Are You a Rippler

I was recently on a world expanding trip to Tanzania. I was working with an amazing organization called Global Volunteers. My task was to ask questions and gather data to initiate a project that is intended to reduce stunting and raise cognitive funtion for villagers in the Iringa Region of Tanzania.

I think I have always been a rippler.

Rippler: A person who starts and/or continues ripples in hopes that those ripples will grow, merge with other ripples, and begin something beyond us all.

Yes, that is my definition but I think it fits for so many.

I wonder if it is odd that I found myself standing in the spot where it feels like life began – that thing that started as result of an event much beyond a ripple – and I was being pulled on to another huge event, in that moment in time, that is so much more than a ripple and might be hard for me to turn away from.

I know this all sounds oh so dramatic but I believe it is no coincidence that I was standing, geographically, at a spot where the first humans walked on the Earth, feeling like I was at the start of something big.

The energy was so different. I could feel it and, for that moment and even now, it was beyond what I understand. What I do understand is that the project I am still watching unfold is not about making ripples, it is about the start of a wave.

Stepping in and riding that wave is completely new when you are used to making ripples.

Ripplers beware – momentum is growing and we need to expand with it.

       – Ruth