Drops in the Ocean--A Paragraph a Day

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean.  But if that drop was not in the ocean, I think the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.   -Mother Teresa


Sometimes it's extremely hard to remind myself that what I'm doing actually makes any sort of difference.  In order for me to actually believe that it does, I have to trust life and trust the world, and that's not all that easy for me to do--and this is a common trait of Adult Children of Alcoholics.  But trust I must, so trust I do, as much as I possibly can.  After all, so much of what happens in this world as a result of my actions are things that I don't see, things that my be a positive result of something that I said or did, but that I have no clue even happened.  I do have an advantage of working with young people as a teacher, and as long as I'm doing that I know that there's a chance that I'll have a positive influence somewhere, somehow.  I rarely know of positive results of my life, but I'm willing to guess that most of us are in the same boat.  We keep going on and going on, doing what we do to the best of our abilities with the hopes that there will be some positive ripples moving out from the action, but never knowing if there actually are.  And that's okay--that's what life is about, isn't it?  Doing and then letting go of needing to know results.  My drop in the ocean is going to be as rich and full as I can possibly make it, and I simply have to trust that there are other positive and rich drops from others in that same ocean.  There are many, many good people in this world, so there have to be many, many wonderful drops in that ocean.