I’m house-sitting for some friends. One of the things they asked me to take care of while they’re out of town is to feed the birds. They buy suet in bulk and have seven feeders with suet blocks in various states of consumption.
As requested, I am dutifully filling the suet feeders.
Heres’ the thing, they’re feeding far more squirrels than birds. Five squirrels are fed to each bird, by my estimate.
That is to say, I’ve been watching a log of squirrels go about their lives in the last few days, and I noticed something I found interesting.
Squirrels spend most of their lives in trees, or in the case of the free-loading tree-rats which I’m watching right now, climbing things designed to keep them away from food intended for birds. The interesting thing is, with every move they make, the world responds to their presence. When they jump from limb-to-limb, the limbs give way; both the one they jumped off from, and the one they landed on. The tree-limbs are forever changed from claws grasping them and from the stress of jumping and landing. All this from a one-pound rodent.
As humans, the world around us mainly appears fixed. Apart from doors, cars, and some chairs, when we move, we know the ground, the floor, the stair-steps, will always remain where they were before we got there.
The world we interact with, while it feels stable, is more like those branches the squirrels play on. Each move we make, each interaction we have, each decision, causes a ripple behind us where we were before, and a matching ripple ahead of us where we land. These ripples spread to infinity, intersecting each other, adding to the ripples left by others.
Imagine life as a squirrel. Imagine the universe shifting under your weight with every step, moving with every interaction, and oscillating trying to find the new center of gravity because of the shift you made.
Then imagine if each move was deliberate.
What would the universe look like if you treated every interaction as an opportunity to bring your plan into being?
You are more powerful than you can imagine.