“A mountain is composed of tiny grains of earth.  The ocean is made up of tiny drops of water.  Even so, life is but an endless series of little details, actions, speeches, and thoughts.  And the consequences whether good or bad of even the least of them are far-reaching.”

– Swami Sivananda

Fall is here, and I am feeling the pain of changing from my summertime schedule, or lack of it, to a more clock-dependent way of life.  My ninth-grader needs to wake up in the morning a full 45 minutes earlier than she did in middle school; and this means that my quiet time in the morning has been displaced by the sounds of footsteps, running water, and pleas for breakfast.  I feel challenged to re-route my morning, but I know from experience that within a week or two I will be comfortably flowing along in a new groove.  Just as a stream finds its way around a newly-fallen tree and cuts a new path that leads to its destination, I will find my way around the changes that have landed in my path.

Sometimes it’s a good thing to have an obstacle land in your way.  It is easy, when life follows the same routine, to allow your groove to become a rut — and we all know how we feel when we get stuck in a rut.  There is not much worse than plodding along and feeling as though nothing we do has any importance, nothing we do ever changes, nothing we do ever results in something significant.  As a proponent of the idea of blooming where you are planted, I have been thinking about ruts and sameness and insignificance and how to overcome the feeling of invisibility that we can develop as day runs into day and we lather, rinse, and repeat our way through life.

When I read today’s quote, I thought of the acorn I saw on my morning walk last week.

It was lying on the ground under a huge oak tree that probably is hundreds of years old.  That little acorn looked pretty insignificant when compared to its tree of origin, yet it contains all the potential of the oak above it and so much more.  Will it find its way under the soil and become a tree?  Will it feed a hungry squirrel and become a part of the life of the squirrel clan?  Will it simply decay and help to nourish the soil that supports the tree?  One little acorn seems pretty insignificant when it lies all alone on the ground; but even in the rut that defines its existence, that acorn is a small piece in a much larger process called life.

We certainly have more choices than the average acorn, although I have not yet met the person who could choose to become an oak tree.  It is important to remember as we navigate the rut that sometimes seems to define our existence that each of us plays a part in something much more huge than our own small contributions.  We need to remember who we are and be the very best we can at just being ourselves; and we need to trust that our small part in the bigger picture will add just the bit of color needed to create a thing of beauty.  I think of the big, beautiful flowers that have blessed my garden this summer and know that dozens have bloomed as the result of one tiny, insignificant seed falling unnoticed to the earth last Fall.

As my schedule shifts and I work at finding my new path through the day, I want to be sure to cut a groove and not let it become a rut.  I like the idea of flowing along with a sense of purpose rather than feeling stuck and insignificant.  I will clear the path past my obstacles one grain of earth at a time; and soon my energy will be flowing in a new direction — and I will feel renewed by the adventure.  Remember today that no matter how small or how insignificant your contributions may seem, they are part of something big and beautiful and wonderful.  Wishing you escape from any ruts that confine you and the freedom of flowing along.  Wishing that you will find your groove.