When I first heard the phrase, The Ripple Effect, I didn’t really understand the weight of it. I thought my actions were my own and that the consequences from my actions would fall only on me. I was forced to face the reality of the Ripple Effect while in the Victim Impact class, and the facilitator made me closely examine my crime from the outside looking in. The class helped me come to an understanding that my crime not only affected my victim, but it also affected everyone and everything surrounding it. “I was given 198 years for one robbery. Before the robbery I didn’t know that statistics show about 27% of rural area convenience stores are heavily depended upon. And closure had a very large impact on the community. You see, Ripples start small, at one moment-one decision-and one choice that feels quick, and careless. But once that stone hits the water, the waves don’t stop where you expect them to. They travel to people you love- people you never meant to hurt- and people you probably never met before. When I committed my crime, I didn’t just break the law, I broke trust. I broke peace. I broke a sense of safety that every human being deserves to feel. And those Ripples kept moving long after the devastating moment was created. My victim felt the first wave: Fear; Pain; The questions that no apology can ever erase; Their family felt anger, confusion, and the burden of trying to understand something that will never make sense. Then-the Ripple reached my own family: My mother-who continues to ask herself if she is to blame; I read in the Bible that “a foolish son is the ruins to his father”. My daughters, who every time someone say my name, they hold their head down in shame.
My community, who lost a man who should have been trying to keep them safe and calm and not scaring them and causing harm. But the Ripple just didn’t stop there, and contrary to what some believe the Ripple hit me! You see, people think prison is the only punishment, but the real punishment is: Waking up every night, sweating from running from the truth of what I did; Its replaying that senseless moment, over and over again; Its seeing the faces of the people I love, suffer because of a catastrophic decision I made; Its carrying the weight of remorse around my waist, and sinking to the bottom of the sea; Its hearing the sound of the unseen Me! making the windows rattle when I scream. Incarceration created its own Ripple, one I’m still learning how to understand: I feel the Ripple of isolation, the distance growing between me and the world outside; I feel the Ripple of regret, sitting with the silence of my own thoughts and realizing the damage I have caused; I feel the Ripple of change, the slow understanding that if one bad action can spread harm, then one good action can spread healing. Ripple Effects are real, and they will forever remind me that what I do, good or bad will always touch more than just me. Today, I choose to create some different kinds of Ripples: and the first one I learned is, Accountability, where I learned it’s a must that I be accountable by taking full responsibility for my own actions; Honesty, being truthful to myself and others about my actions; Growth, growing from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset; And the last one is, Commitment, where I pledge to never ever, never ever, be the cause of harm ever again! I can’t erase the stone I threw, but I can spend the rest of my life trying to calm the waters I disturbed. I hope the waves I send out from here forward, will be waves of change.