Ripples #949: Slight Adjustments!
July 31, 2017
PEBBLE
We take almost all of the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious.
-W.G. Sebald, another great find by Leslie in Madison, WI (who has been scrounging up fabulous Pebbles & Boulders since our first year of Rippling…way back in 1999!)
BOULDER
Your life is like Tetris. Stop playing it like chess. It’s choosing, on a fundamental level. It’s taking these random experiences as they slowly fall down the screen of life and rotating them 360 degrees; moving them two rows left and three to the right; examining them from new vantage points so as to make them fit into the grander mosaic of our lives. Tetris, not chess. If you think you’re in checkmate, you can choose to flip the table and play something else.
-Jeremy Mathurin, 2016 Hamilton College student commencement speaker
shared by Dave, Silver Spring, MD
PONDER
It can be tempting to daydream about the BIG shifts that we think would improve our lives: if only we could snag that dream job/house/relationship or radically improve the country/world/universe. Whenever I find myself lost in those daydreams, I try to remind myself that while the big changes sound exciting and life-altering, it is the myriad small decisions we make each day that have a more significant impact on our lives.
Studying for the mid-terms and showing up for the final exam are essential, of course, but your daily decisions about whether to go to class and how many minutes you’ll study have a far bigger impact on your academic success. It’s important to go to the dentist a few times a year, but the bigger impact on your dental health are the daily decisions you make about whether to brush and floss. And while relationships can be deepened or destroyed by single events, most of our cherished connections are made by lots of small deposits: texts and chats and lunches and walks and such.
Let’s make this week about recognizing and seizing the small, everyday choices we have available to us, and explore how these SLIGHT ADJUSTMENTS might expand our options and improve our outlook.
Peace,
Paul
The Ripples Guy
