you cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. what you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make. ~~dame jane godall
do you wake up each morning with the knowledge, the deep inside knowledge, that you will make an impact? everything we do, think, say, believe, hope, dislike, condemn, praise, love has an impact. much of this is invisible to others and, more importantly, to ourselves.this impact isn’t only about deciding to recycle an empty milk bottle or yesterday’s newspaper (though that makes a difference too). the impact we each make is much farther-reaching than we can imagine.as elders we are called upon to consider how our lives have effected others and how we continue to influence those close and those far from us. knowing that we become responsible in a much larger way than we might have imagined earlier. and we are then called upon to act in ways that have a positive effect.we can choose to make a difference, as goodall has done with her remarkable work with chimpanzees and in defence of the wild. our choice may not have the massive impact her’s has had, and yet, each of us has the strength to choose how we live, speak, think, believe, care and love. we have each made hundreds of thousands of choices of decades of life. we can now choose to live knowing that we make an impact.it’s the butterfly effect.
a small change in one state can result in large differences in a later state. a small change in our thinking can have massive effects on other ‘states’…our own internal state, the state of our relationship to others around us, the state of our actions in the world.one of the ways we can change our thinking, and therefore our actions, is through spiritual practice. we might become more mindful, more calm, more insightful, more willing, and able ,to bear the unbearable and more able to live with serenity and grace…even through the hard stuff of life.from that state we can then make choices whose impact is beneficial to those concerned and to the planet Herself. we may even make history!