Linked Together By Miles Of Smiles

I like to keep things simple. Why complicate anything with foreign or ‘insider’ words when it’s not really necessary.

Not sure where I’m going with this theme but I’ve been thinking about how everything and everyone is all linked together and how coincidences and/or synchronicity may happen. Many give this linking together fancy names depending on beliefs, religions, the latest book they have read and so on.

This is fine but sometimes it’s something almost simplistic that can get the message across. It did for me when I looked through an autograph book I had as a young child.

I’ve mentioned this autograph book previously and this morning I was flitting through the pages before putting it somewhere safe in my office.

My Dad’s autograph and the verse he wrote, when I was seven, suddenly seemed relevant – that’s it at the top of this post. Yes, it’s simple, yes, it’s quite well known but it does make a point about how we are all linked together and how what we do can affect others and, who knows, perhaps the whole world.

He’s was right – one smile can create miles of smiles.

I remember years ago writing something along these lines but from a negative perspective. It was about how a wrong word could set off a chain reaction.

ARAB PROVERB
The spoken word is soon forgot,
By thee – but it has perished not;
In other hearts ’tis living still,
And doing work for good or ill.I did a whole story about how a boss got angry with an employee. She went home and, as she was upset, had a go at her husband … he stormed out down the pub where he met a woman … they had an affair … and, before you know what had happened, thousands of lives had been touched upon – and all because of a few angry words. In my story the reaction rebounded back to the boss who set the whole thing in motion.

And watching what we say is one of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path of: Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration.

It’s also a little like that saying about how the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can set off a storm in Texas. Okay, unlikely in reality perhaps, but there’s more on the Butterfly Effect on Wikipedia here if interested.

So there we go, never thought this post would end up being about this!

For more interesting and unusual stories like this go to 67 Not Out – coincidences, synchronicity, UFOs, reincarnation and many other mysteries.