Gamechangers

I was watching a great program on Bloomberg this afternoon on "game changers" and found it amazing to see the potential ripple effect of one person's life. There were three back to back episodes that I enjoyed. Steve Jobs (Apple CEO), John Stewart (The Daily Show) and Mark Zuckerberg (Founder and CEO of Facebook.)

It is fascinating to see how these people shaped their fields, faced their setbacks and became viable by making a "thumbprint" in our history of technology, social commentary or simply in what/how people spend their time.

I recall now, as I sit in a well known coffee chain (rhymes with Cartucks... lol) using the Internet - a meditation that a friend once led on "interdependent arising." It was a great way to consider how the things and objects that we interact with every day came about. The particular book that my friend was reading at the time was called "Glass, Paper, Beans" and explored how at any moment in the modern world you could assess all the things around you and know that they came about through a complex series of causes and conditions.

Current example... I am typing on a small computer (parts consist of metal, plastic, other items)... which were all manufactured before being assembled into a Netbook... and those items were transported by some means from the place they are created to the factory where they became a laptop... and the raw materials of those constituent materials were brought together by other efforts and products to that place where they became "plastic" or "metal" or a "motherboard"... etc., etc., ad nauseum...

And then there are all the people that worked at each place that produced or transported or sold or serviced the pieces and parts and software along the way... all the bugs that the trucks killed on the road while delivering the parts for assembly or to the sales floor...it actually begins to expand frighteningly.

When one begins to explore interdependence... it is fascinating to see how many factors are at play in every moment. Everything you own, or eat, or use came from somewhere that another person had some skill in creating. They designed or assembled or packaged the object, or formed the company or funding for the capital start up. It is an amazing and complex karmic web that we dance in daily... and this observation of these "game changers" made me realize that they are the very OBVIOUS ones. But my thought from my studies and teachers is that we are all points in a Universal unfolding that makes each of us a game changer. Maybe less grandiose, and far less recognizable than, say Mr. Jobs or Mr. Daly (nee Liebowitz... so see, a clerk somewhere must have filed an application or processed paper work to issue that name to this man who many say is revolutionizing journalism and politics as it is represented via media) but there I go digressing again.

Think of the smallest and seemingly least "grand" gesture you make on any given day. Maybe you envision yourself on a ceramic seat laying waste to food your body ate hours earlier. Even at that less than noble moment... you are connecting junctures of karma. In that moment you are the time and space fusion of that roll of waste paper, that food that you chose at a restaurant or grocery store, that gallon of water from the Chesapeake or water source, that toilet model number that one company designed and manufactured and another company purchased where the contractor that built the room you are relieving your bodily functions in designed maybe long before you were even aware of the existence of the town where you now rent an apartment that houses this commode. It is you... right in that moment.... connecting all those precise trajectories of karmic unfolding... and yet you thought you were just pooping! ; )

So take a moment of reflection to relish in the complexity of life. Often we feel impotent or frustrated with the direction or unfolding of our life... when IN TRUTH we are always changing the game. Every breath creates a minuscule shift in the atmosphere around us. Every movement rearranges the very air around us atomically... pushing electrons and protons and neutrons and changing the microcosm that affects the macrocosm. You are involved in miracles even at the dumbest or loneliest or conversely most dramatic unfolding moments of your life. So be mindful of the power and ability that you possess. And maybe in that moment of inspiration - you will spark an idea or give rise to a puzzle piece that will lock into the web of activity that will arise as one of these celebrities. You may write the jingle in the commercial that funds their most successful campaign, or introduce a friend to an associate who together go on to find the company that underwrites the idea that revolutionizes the Internet.... perhaps you serve a well suggested lunch to a court judge one day that inspires a good mood that decides a fair decision that saves a life.

Who knows where you are tapping the main frame... so I inspire you (or at least hope to have you consider) challenging your life and giving rise to greatness in the tiniest of moments of choice and circumstance.)

Peace ya'll. Cherish the moments.