The Chemistry of Change

I don't remember much chemistry; it's kind of like Chaos theory in that way, I studied it and then forgot about most of it. But maybe we just study so we have more to draw on when we are making analogies about life. That said, I was thinking the other day about change-- how people change. There was a line in a book I read that said something like "that changed me" and I thought, that small of an incident? Do small every day things change us? Or are we only changed by a move around the world?
Or, to compare it to chemistry, is personal change (or maybe societal and other kinds of change as well) like a precipitation where you add one last chemical and all of a sudden you have a bright orange, anenome-like solid (this happened in one of the better ochem labs) or is it like a titration where you add something drop by drop and the color of your solution goes from clear through a variety of colors and ends up blue (some titrations change color all of a sudden, but I'm not talking about those ones...)?
I'm not sure. Maybe it depends on the person or the situation or maybe it happens both ways. But I've found that I only look for the bright-orange precipitates to appear in my life and that seems more rare. I should rather be looking for the drops that change me-- an unexpectedly thoughtful Americorps workshop here, a ride on a motorbike there, a conversation that I had, or a rainstorm that I watched (can a rainstorm change how you think or who you are?).
I saw this bird in the village yesterday that flutters its wings half the time and closes its wings and drops a bit, then flaps again. It was white and black and striking in the way it moved. And it made me think of something someone had said about there not being many birds near the villages because people eat them (what other source of protein do they have? not many). Thinking about that seems like it could change you a bit, maybe just a shade. Anyway, I'll keep my eyes open for drips of change.