It’s All One Big Echo

I guess one good thing that came out of the years of my over indulgence of alcohol is that there are no cell phone videos capturing my alcohol-fueled antics for my kids to see.

Those stories are shared the old-fashioned way, first hand accounts by those who witnessed the things I usually don’t remember.

Recently I was reminded of such a story I do somewhat recall. Some 25 years ago a business trip found me in New Hampshire for a few days and I had the opportunity to stay with some friends at their antiquated cabin on a remote lake with a name I have long forgotten.

On a cold, crisp October night smack dab in the middle of nowhere we sat lakeside by the fire consuming mass quantities of Miller Lite, and at some point, I am told, I engaged the lake in a conversation. As I would yell out into the darkness, the darkness would yell back to me in the form of a delayed echo, magnified by the great length of the lake. “I love you, Pete!” I’d shout out, and a few moments later the echo would tell me it loved me, too.  I’m told this went on for quite some time, this one sided “conversation” between myself and my echo.

I don’t remember what else I may have said. Though I do remember my head throbbing for the balance of my week in New Hampshire.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve engaged my echo in such a way. Now 24 years sober I no longer feel compelled to yell into large bodies of water for self entertainment purposes. But I’ve learned something about echos.

The drunken me was offering its voice into the universe, and the universe responded in kind, giving me back exactly what I was sending out. But the sober me is also getting back from the universe exactly what I am sending out.

In a world full of energy and attraction, I’ve noticed that the vibrational nature of my thoughts and expectations have faithfully been matched by the the world I’ve offered them into. Any doubts and fears resonating from within me will echo back to me in the form of people and experiences matching the negative vibrations I’ve consciously or unconsciously sent out into the world. Be it doubts and fears, limitations and lack, abundance and happiness, or possibility and expansion, the energy of whatever is offered will find its way back to us.

When my world is filled with more of what I tell myself I really don’t want, the first place I now look is within me. The echo I don’t want that’s coming back started with me. The echo I do want coming back will also start with me. Like that echo on the lake, what is sent out is going to find its way back.

It always does.

It’s all one big echo.