In the Giving Heart, M.J. Ryan offers this take on giving: whatever we do, we do for ourselves.

What exactly does this mean? Ryan uses a story of a farmer who always grew the sweetest and best corn in the county. At the end of every growing season, he would take his seed corn, and give away a lot of it to other farmers in the area. When asked why he didn’t want to keep the best corn for himself, the farmer answered that he was doing it for himself. Because his corn would be cross-pollinated by bees and wind from other fields, if they had inferior corn, his would soon be inferior too.

Ryan points out that this story illustrates how interconnected our world is. And when we take into consideration this interconnectedness among all of us, it follows that whatever we do for someone else, we are also doing for ourselves.

“When we truly understand this interdependence, we also understand that whatever we do, we do for ourselvse. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, ‘We may have all come on different ships, but we are all in the same boat now.’ And a mighty small boat it is.”

Whether or not we look at this “ripple effect” of doing from the context of giving or simply doing or taking action, it’s an interesting consideration - what are the potential ripples from your next intended action?