We help to build one another

Do you sometimes worry about whether you have an impact on people?

I find myself chuckling as I think back to when my daughter was seven or eight years old. I wanted to be a good dad and give her good advice. I would repeat phrases of wisdom again and again, like “I appreciate your positive attitude and kind tone of voice.”

It was like I thought she spoke a different language and couldn't quite hear me. Then one day she said back to me, “I know, Dad, I'll try to have a positive attitude and a good tonal voice.” First of all, it seems she had misunderstood the literal words “tone of” all this time, but more importantly, she had totally gotten the message.

The wisdom given to me

It's unfortunate that we don't always know when we've impacted someone positively. We don't really have positive feedback loops built into society. Yet, I would say our work spaces, our online media spaces, and our political spaces are extensions of our family spaces. In our families and elsewhere, so many of the things we do have an impact.

I remember my first year of teaching at Montgomery High School in Santa Rosa. I had a mentor teacher assigned to me as part of the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA). Her name was Brenda. She had orange spiky hair, and she made me feel so loved and appreciated as I struggled to learn the ropes.

Back in 7th grade I remember the librarian Mr Conway, an elderly skinny man who most students knew only in passing. He initiated the purchase of the first student computers at school, and somehow I and three or four other students found ourselves in a special class to learn Logo, a basic computer graphics drawing program based in mathematics. I spent many later years advancing my computer drawing skills learning about fractals, and now I lean heavily on my computer programming skills to verify mathematical ideas in physics. Mr Conway gave me a gift that I wasn't aware of at the time, and of course he didn't know what the impact would be.

At Burning Man last year, when I had started having trouble with my coordination playing guitar, I still got on stage for an open mic. I almost didn't. My performance felt mediocre, but I sat back down afterwards without judgment of myself, feeling unconditional love. Then a woman came up to me and handed me a note written on a jagged scrap of paper that I still have. It read: “Your songs changed my heart and blessed my soul. Thank you, I needed to hear them. Burn bright.” She reminded me that sometimes the music is not for me, it's for others.

At my family holiday party last year, I received the nicest gift of the group, given to me by my sister-in-law: a handmade divination tool with inspirational words written on slabs of wood, and a poem that read “Holder of possibility, holder of pain and hope, Holder of fertile darkness and expanding light.” The time I've spent with her, my brother, and my nephews and nieces had impacted them.

We contribute to one another

Whatever our purpose is, when we take actions with that purpose we cause transformation. We are interconnected to each other, and the deeper connections we nurture, the more impact we have. Thank you, to those who have impacted me and given to me. You're welcome, to those whom I have impacted.

Welcome to a Leap to Wholeness

We are starting a new series of social media posts around my second book, Leap to Wholeness, How the World is Programmed to Help Us Grow, Heal, and Adapt. One of the big themes in the book is identifying the filters that color the way we look at the world and ourselves. When we can identify a filter or belief we have, without trying to change it, we naturally start to see it better and it's easier to see beyond it. I offer this as a way of healing our old patterns of behavior.