I have the power to create change.

Power at a personal scale is unimpressive and real.

It is the resident who emailed the council about the broken step every fortnight for four months until somebody finally turned up with a bag of cement.

Nothing about that is inspiring while it is happening. It is tedious, slightly embarrassing, and it worked, which is more than can be said for most strongly held opinions.

The scale you can actually touch is smaller than you want and larger than you fear. It usually begins with being the one person who does not assume somebody else has already reported it.