If we let our golf-hero tee up a perfectly spherical golf ball - no dimples - and hit it with a driver, and then magically replaced that same ball with a dimpled ball and replayed exactly the same drive: the dimpled ball would go approximately 200 yards further than the plain spherical ball!! Isn’t that amazing?? Those tiny, tiny dimples, which seem just RANDOM - they don’t seem to be worth anything - change the drive from a 100 yard drive to a 300 yard drive!!
Or, remember that short story by Ray Bradbury, “A Sound of Thunder”? (first published in Collier’s magazine in 1952, it is the most re-printed sci-fi story of all time). It was the story about the guy who went back in time recreationally, but accidentally crushed a butterfly while he was in the distant past. When he returns to the future, it is completely altered on account of the tiny, seemingly insignificant fact that a butterfly’s life was taken.
I think we should change our perspective. Instead of seeing the vastness of the trouble and being overwhelmed, let’s just see individual, tiny ways we can make a difference.
I was listening to Speaking of Faith on NPR this weekend. They had Rachel Naomi Remen on. She’s a physician who’s one of the first physicians to really concentrate on the mind-body connection. Her grandfather was what she describes as “a flaming mystic”. This weekend she talked about how, for her fourth birthday, her gift from her grandfather was to be told the story of how the world was created.
He told her that, in the heart of the sacred darkness, suddenly there was a light. And that light was in a sacred vessel. But, she said, because it was a Jewish story, there was an accident!! The vessel was dropped, and the light shattered into a thousand thousand pieces. And we’re here to gather the light back - it’s lodged deeply inside each of us.Part of the point of this story is that we are exactly what is needed to heal the world. Each one of us. And Rachel Naomi Remen asked herself, “how would I live, if I believe I was exactly what was needed to heal the world?”
Now, THERE’s an interesting perspective!! Instead of being overwhelmed by how much there is to do, believe that the small thing that you CAN do is EXACTLY what is needed!!
I think those small things are WAY smaller than we realize. I think we are still caught up in, “oh, but I can’t really donate EVERY Thursday evening to working at the soup kitchen!! I’m WAY too over-scheduled as it is!”
RIGHT!!! We ARE way too over-scheduled!! But, what if we didn’t change anything on our schedules - but we changed the WAY we did everything on our schedules??
No, no, no!!! NOT a big change - only this: what if we just connected with everyone we encountered. What if, instead of looking inside our heads at our spinning thoughts, we just made eye-contact with the other humans we encountered, and just smiled.
What if, just by being pleasant and acknowledging the humanity of the others on this planet, we made everyone else’s day just one iota better - by just sharing a smile? Nothing larger than that. Nothing larger than a butterfly. Or a dimple on a golf ball.
I think that could make an enormous, profound difference.
Coming next: River View Miniature Golf, St. Charles, Illinois
Well, this was an interest article from the Mini Golf Diaries. I still don't understand how the dimples make the ball travel farther.
ReplyDeleteBut what I do know is that the belief by Jews, particularly those who study Kabbalah, that "Tikkun Olam" (literally, "world repair") is the responsibility of each person is a fairly serious belief.
Rachel Naomi Remen's grandfather was probably called a flaming mystic because he obviously believed in and practiced some form of Kabbalah. Kabbalah is a mystical sect of Judiasm that is quite interesting and has very little to do with Madonna's little red wrist string.
They believe that when G-d created the world, his divine light was contained in special vessels, or kelim, some of which shattered and scattered. This is the reason that the tribes of Israel (i.e. Jews) were divided and scattered across the earth - so that we can restore the divine sparks that are in each of us by doing good deeds (called mitzvot) which will light the way for the Messiah. It is believed that this can be done only by taking human responsibility for fixing what is wrong with the world.
It is an interesting belief, is it not? In a sense, although it feels like we pray an awful lot, the Jewish religion teaches that we cannot fix the world with prayer. We can only fix the world by fixing the world, i.e. taking personal responsibility, beginning with ourselves.
Sort of like a hole in one. You can pray for one if you want to, but in the end you have to hit the ball all by yourself. Happy golfing!!