"Showing up" & Inter-connectivity

"Showing up"….

I’m here I’m doing this….I have showed up, they always say that just "showing up" is often the hardest thing to do.  I am scared, afraid…worried that I will fail but I am here thinking about trying rather than denying myself of the opportunity or rather the right I have to take that chance I owe myself to write…that is to be a writ ERrr

Life seems to surprise me, just when when I am ready to run away or call my bluff or be the coward that I want to be because its so much easier to collapse and whither away…somehow I escape from the cage my mind tries to build itself…

I am living I am truly living at this moment addressing my fears head on….or attempting to make that effort to unravel and face them full on…

Inter-connectivity

Today I heard a new yoga teacher teach her first class.  I say heard intentionally here, as she reminded me of something or rather validated a theory that I have known in my heart to be true (therefore the validation was for my mind rather than the intuitive knowingness of my heart), that once heard echoed aloud by another gave it all the validation I needed…that YES someone too thinks the way I do…

She talked about whether the small changes we make in our lives matter or impact not only us but others around us.  What good is it really if we make these changes if we don’t see the result or the good it does its effect…We sort of make changes like recycling verses being wasterful or cycling verses driving…but are we really making an impact, will this really make a difference?

And she said yes, the answer is yes! Her assuredness in the way she said yes struck me, or rather struck a chord, the tone of that yes was somewhere between knowing and not knowing but it was on its way to somewhere new, somehwere higher, an elevated place of thinking and feeling and doing…

I never thought about it, I never thought about truly the impact of my actions on others.  I understand direct impact like not hurting someone with my words but the indirect impact, the indirect impact of my actions… I have contemplated it but not wound up at a conclusion because of the very nature of the question, the impact the conclusion itself was just so indirect from me...

And the conclusion is yes! There is an impact of everything, we are interconnected! I have heard this idea proposed in the movie Before sunrise directed by Richard Linklater…each action has a rippling effect, like the rock that breaks a still waters surface, like the smile you smile at someone and they smiles at another and so on...

I think the air we breathe is a symbol of this, we are all on the same earth….I think about for example in my own life, the change of one thought can change the slope of the line of one’s whole life, the pace at which they move, the direction and ultimately where they wind up. And well if I could help another change the slope of their line then we are changed togther and thats two and if we all collectively changed together, the impact of our change is much larger…we are truly just drops part of the same ocean underneath it all becoming apart of a wave of change, the ocean, the river will flow different if we create a new current!  I look at whats happening with the riots in europe the middle east, the UK and now our own shores in New York. And while Occupy Wall Street may still be formulating and refining what it is that they hope to achieve, the point is they have shown up, and it started with just 1 rippling many into action.

One of the most important visionarys of our time Steve Jobs captured the power behind one individual in this quote  "The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world… Are the ones who do." I mean Steve did it!  It starts with one and then two and then...He revolutionized computing, its accessibility and created a subculture of Apple users, he created a community.

While playing soccer I watched a group of people playing Quiddictch (the outdoor game played in Harry Potter using broom sticks), and I watched these people in awe and a slight air of ridicule as we all did on that soccer field.  But in the few moments of clarity I did have in between my juding, I thought - so this is is how change occurs, someone dares to be different and it seems to catch on...like fire! 

I mean look at the effect of a single yoga teacher's quotes on me, which has lead me to contemplate and write this piece, which you are now reading and may spark you to speak, think or do...

I wonder when I will consider myself wise enough to be the yoga teacher and writer I am within.  But I can say this for now, I am working at it. I have mustered up the courage, the courage that fuels me forward to dare to endeavor to go after something I truly want and while I may possibly experiece the pangs of failure -but oh the taste of triumph…now that is something fighting for!!