It was on a day like today (sunny, a touch warm, with spring smells in the air) some nine or ten years ago that I had a revelation at a park in North Seattle.

I have never shared that a-ha moment with anyone until today.

I was watching a duck paddle its way in a very large pond. I watched the waves from its movements spread in concentric circles around it.


The waves continued spreading. For seconds, then over a minute. For feet, and then for tens of yards.

The ripples from that action continued until they filled the whole pond and hit the shores. That one little duck’s paddling impacted the whole pond. Hmmmm. 

Meanwhile, I had been doing some mental mathematics beyond my own abilities regarding stars.

When I looked up at the night sky and saw a star, I realized I was a single point on a sphere that was……well it must be HUGE. I cannot do the math of a sphere with a diameter of 100 light years, but it is astronomical. And every point on that sphere (where not blocked) was receiving the light from that star, too. Holy moly! What an impact! And the light kept flowing past to more and more planets unseen.

All these waves, all these forces, all these outputs intersecting, and continuing to flow and intersect. I felt something akin to awe.

But let me get to where this gets personal. Sometimes I doubt myself and my life choices. It could have been simpler and easier to stay in corporate IT than become a psychotherapist. Maybe, I think every once in a while, the personal development workshops I fought so hard to run in the early Aughts, my spiritual community, or the men’s work (the ManKind Project) that I am so passionate about now are just crazy, fanciful wastes of time.

That’s when I turn to waves and ripples.

For the work I do, and all the people working on love, healing, growth, education and expansion are doing, is creating ripple after ripple, wave after wave.

And each person then impacts those around them – spouses, children, siblings, friends, clients, co-workers. Ripples move others. Waves create new wavemakers. The waves of those around me and those that came before me helped me get where I am today.

What is your legacy going to be? Are you ready to consciously make some waves?