Squirrel Droppings: Dog-eared Pages

By Fred Prout

A good friend recently made a very important life change. Twelve miles as the crow flies. A quantum leap to a totally different life style. As an introduction to her new environs she wrote a piece about turning a new page in her life. That got me thinking. Every day we turn a new page in our lives. Without a second thought we go about making hundreds of tiny changes. We turn left or right. Eat this or eat that. Read a book or watch the news. Coffee or tea. Beer or wine.

Many of these choices are made within the confines of our own home. Affecting no one. Besides ourselves.

It’s the other choices I’m talking about. The personal interactions that we have. A smart man once wrote “ When two or more entities ( people) come in contact with each other, each of them is affected. Changed. However minutely.” Think about how a smile can affect someone’s day. That reaction can pass on to everyone in that person’s orbit. And everyone in theirs. And maybe one of these people pass it back to you at a time when you really need a smile. You have no idea that they were actually returning your smile. There are people who consider it a privilege to bring you a smile. Like ripples in a pond. The butterfly effect. A choice.

Every day is a new page. And everyone you encounter that day puts their fingerprints on that page. Since I am now closer to eighty than seventy I have accumulated almost thirty two thousand pages. A very large book. My life. Many chapters. Some painful. Some crushing the spirit. Some bringing happiness . Elation. Some remembered. Some tucked away in the crevices of our minds. Never totally forgotten.They leap out at us unexpectedly. Many are from people we have never met. We have still learned from them. Dog-Eared pages. The ones that made a lasting impression. Hurt inflicted . Joy and laughter given. Lessons learned.The big stuff. The memorable moments. Life moments.

Events like finding someone special. The birth of a child. The death of a loved one. A friend. Seeing the Grand Canyon. Top and bottom. Important events. But important only in the context of the people involved. We make these pages important to our lives by dog-earing them. They made microscopic changes to our being. Who we are. I guess the more of these pages, the more meaningful things have helped shape us. The dog-eared pages, individually, are a small but important part of our book. Our lives. Added together they help define who we are.

Where am I going with this? Who knows. Some of the fingerprints may have faded. Their donors gone. But the memories of them remain . They dog-eared multiple pages of our lives. They were, and still are, an integral component of our beings. By touching the page, they touched our lives.

We need to appreciate the important people who have intersected our lives. Both those who have brought us happiness and those who brought pain. The pain is for us to overcome. To learn from. We need to remember them. They, and others, have affected who we are today. Maybe I’m filling this page hoping that one person, maybe even me, will have a better understanding of who we are and how we got here. Maybe that understanding will allow us to improve who we will become. Somehow make us better . By your reading these words, our lives have intersected. However briefly. Lots of fingerprints on lots of pages. How great is that.

Life is a party. Let’s bring the best presents we can.