Ripples of Our Life

“Just as ripples spread out when a single pebble is dropped into water, the actions of individuals can have far-reaching effects.” - Dalai Lama

At the beginning of this new year, there seems to be a pessimism that the world is in the doldrums. Worse is the cynicism that people feel like there is nothing they can do to change it. For some people the hopelessness strikes deeper – a feeling that they are inconsequential, a nobody leading an insignificant life that will soon be forgotten after they die. The good news is that perception is not always reality.

Every decision that we make casts ripples and impacts the world.

(Right now you’re probably rolling your eyes and thinking “this guy hit the egg nog hard this holiday season”. Stick with me though.)

Going through your day you interact with dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of people. These are both people that you see, but also the ones you don’t see behind the scenes. The choices you make effects each of these people and influences their lives. For example, if you chose to go to Starbucks for a coffee in the morning you are reinforcing the supply lines that start with the farmers looking over the coffee trees, to the merchants transporting it, to the employees at Starbucks making and selling the coffee. Your purchase continues to provide assistance to all of these people and helps their jobs. You could have just as easily patronized a different coffee house giving support to those employees or forgone coffee completely in the morning reducing the economic support for the whole coffee industry. This pattern repeats itself in everything we chose from our means of transportation to the shows we watch on TV.

The same can be said about the nature of how we interact with one another. Think about in your own life and how you respond to a person yelling and cursing at you compared to a person that is polite and smiling. We tend to respond better to the nicer person. Have you noticed a difference in your day after dealing with a negative person? Back in 2000, the National Institute for Health published an article detailing how negative interactions with other people hurt our own emotional and physical well-being, often even transferring it on to others (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4651456/).

More recently psychologists have started to look at how the news we consume impacts our lives. Psychology Today recently ran a feature article on just this topic (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-modern-brain/201909/how-negative-news-distorts-our-thinking). No surprise, that news stories pointing out bad things stay with us longer and influence how we see the world. In a similar way, negative interactions with people tend to stick with us longer and influence us. If we see the world as a bad place, have poor interactions with others, we are more likely to see the negative side of things moving throughout the day.

Finally, perhaps the most important interactions are with the younger generations. The interactions you have with them helps to influence their development. If you have children, when you come home from work do you spend time with them, review their homework, learn about their concerns and help them make sense of the world? Do you give them iPad and tell them to go play Fortnite in their room so you can have some quiet? One reinforces the importance of relationships and education, while the other reinforces that you want to be left alone. As you get older, which group of people would you prefer make decisions about your social security?

I remember when I was a boy, I was playing outside laughing and being loud with some friends. My father came home from work and was upset about the way things had gone for him at the office. He came out and yelled at us to quiet down and told my friends to leave. I was mad. The next day, walking to school, I remember yelling at the crossing guard and being in a foul mood in general. Of course I was able to work through my own anger, but not before I had sent several of my own negative ripples out into the world.

#Found #Lost #Relationships #Paradigm #Change