The Ripple Effect
How It Changes the Lives of Everyone
As a climbed into my car this morning and waited for the garage door to go up, I realized that it had been a while since I had picked up my newspaper from the driveway before going to work. Currently, it’s my habit to pick it up as I walk into the house in the evening upon returning home. It didn’t use to be that way. As I contemplated this, something else dawned on me.
The smallest change in our daily routine can cause a ripple effect that has the potential to change the lives of others. Even the smallest difference in a habitual action can change the world. It is just another version of the butterfly effect, but the potential is in every one of us.
Over the past four years, I have slowly de-cluttered, re-organized and re-distributed the contents of my garage. It has been hard work, but I have finally reached the point where I can park my car inside. This winter, I will not have to brush snow off my car or scrape frost off my windshield.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, the act of parking my car inside my garage changed the lives of several of my neighbors. Prior to using my garage for its intended purpose (parking my car), I had to walk down the driveway every morning. Within feet of the driver’s side door, was the newspaper which had been hastily tossed from a moving car. I would pick it up, toss it towards the front doorstep and return to my car.
During the past 4 years, I watched the elderly couple who live two doors down become ever more frail with each passing day. Their newspaper was also waiting for them at the end of their driveway. As a result, I made the conscious decision to take a few extra moments each day to cross the lawn, retrieve the Wilson’s Windsor Star and toss it next to their front door.
Parking in my garage changed all that. I found out that the paper delivery person tossed my paper at the end of the driveway to avoid hitting my car, which was still parked out in the elements. When I began parking my car inside, the delivery lady tossed it right up against the garage door where I would leave it until I came home at the end of my day.
Does Mr. Wilson now have to go to the end of his driveway and pick up his own paper? No, it turns out that he doesn’t.
There is a rather spoiled dachshund named Pippa that lives down the street with her mama. Pippa doesn’t like to get her feet wet, so her mama has always walked on the opposite side of the street which has a sidewalk. I didn’t realize that the wiener dog and her human took their morning stroll at the same time that I was leaving for work; I just never noticed them. But they noticed me.
Pippa’s mama also noticed that the Wilson’s paper was no longer being wielded at the front door like a fast ball gone astray (admittedly, my aim has never been that great). Pippa doesn’t like me much anymore, because now her mama makes her walk on the other side of the street where they can stop, pick up the Wilson’s paper and place it, gently, of course, on their front step. As a result, Pippa gets her feet wet in the gutter.
But it also means that Mr. Wilson will not have to pick his way gingerly down the driveway on an icy, cold winter’s day, risking the chance of slipping and breaking a hip, and leaving his ailing wife alone at home to fend for herself.
If that alternate reality were to occur, the elderly couple would probably be forced to move into some sort of retirement facility, I would end up with new neighbors, and Pippa would once again put on her air of superiority as she pranced along the sidewalk with dry feet. All because I park in my garage.
Never, ever doubt that even the smallest of actions can have a lasting ripple effect on the lives of everyone around you. It matters, it really does.
