I saw these words on the Facebook page of a woman I follow called Karen Salmansohn and upon reading them, immediately knew that I had to share them with all of you.

Karen shared her story of her father’s death.  The day after he passed away, her mother gave her an envelope marked with her name.  In it were some pages torn out of a book – pages that she had sent her father while she was a teenager.  He’d kept them all those years and had wanted to give them back to her after he’d gone.

Her post, and the words written on those torn out pages touched me deeply on many levels.

I hope you gain something from them too…

“Everything that is not given, is lost.”

Read those words again – and really take them in.

“Everything that is not given is lost.”

This is a potent wake-up call.

Because we are mortal, every talent, skill, ability we possess, every thought and feeling we ever have, every beautiful sight we ever see, every material possession we own, will ultimately be lost.

UNLESS WE SHARE IT.

Unless we give what we have to others – to our spouse, our children, our friends, our neighbours – to the strangers we encounter on our path – what we know and value will be irrevocably and utterly gone.

BUT…

If we give freely of our minds, hearts, spirits – who we are – then what matters most to us will never die – but will live forever in the psyches of not only all those who know us – but everyone who encounters them – and then everyone who encounters those who knew them – in an infinite regression of mysteriously unseen effect.

That’s why the metaphor of a pebble in a pond is so potent.

We toss the pebble of our soul into the pond of life and ripples are created.

If we hoard ourselves – our gifts, our talents, our love, our thoughts, our feelings, our insights, our words – we will make a very little splash and the ripples will soon end.

But if we give fully, with abandon and abundance, the ripples go out infinitely, overlapping and intermingling with other souls.

Viewed this way…what kind of ripple do you want to be?