Ripples

About a week ago, I heard a story by Stuart McLean (writer & host of The Vinyl Café on CBC radio and someone who I aspire to write like) which has got me thinking a lot about cause and effect. His story, which I won’t attempt to re-tell here because there would be no way I could do it justice, ended with Stewart musing on how our lives interact like balls on a pool table, colliding and redirecting each other and not always with conscious intent.

For me, it's like someone throwing pebbles in a pond, the ripples radiate out, affecting other ripples on the pond, combining, amplifying, nullifying and altering each other without realizing the effect prior to the ripples colliding.

People interact in much the same way, their actions or words are like pebbles creating ripples, radiating outward affecting others, both intentionally and unintentionally. The nature of the action or words used determines the size of the pebble and the velocity of the drop and, in a related fashion, the size of the ripples created.

Consciously or unconsciously, we have an impact on others, altering their thoughts or feelings or actions; like the ripple from the pebble alters the path of a wayward leaf floating on the surface of the pond or altering the shoreline on another part of the pond when our ripples move and alter the flotsam and jetsam on the shore.

Sometimes, the pebbles are larger than expected and the resultant ripples are large, causing problems for the wayward leaf or far shoreline.

I created one such ripple; almost a month ago now. I didn’t realize how big it was or how much damage it would cause to a good friend’s shoreline. I was trying to strike a blow for self esteem and self worth and as the wave rippled outward, it was distorted and became; me just striking a blow.

The funny thing about ripples is that they radiate out in all directions, hitting far shorelines but also hitting your own; they bounce off of other objects and rebound off of other shorelines and are distorted and magnified and they cause greater damage than they ever intended. In the end, my shoreline has not remained unaffected.

I keep dropping more pebbles in, trying to nullify the effects of the first one I dropped but I don’t have a PhD in wave mechanics or advanced mathematics or whatever it takes to calculate what force needs to be applied and where, in order to nullify the ripple. Maybe that’s where my analogy falls apart, or maybe that’s where it is reinforced.

We all create ripples as we move though life, some big, some small, some good, some not so good, but once that initial pebble is dropped, and the ripple begun, there is little we can do to stop it from radiating outward; once the words are spoken or the action done, we must then live with the consequences, expected or unexpected. "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" – no PhD required. I guess the trick is keeping Newton's Third Law in mind as we move though life.

But eventually all ripples dissipate; with time and space eventually the ripple diminishes and all that is left is to clean up the shorelines. And hopefully, when the clean up is complete, the shorelines will be better for the effort.