There once was a little pebble up on a mountain top. Part of the mountain-top jutted out like a cliff overhang. It overlooked the valley below. A mean and surly rancher lived in the valley below. He was a bully. He always had to have things his way. He figured he knew what was best for himself and everyone else too! This bully would stop at nothing to get his own way. He pushed, shoved, connived, cursed, walked on, and kicked whomever he had to or wanted to in order to get his way.
His favorite place to have a fit was up on top of that mountain. He would go up there and curse and kick things around. Every time he had a fit, he'd kick that little pebble too. The little pebble got kicked closer and closer to the edge of that cliff until, one day the bully kicked him right over the edge. “Hmmph”, the rancher snorted, and went on back down the mountain.
The little pebble landed on a loose clump of dirt. The dirt clump rolled with the pebble and together they picked up small twigs and more loose clumps of dirt. Down, down, down the mountain they rolled slowly over time.
One day the rancher was clearing some land at the foot of the mountain. He'd been having a particularly hard time with a dead root that was sticking half out of the ground. He pulled and tugged and kicked and cursed. Finally, bound and determined to have his way, he dug and dug around the root until most of it was exposed. Then he took his axe and began to hack away at it furiously.
After some time, he'd finally cut through the root. “Hah!” he snorted, “At last, something's going my way!” He pulled the root out of the ground and stepped back to admire his handiwork.
Just then he heard a rumbling sound. He looked up just in time to see the mountain rushing down at him. The surly and bullying old rancher was buried beneath alive under a mountain of dirt. At the top of the heap of dirt lay the little pebble he'd kicked over the edge awhile back.
That's how even the tiniest thing, when pushed over the edge, can be fatal.
