in society, seems to be a process of change through many small steps, and I am learning this day by day.

Photograph: Hanoi residents enjoying a break at a sidewalk café.