Dominoes October 2020
I am fascinated by those exhibitions showing long chains of dominoes falling. That action is very different from the inventor’s original purpose for the black, enumerated wooden blocks. Yet, one concept is the same; the adjacent piece gets its meaning from the value of, and the touch of, the piece next to it.
On a small scale, the touches from the humans in our life cause us to build or to fall. My day can become brighter when someone shows me a kindness. If I am abused, my day, even my week, may turn out dark and depressing. What we do to, and for, others matters greatly. Did the two dots on my domino connect with someone else’s dots? Did something build upon our connection? Did that connection cause the person to fall and knock over another person?
In the histories which I have studied, the obvious, dramatic events are only part of the story. The front page news in St. Petersburg, Russia on July 16, 1918 was about the progress of the war with Germany, though Russia had pulled out in March of that year. The next day, July 17, 1918, Czar Nicholas and his family had been assassinated. The people had suffered with the deprivations of an extended war which was the first domino. The second was the absence of a dedicated, protecting army. The third was a group of radicals who inflamed the people about their victimhood and the imbalance of wealth. Not much later the next radical, Lenin, became a domino. Less than three years after the execution of the Romanovs, he had fallen ill, and in 1924, at the age of 53 he died.
Keep your eyes open to the side actions when a big action is in the works.
There is no game where the dominoes fall up. They always fall down. In nations, an agitated call for a radical change always causes radical collapses and rarely makes conditions for the common man better. Peaceful times and peaceful people do not need radical change and its domino-like consequences. Good change is thoughtfully considered, well planned, and flexibly executed over a longer period of time. It is never emotional and sudden.
If things in your world are 95% good, don’t be tricked into focusing on the 5% that is bad. We work on the bad parts, but we do not let them consume us. The greatest changes come from within each of us as individuals. We control our one domino. That control is our great duty and our great asset and those we connect with present the highest possibility of success.
A Guy Named Bob 