It often feels like the world around us is spinning by and we have very little control over what happens. The most we can hope for is to hang on and hope we survive the experience. The thing is though that we take in the world and ultimately give back to it even when we're not realizing it. Like leaves falling from trees we leave pieces of ourselves in the world. In fact a part of you could have slipped off years ago and traveled the globe. That means we are surrounded by pieces of everyone else as well.
I've mentioned how our perception of the world actually alters it, at least for us. The vast majority of our experience is behind us so however we perceived the world at the time is how we remember it. In that way we shape our own world as it lives inside our heads. The thing is though that by simply walking through the world, we change it. Even not walking through it, we change it. In science there is this idea that even by observing something you alter its behavior. They're not entirely sure why that is, but the act of looking at something can potentially change the way it exists. The same is true with our presence within the world. Think of a pebble being tossed into a lake. At first the ripple effect is small, but before too long the entire lake has been affected by that single pebble. We are all pebbles. Our impact may seem small at first, but our ripples through life keep going long after we've made our splash. The world is forced to behave differently because we're in it. People have to acknowledge your presence, even if it's unconsciously.
The strange thing is that your lack of presence also has a ripple effect on the world. In the movie It's A Wonderful Life, George finds out what the world would be like without him. It's a pretty heavy-handed message about our impact on the world, but for the most part it's true. Now hopefully none of us will have to experience seeing what the world would be like if we never existed. Since we do exist already that means we've already impacted the world and that can't be undone. Throughout life we interact with people and places. As we go through we leave those things forever changed by our passing. In a way the world is now prepared for your presence so if you don't show up, it has to change again to account for that. Now I'm not saying that you're the center of the world and everything is contingent on you being there or not. It's just that we all have a level of impact that in most cases can't be measured even though it's so far-reaching that we can't comprehend just how much we've influenced what's around us. It's something to think about the next time you feel like the world is passing you by and you're just along for the ride. You can change the world just as much as the world can change you.
