Speak to Me Sunday: Ripples in a Pond

It was a blustery morning, dark and cold, when I entered a local grocery store. Working there was a cashier, an Indian woman, who always smiled warmly at me when she rang up my groceries. I always felt as if I knew her, and the way she interacted with me I felt as if she knew me too, but it never went beyond exchanging smiles and pleasantries.

On that morning, however, with the storm raging outside and the store mostly empty, she stopped ringing up my purchases and leaned forward.

“I don’t know if you remember, but in 2015 you gave me a note with a gift card,” she said quietly. “Do you remember?”

I shook my head.

“I have always kept it. It was such a nice thing to do, and I always wanted to speak to you about it. Then this morning I woke up and said a prayer for you. I prayed you would come in today, but with the storm I did not think it was possible. And yet, here you are.”

“And here I am,” I said, smiling.

As we talked, a vague memory surfaced of a handwritten note but not of the circumstances or the reasons behind it. And I recognized this for what it was, a George Bailey moment whereby I was offered a glimpse of a past action—something I could not even remember—and the impact it had on someone, so much so that she brought it up nine years later.

Every action, no matter how tiny, can change the course of someone’s day. We know this. But it was strangely humbling to be reminded it does not stop there for that single, tiny action—a smile, note, gesture, or kindness—can grow, expand, and reach out in ways we cannot even imagine. Or see. Like ripples in a pond that continue expanding beyond our line of vision, beyond that moment, or even that day.

Sometimes life can be overwhelming, making it all too easy to give up, take a step back, and think there is nothing, absolutely nothing that you can do to make a difference. It becomes all too easy to set up an all or nothing scenario, of dismissing the littles things that have become overshadowed by bigger, louder issues. It becomes all too easy to think “What does it matter?”

But as I was reminded on that stormy morning, it does matter.

More than you think.

“I alone cannot change the world,” Mother Teresa said. “But I can cast a pebble across the water to create many ripples.”