COLLIDING LEAVES
(written 2000)

There were two leaves growing on a tree of life.

They dependently lived for a while on this tree. They never met; they only dreamt of what may lie beyond the breeze.

One day, the wind fiercely blew and the two leaves stole away upon it to satisfy their curiosity for wanting to know what they were destined for. Their courses were different. They had different rhythms in their dance. Finally, the wind subsided and let them fall on still waters. When one leaf fell, it created ripples. Similarly, the other leaf created proportional expanding circles. They had caused the waters to move, to change its motion, to giggle, to be ALIVE. Two leaves were the centers for perfect multiplying diameters changing the water. But what happens to these leaves? As their circles expand in diameter, they eventually collide and meet, and are no longer the same. They, like the water, are both affected by the ripples of the other. They are moved. They are changed. They giggle and become alive. They affect the stillness of this world, but are affected by the motions of each other.

Maybe that’s what it means to live.

We create ripples and impact this world if we leave our comforts and ride the wind with a passion to find a place that longs for motion. And our words and actions affect our surrounding with our contagious dance. But we live when wetoo are affected by other ripples that have been trying to reach our own circles. Somehow, those people are so strong that their ripples not only touch our outer adjacent exterior, but they have the magnanimity to push through our circular barriers and find a way to move us deeply.