Be the crystal-seed of change

crystals forming in a solution

There's a quote attributed to Ghandi: "Be the change you wish to see in the world.  I'd like to add to this idea:  You'll be more effective if you find the right time and place and connect with others. In my HS chemistry class, I learned about supersaturated solutions. Materials with the potential to form crystal structures are heated with water to form a solution (dissolved mixture). Then let it cool.  Now, crystals "want" to form, but need a basic unit of that structure to build around.  

Then you drop in a "seed crystal" (like a grain of salt) and watch the magic happen; the crystal pattern branches out like a complex snowflake.
In my experience, social change is often like this.  
At my high school, lots of people liked tossing discs with friends; I found out about the sport of Ultimate and a team formed, branching out from my knowledge of the game.  
At my college, there was a need for more options for counseling and support and other services; a few people with ideas started meeting and a service networked from us, adding trainers and trainees, and creating an organization and a service that lasted 15 years after I graduated. 
Ghandi too had ideas, adapted from Thoreau, that were a good fit for nations of people dominated by overwhelming physical force; they formed a movement that spread even as it was beat down. Other ideas, such as different ethnic and religious groups living in harmony in India, did not find a supersaturated solution to grow in.  
Martin Luther King is sometimes said to have found a movement ready to happen and he got out in front of it. I would say that his personality and ideas, some of which emerged when he threw away a prepared speech and spoke of having a dream, were the crystal seed around which the movement formed. 

from the wikipedia entry for "seed crystal"

   Be the change you wish to see in the world.  Change will happen when the solution is there, ready to crystallize around you.  Watch for it.  
     We humans can add one more trick that chemicals can't; we can modify the shape of the crystal see, modify the image of the change we wish to see.  Our ideas are already formed in part by the people around us; we may as well do this consciously, choosing ideas that fit our ideas but also fit the people around us are asking for, ready for, and be that version of change.  If you wish to see change in the world, you can find a movement ready to form, and help crystallize it.  Maybe you'll form a team, or maybe the change will spread into something larger, hopefully greater (I qualify this with "hopefully" because:  if change is to spread like a living system rather than to turn to stone and crumble, you must be willing to lose control of change once it begins; but maybe that's a topic for another day).