Ripples

I love water, the way it moves, looks, feels, and adapts to whatever contains it...

As many hours as I have spent watching water move, I have spent watching its calm surface reflect everything hovering above it.

I enjoy watching the birds skim its surface, looking for fish or cooling their wings. I like looking through its freshness, curious to discover the sand, rocks and life which lay beneath.

What I like best of all though is the movement formed when elements, such as these two send ripples out farther than my eye can know.

For me, the ripples are reflective of life and how the smallest, least significant-seeming decisions echo forth. Ripples are soft and gentle. They are noticeable yet they neither detain nor disturb us. They may even enhance our enjoyment of the water.

Other ripples, we call waves. Waves are big and loud. They can be seen coming a mile away. The can make us leap with joy or make us panic. They can rock, tip, deafen and sometimes engulf us. Waves change us. They leave us wet, staggering, they can turn us wrong side up, can obscure the light. In the midst of a wave, we lose sight of everyone and everything around us, making it appear as though we are alone. Waves change our perception, our orientation and most often, they carry us back to a place we had already journeyed past, causing us to travel through territory we thought we had already conquered. Some of us seek them, their energy and excitement...

Whether ripples or waves, no creature can move through water without creating a disturbance... not the smallest bug and not the best swimmer.

The same is true of life. No matter what you do or how hard you try, you will not make it to the other side of it unnoticed. You do not have to be a wave-maker. Ripplers will be seen, will be loved, will make a difference to someone just as these two made a difference to me.