The note on the lift door

In a building in Alexandria, one resident has started separating plastic from the rest of the rubbish, and wants the neighbours to do the same. One evening a note goes up on the lift door. It is well written. It explains how much plastic ends up in the sea, and adds, in a line that took some care, that anyone who cannot manage two bags is choosing not to.

Everything in the note is accurate. Nothing in the building changes.

The note made a point. It showed that its writer cares, knows more, and is not afraid to say so. That is satisfying, and it is not nothing. But it altered nobody's evening, because it was written from where the writer stands, not from where the neighbours do.

The neighbours do not know where separated plastic goes, and suspect it all ends up in the same truck. They do not feel the writer's urgency. Some of them do not want a second bag in a small kitchen. None of that is unreasonable from inside their flat.

Making a difference starts there. It asks you to step, for a moment, into how the other person sees it, and to work from that. Perhaps it means finding out who collects the plastic and telling people. Perhaps it means a sack hung by the bins rather than a lecture by the lift.

A point hands people a story about you: that you are right, and probably a bit much. A difference hands them a story about themselves: that they live in the kind of building that does this.

The first is easier, and it feels safer. Only the second moves anyone.