Ripples – the heartbeat for human progress!

I make ripples everyday. Just like my pulse indicates that I am alive, the ripples I make in life shows I am connected to people. I might have started making short ripples early on in life. When I smiled as a 3 month year old child, my mother would have felt happiness for a few minutes. When I cried, she felt sad. As a toddler, when I babbled, those around me laughed. For a few moments, I helped them forget their worries and sorrows. As I grew up, the ripples I made were more intentional and longer lasting probably. When I grew up and stood for truth and justice, I made ripples. When I cared for others in need, that made ripples. When I was angry and hateful, that made ripples too. When I forgave others who hurt me, I made ripples in those I reached out to. When I took decisions that affected my life as well as others, I made again ripples.

Continuously, I made ripples. Some I knew, some I didn’t know.

However, I didn’t create any ripples when I refused didn’t take a stance.

When I went with the flow, I didn’t make ripples.

When I was silent in the crowd, I didn’t make any ripples.

When I was following without my own thinking, I was not making any ripples.

I know my ripples can be positive or negative. Some I have control over, some I don’t. I know it is important to make consciously positive ripples. I also know that this is a process throughout my life.

The moment I get up from bed, my life is dependent on other people. Some of them, I will never meet personally such as the people who generate electricity for me or the people who produced the milk for my breakfast. But there are others whom I meet everyday – students and colleagues on campus, the driver, housekeeping staff, the security people, the people in the shops I go in the evening, friends who visit us and whom we visit. Even within that circle of people whom I meet, there is a smaller number whom I interact and transact. Those who listen to my words, observe my reactions to situations, who take a note of my responses to adverse news as well as pleasant tidings. Knowingly or unknowingly they get influenced by my words, reactions and behaviors. Those are ripples I make.

Physical ripples start a series of circular waves from center outwards. It may be short and quick or it may continue for a long time. My ripples may start a train of thought, initiate a change in attitude, begin a change in outlook. That may grow to make a change in others around me. In turn they will also be causing ripples in the lives of people in their circles. It may turn out that such affects of ripples can go far and wide – to the next generation and after effects may echo down multiple generations.

Some ripples have overthrown empires, changed cultures, and caused worldwide transformations. A few examples are the ripples made by people such as Buddha, Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa and Nelson Mandela.

In fact everyone makes ripples. Or they can make ripples. In life, ripples is all what everyone makes. But we don’t see it that way. We look at some people and say they were great people and so we need to keep their memories by making statues or naming parks, and buildings after their names. Sometimes we start institutions in their names. Actually that is meaningless. They are gone. They made ripples when they were alive. That had an effect. But after their life is over, it is the ripples that continue – the thoughts, the teachings, the values, the methods, the adventures. But instead of looking at the ripples, we look at the statue, the shape of the person made in bronze or clay. Then we start to adore them and elevate them even to the level of a saint or a god. We worship the person who was.

The real need is for us to be influenced by ripples from others and we should make ripples in our own generations. The names, the physical statue can help a person to remember those ideals the great minds stood for. To rejuvenate and restart the ripples. But often that memory goes to a state of worship of the person. Attributing immortality, infallibility to him/her. That is not right. They probably had follies and short coming which was evident to those around them. Looking back far into the history, we may not see them with those blemishes. it is a universal fact that is true in all of history - everyone of the humans who walked  on the earth had their own weaknesses.

Despite the fact that the world may not know each of us as as much Gandhi’s and the like, still we can have a circle of influence that causes ripples. The effect of the ripples is beyond our imagination. It can transcend time, and ages. If we think on these lines, we will be more careful in our behaviors and actions, attitudes, stances, relationships.