The Ripple Effect

The Ripple Effect                                                                                                  171010

            If a stone is thrown into the water, it causes waves to travel on the surface of the water in all directions. The size of these waves depends on the size of the object thrown into the water. Each wave lasts for some time depending on the energy that it has at the beginning. If it has a lot of energy, it will travel a long distance before it gets used up.

            If there are many sources that are causing ripples in the water, these ripples interact with each other causing the size of the disturbance at any point to vary depending on the sizes of the individual waves reaching the same place at the same time. This is referred to as the principle of superposition. If two waves arrive at the same place at the same time, they will interact in such a way that the resultant wave is the sum of the two waves. These waves can add up or cancel each other out depending on whether the two waves arrived as humps or deeps at this point. 

            Life is like a big pool where many individuals are splashing and cooling off in the summer heat. If you sit by the pool while children are playing you will notice that at any given time the water is moving. The movement is random because the disturbances that cause the ripples are also random. Even if the children leave the water for some time, these ripples will continue to move in this random way as if the disturbances are still present.

            Everything that you do today has the same effect in the future. It may be positive or negative but its effects will be felt over a long time to come. The choices that your grandparents made somehow affect you whether you know it or not. They may have decided to migrate to some part of the world that made it possible for your parents to meet and that union produced you. There are many things people can argue as to what would have happened had the grandparents stayed in the original location. All the same, they moved and the decision has produced you. There are many other choices that were made earlier on by other people that made certain things to happen in your life, whether these things are pleasant or not.

            There are times when two events of the past contribute to make other events to happen in the future. These events may have completely different effects depending on the place in which they meet. In the pool, when waves meet they can meet a ‘hump’ and a ‘hump’ producing a supper ‘hump’. These humps are called crests. A trough may meet another trough to produce a big trough. A crest and a trough will have a canceling effect and in some cases produce no wave at all. There are many varying stages in-between these three, which result in different levels of bulges or deeps. If, in real life, you are positioned in such a place and in such a way that the events of the past arrive with a supper hump effect, you may get positive things out of these events. In another place, however, the same events may create disastrous effects. The problem is not in the waves, but in the position in which the individual is standing in the pool. Other places feel no effect, whatsoever, as far as these events are concerned.

            It has happened in the history of sea traveling that ships suddenly find themselves in turbulent waters following serious calm. There may be disturbances in far away places that have very little effect on the big ship as individuals but as they meet in one place, each one contributing its small size to the rest, the resultant wave is big enough to destroy the ship. The people who cause the disturbance may never know about the serious effects it has many miles away. That is the power of the waves if they happen to meet at the right place at the right time.

            Whatever it is that you do has an effect in other people’s lives. This effect can either be good or bad. There are many things that are done in good faith that end up causing some pain in others. This is not what I am talking about. There are many things that we have to think seriously about before we do because the negative effects they have can be felt while we are still around, not deep into the future after we have forgotten we are the cause of the same waves.

            The things you do today have a way of affecting the future in a serious way. Think before you act. The effects may affect others but they have a way of affecting you too if you happen to be in a place where that action’s effects meet other effects that result in either positive or negative results. By choosing to do good things at any given time, you choose to affect the ‘pool of life’ in a positive way, and there is no telling what good these actions can bring back into your life.