Have you ever met a stranger who happened to know one of your close friends? We’ve all had this kind of experience and we think “it’s a small world.” You may also be familiar with the theory there are only “six degrees of separation” between you and any other person on the planet. It’s the idea that you can find a path of six friends or acquaintances that will link you to any person on earth. If you randomly select someone, for instance, the actor Patrick Stewart, you can find a path of friends that will link to him directly. (I’m three links from Mr. Stewart).

The study of the interconnections between people, places, and things is the study of networks, and it’s changing the way we think about the world in fields as diverse as biology, sociology, and economics. Albert-László Barabási has written a fascinating account of the growth of this science in his book, Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means. He describes how the reductionist view of studying smaller parts of things is giving way to understanding the relationships between the parts. This new, holistic approach to science is a fundamental paradigm shift—it is changing the way we think about the world.

For instance, geneticists have decoded the DNA sequence to the human genome. Excitedly, these geneticists tell us that diseases will be decoded from our gene sequences. Reality, however, is more complex; for example, the discovery of “the gene” for bipolar disorder was recanted by scientists when the results could not be replicated. It turns out that illnesses are not caused by a single gene, but rather (you guessed it) by the relationships between several genes.

Scientists now realize that they must study the body in its integrity. Barabási writes, “The behavior of living systems can seldom be reduced to their molecular components.” The molecular approach to science first reached its limits in physics—when it was discovered that particles sometimes act like waves. The other sciences are now facing their molecular limits and are realizing that they can better describe the world in the language of relationships.

Thanks, largely, to the internet, email, eBay and PayPal, people are easily connecting with friends, family, and customers worldwide. Distance no longer dictates whether we are linked with someone; rather it’s our network of relationships that creates a “small world” experience. I believe that it is these interconnections, and not the rhetoric of politicians, that will bring us the world peace we envision.

When we were children we had such great dreams for ourselves. We believed and knew that anything was possible. As adults, we sometimes see those around us who are unhappy with their lives. They experience one failed dream after another until they stop believing that they can ever have any of their wishes and many fall into a feeling of despair. Then we see people who continue to create many wonderful things in their lives—whose lives seem to be an upward spiral of even more joy, happiness and abundance, where dreams do come true.

I often wonder how we would feel if we took a picture of ourselves as adults and showed this picture to ourselves as children. Would we feel happy about how we turned out? Would we feel pleased with how we look, where we live, who we are living with, what we grew up to be? Or would we run from the room trembling? If we are unhappy with certain aspects of our lives, then perhaps we could begin today to work on changing the parts that are not all that we know they could be.

Neale Donald Walsch, author of books such as Conversations with God and New Revelations, recently wrote in his weekly bulletin that “Change is part of life…Change Is Life. Life IS Change.” He further points out that when a thing moves that it is changing. Since everything in life moves all of the time, then everything is naturally changing.

Neale Donald Walsch notes that once he began to embrace change and to see it as an opportunity rather than a burden, then he could work on creating how the changes would occur rather than simply reacting to them. In his Conversations with God books he points out that there are three Tools of Creation. “Thought is the first tool. What we think, we begin to create. Word is the second tool. What we say, we begin to create. Action is the third tool. What we do, we begin to create.” By using all three tools together, we all have a very powerful way to create change.

There are many wonderful people available to assist us on our path. It is our great joy to introduce you to so many who are available to help you create the changes you are wishing to experience. We hope you will be able to attend our next Wellness Expo on October 21-22, where you will be able to experience many of their offerings. I believe that if we keep on looking for solutions, then we will find the ones that are right for us. May we all begin today to work on creating a picture of ourselves that lives up to the dreams we had when we were young.