A Drop in the Bucket

A drop in the bucket.  Insignificant.  Yet, if you leave a bucket under a faucet with a slow drip, it will fill up, gradually and imperceptibly, but surely - it will fill up, even overflow.

Once, on a pier in Ventura, we saw a boy lean over the railing and spit into the ocean.  He'd work up the spit in his cheeks, pucker his lips, and spit, leaning out farther to watch the glob kerplunk into the ocean twenty feet below.  Did he think he could raise the water level of the ocean?  Was he trying to time his spit-drop to hit the height of the swell as it rolled through?  Was he trying to bonk some poor little fish on the head?

The Huntington Beach Pier on a rainy day just before Christmas

It was funny to watch him spit over and over into the ocean.  In his mind, though, it was a serious business. 

My efforts feel like that sometimes.  Just a drop, imperceptible in the ocean swells swirling around me. But I can be sure, as the drop dripping continuously into the bucket, one by one, my little trickle of effort will make a difference.