“I alone cannot change the world,
but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.” ― Mother Teresa
This quote has forever been framework as part of a ‘belief
system’ humans have embraced in many context forms. This week, I realized this quote has
multiple dimensions beyond the surface.
Now we must move into a new mindset about what this means, ultimately
allowing its own evolution to transform with how we once perceived what was
possible. Could it be that when we first digested Mother Teresa’s quote that we
did not see BEYOND IT? Everything that
sits before the comma (WHAT I CROSSED OUT ON PURPOSE) may have done the human psyche/self-esteem a disservice if we
accept it as part of our soul’s pathway, TODAY.
In other words… as humanity, with our ‘new normal’ we should
focus on the positive of WHAT WE CAN DO to create as many ripples of change as
possible.
Amen. Apologies to Mother Teresa…
But I believe as life
shifts as does the vibration of energy and our moments within history, we must
continue to not belittle ourselves. One
person thought of sewing face masks when there were none; one person thought of
helping their neighbor; one person decided to sing outside of a loved one’s
nursing home; and the ripple? Well, that
is now cast widely across all of the oceans and therefore – we must indeed embrace the power of what
ONE PERSON CAN DO to start the ripple.
Perhaps it is best to focus on everything after the comma, eh?
If we think about ONE person staying home can save thousands of lives in a ripple ---- Whoa, yes, we have now tweaked the narrative a bit at what one person can do in a positive light.
Let’s start with the wide open road that millions of people
are working with right now as humans search for rest stop map plotting of where
Covid-19 will take us in reality of health, life, livelihood, logistical
structure, contortion, acceptance, adaptation, and shape-shifting, and the
future reality of our dreams.
Yes, Lovelies… that’s quite a mouthful underneath what is
now our daily mask we must wear.
It is here we say THANK YOU, because we are here right now
to say it – these are just a few squares of a hopscotch we’re leaping into one
square at a time.
As we hop – does it dawn on us to unfurl our wings to fly
instead and/or simultaneously do both?
This is a complex question to ask, but what if the ripple we
create starts with us being the frog leaping onto the lily pad, but the
butterfly in lift off to see the bigger picture of what is happening in our
world AS WE’RE LIVING IN IT?
Hmm…
For me as an octagon-peg solopreneur small business owner
who does not ‘fit any mold’ of a ‘formula’ – these last few months have been
all about balancing my own energy in navigation forward of my own business
future and life, helping all of my fellow small business owner colleagues and friends
in the same boat disseminating information and doing the legwork. Doing this was just part of what I do, I did not bother to ask for any said telephone tree structure, nor expected it - as everyone is in a different place of 'dealing.' I just did what I had to do with this mission, along with
all of my freelancer friends who are also still fighting the good fight against the AB5
Law, which cuts off several streams of revenue.
It’s like a double blow with COVID, and a third slap in the face if you
have no brick-n-mortar or a slew of employees underneath you.
Behind the scenes, as my human dials for dollars, my
empathic soul is picking up all of the spirit energy transitioning to ‘the
other side’ as a channeling lightworker, feeling the feelings of the souls who
passed on whose human vessels didn’t get to say goodbye to their loved ones on
the planet.
Trying to navigate this whole Covid-19 reality, I received
the gift of Mother Teresa’s quote’s meaning ‘beyond’ original perceived
framework to give a gift two ways which I didn’t even realize was possible to
give until it escaped my dharma-laced flowing mouth. Thank you, Spirit.
As humans navigating ‘human waters’ where days on a calendar
have been blurring for those adhering to staying at home; I see the clock as
both real and not real when it comes to what must be done.
In that, my 5D soul and higher-self went into auto-pilot
research to get answers for the human vessel flesh puppet in which I reside, to
look at my human’s 3D future. After hitting
roadblocks with PPP, EDD, EITC, and PUA simultaneously trying to pay
R.E.S.P.E.C.T. to those in safe passage with the OMG (hehe) hours (172 hours to
be exact) of being on hold on the phone sometimes with and without loop
recordings, hang-ups, elevator music and bad reception – one would think WTF.
😃
My human continued calling around, grateful for pressing
numbers instead of a rotary dial as my parents might have. I stopped at that moment to laugh thinking of
a claw hand equivalent of carpal tunnel being thankful for the latter;
then gear-shifted into feeling oh-so-blessed to not have been alive during
their WWII hell and their sacrifices made with the Japanese Internment
Camps.
Yes, COVID-19 is bad – but I force my human to 'check herself' in every moment
and remember just how much they gave up, inclusive of their youth, their
dreams, their homes, their farmland, their innocence and optimism for a better
life, leaving with just the clothes on their back into Army barrack living
imprisonment in the U.S. even though they were U.S. citizens.
Sigh. Here I take a deep restorative cleansing breath of
knowing that yes, we’re all living in this said void and unknown, but to be
honest, in many aspects we do have oh-so-much-more to be grateful for than we
know.
……………… I sit in
reflection to see my path - I don’t have to ask WHY, because I know.
Soldiering on, I continued research, reading, finding LINKS
(not the kind I normally do) things that only apply to businesses with more
employees, those only with brick-n-mortar, navigating parameters of rules,
conditions, the forgotten freelancers, independent contractors, consultants and
solopreneurs I decided to stop to switch gears to the other squares of the chalked
hopscotch in butterfly form.
I called State, County, City, a plethora of relief organizations
and started going on this pathway of finding new answers by becoming the answer
as part of the solution.
Phone call after phone call – most people would have given
up to get through to government.
Before being able to get through to my local Assembly office
and Senator’s office to shine a light on those of us who slipped through the
cracks of ‘the system’ so that we could pass a bill to acknowledge terrain that
exists, there was a gate.
The gate was guarded by a gate keeper. I understand the gate keeper… for years as a
publicist, I was exactly that, but in this case the gate keeper is the first
person for which is the start of the corn maze to political powers who can take
bills into legislation, not protect celebrities from their stalkers.
After a long and delightful conversation of actually being
listened to, the person on the other end of the phone said, “Well, I can pass this along… I can’t do
much, I am just an intern.”
The brakes screeched, rubber was burned in the Spirit Realm like
cloud-drifting from a Fast & the Furious script on city streets, but in the
Heavens, as I was tapped on the shoulder hard, “Go, Go, GO Stacey…. GO by
telling her to stop!”
So I said, “Stop!” Then I gently softened to say “Please do not ever say that again and demean yourself.
You CAN do a lot, you are NOT just a one-person intern…. instead, my
sincere hope is you realize just how much of a difference you made by picking
up the phone to actually listen, when I have spent 172 hours getting stuck in
voicemail hell of recordings. You made a
difference today as your own brand of leadership in doing something meaningful,
right now with what you can with what you have.
That is magic. You are the path
to helping to facilitate change by what you have already done by taking notes
and what you plan to do by passing along said notes…. Do you realize your own
power?”
I rambled that out of my human as if a direct channel that
was like some floodgate opened for said gatekeeper and I laughed as my eyes welled
up hoping she could feel that over the phone.
We are in a historic moment in time. I wanted her to digest that for a few seconds
to look at what she was doing within the framework to re-work how she saw her
role.
I wasn’t sure if I was to be met with gasping, tears, the
awkward pause (branded by TV’s Craig Ferguson…’shout out!’), or simply a quick
brush off or ‘huh’ or resistance, but as I said what I said, I was about to see
that the square dial of the hopscotch within Mother Teresa’s ‘ripple’ context
could, may, and perhaps may never be known wasn’t important as much as that
moment.
Ahhhhhhhhhh. Could
she see this?
So I heard the smile, the pause, the gratitude, and suddenly
someone who once felt invisible in labeling herself as an intern was no
different than seeing what I, as one person could do by making a phone call to bring
awareness to the Assembly office and Senator’s office!
I did not pick up the
phone to deliberately/intentionally create said ripple of my own as I trekked
onward to seek solutions. Rather, I as just one person on a mission just did what I had to do, and the side
benefit would be that as described, as my human tried to figure out how we can create a
pathway to try to make change for seasonal workers and those mislabeled as in thousands
of other Solopreneurs.
Ah what a mirror we shattered in said moment and I felt like
this Divine energy was here to deliver a lightning bolt.
With the initial mission to seek to help those who have too
many labels to fit in said boxed parameters of what is being offered as
‘relief’ (in the human livelihood sense) to become and transform evolving into
‘relief’ of another sense was like some sort of paradigm unexplored in Mother
Teresa’s quote beyond just the words and initial message.
Feeling like I was floating in and out of some COVID Matrix
or Back to the Future time machine was surreal and then I was told I had to “Share this with the collective as there
will be more of this for humanity as we move forward.”
So BUCKLE UP, Lovely Souls….. We’re in for a wild ride, are
we not?
While there are certain organizations fighting for business
owners of a certain age, gender, minority group, economic level, doing their
good work, I was still left with the octagon peg reality of getting solutions
to look at what is stated as a Phase 4 (potentially not this year, but maybe
2021 or longer depending on said vaccine) for an old mold livelihood return,
which in reality is not a return, rather a tweaked return of uncharted
territory for most as it is for anyone working with people. I’m not afraid of this tweaked return or lack
of return nor am I afraid of morphing and saying goodbye to this part of my
tapestry, but rather still solution-driven to find answers for the larger pool
of people in this same situation.
As for others currently in mode of preparation for said
‘return’……
The business world is getting mixed messages with hopeful
vision vs. logistical vs. economic reality.
But we are stronger than we know.
Yes, great mantra here “We are stronger than we know.”
As we look at traditional commercial real estate office
spaces being reconfigured, courtrooms, juries, or group retreats or event
spaces; places of worship and the list goes on – we have to look at the space
in time as well as the ‘space in time’ and what we do with it to matter to be a
another twist of said square dial on life’s hopscotch or lily pad road.
If you are a hairdresser with the ‘yes-to-no hairdryers’ –
in a conflicting message about safety of air or false narratives of killing the
virus; or you are in the retail or hospitality industries dealing with the six
feet of social distancing along with the ‘air conditioning with HEPA filter’ waiting
to see the real airing of messages of erring messages through contortion, it
may be challenging to see the flow of air around you. But it is here you must breathe in a new
square or two on said hopscotch, even if given some reopening green
lights. But this is where you can
circulate your own LINK to being part of said ripple.
With your mouth wide open in a dentist’s chair with someone
directly working over you on your teeth while, YES, we still have a lot to
figure out to ‘get back to reality’ -
you can literally bite down on your own fears and address them to perhaps create
a new square of the ripple of what that means as you smile forward into your
future. Uh... yes, even if we don't know what that looks like yet, as our politicians are saying "COVID won't go away, but we will change how we LIVE with COVID."
Okay... that's a sad fact. I know for many of you - the idea of that fact is like a nightmare-ish buzzkill to anything from a life you used to know. There are some aspects of this 'new normal' that are adaptable. Introverts love lock-down. Those of us who are seasoned remote workers or germophobes didn't have to change habits all that much. But those of us whose 'raison d'etre' and initial purpose was to work with people in the ways we once worked with people still can be working with people, it just must contort to a different shape now.
These are all things we're figuring out, of course.
While gameshows go online or perhaps ‘back to the game
board’ in present 3D reality; and scripted TV wonders if it is the end of the
RomCom or Soap Operas where there is no such thing as physical distancing
unless some funky Sci-Fi alternate reality with a virtual kiss in space suits….
We humans realize that we must now live life like Sheldon Lee Cooper of the Big
Bang Therapy carrying hand sanitizer everywhere, creating ‘relationship
agreements’ in business and personal with a COVID clause; and no more blowing
out candles on birthday cakes – because with COVID –there is no ‘dry blow’ ---
safety and no one is going to want to eat a slice of your cake with ‘the
unknown’ risk factor.
But as we all work through this ‘new reality’ – most of us
now are looking for answers and solutions…. And dare I say it all begins with
each of us.
So back to my dialing frenzy in dealing with Assembly …. I received a reply about my ideas for a
proposed bill, and was thanked for suggesting “how we could create legislation
in regards to furthering support for solopreneurs. She will take your
suggestions into consideration during future legislative action.”
What can one person do?
A lot more the merely casting a stone for the initial intent – it now
has the potential beyond just a ripple, but what we’re all being asked to see,
a new alternative reality in our own dimensional thinking of what we can do
beyond the surface.
Just when you think you are merely doing one thing, realize
it may be multidimensional within the initial ripple process. This in itself could go forward beyond the
solution for your starting point of your mission, but ideally a few twists and
turns transform into something more than you ever thought you could do. So never say to yourself, "I alone cannot change the world" or call yourself 'just an intern.' Whether or not collectively joint efforts will or will not move forward the proposed bill idea into legislation, the one thing I know for sure is that the gatekeeper will think twice about demeaning herself thinking she is not doing anything meaningful. If nothing else, I left her with a seed in her brain for her to cultivate beyond the construct of Mother Teresa's now multidimensional quote from the 5D to the 3D.
That may not seem like a ripple, but if it changes her life, then changes the lives around her by paying forward the message.... the effect may leap beyond thousands of lily pads and fly higher than the butterfly can rise beyond the clouds in the Heavens to matter in future generations of humans.
In turn, your own world can/will change within the moment
and the moments thereafter in ways you may have never fathomed. I know mine did.
Happy ripples, happy twisting, taking a leap of faith,
action and daring to fly ….. Mother Teresa would be happy for all of your
pedestrian steps into the Stairmaster climb on a staircase that has a bigger
picture destination than you can see.
Blessings to you all Lovely Souls!
Namaste,
Stacey Kumagai
