The Butterfly Effect

So, here we are once again….on my blog. This one is a product of the ‘too much’ thinking I indulge in, more than once a while. I know, you must be wondering ,”Is the title ‘Few Words’ sarcastic of the blog itself, coz this guy blabbers a lot more than a few words!” Hahaha…. No, actually it is titled quite aptly, because for those who really like the blog, thousands of words will just count as a few! 

Moving on, as you see the title, this entry is about the ‘Butterfly Effect ‘. For those of you who don’t know and don’t care to Google it, I’ll define it right here. It is a scientific sub-theory of the chaos theory. “Wow, this guy loves going tangent”. No I don’t and this is precisely why I am writing this entry. You see, even though it is a scientific theory, what I want to discuss here is the daily occurrences which we see in the world around us. The most common paradigm associated with this theory is “A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas.” Absurd? Nuts? Too far-fetched? Or, simply stupid? I know it sounds like all that. But what you don’t see here is the chain of events between the butterfly flapping its wings and the tornado in Texas. Now, I would break the it down so that you can comprehend and marvel this unique idea.  The basic idea here is that a small event/action/inaction in your life can set off an unlikely chain of events in someone else’s life, someone who exists far beyond your world. Forget about Brazil and Texas here for a moment. Imagine yourself to be the butterfly, and suppose the tornado comes right on top of YOUR roof! That is, imagine how the smallest of actions done or the decisions made by you have changed your life and made it what it is today. I’ll quote myself as an example here. I am, as many of you know, studying in BITS-Pilani Goa Campus. To come here, I had to score in an exam called BITSAT. Now my score, purely a number in the broad sense of looking at it, has set me on my current path. Had it been 5 up or 5 down its actual value, I might have been in a different city or pursuing a different stream of engineering  in the same  city. In both the cases,my life would have been completely different from what it is right now, and all this would have changed just because of a difference of 5 in a number. Now you can see yourself as the butterfly, how and when you flapped your wings sometime, and brought a tornado home, can’t you !? Now let’s bring the Texas and Brazil thing into view, that is, how our actions can supposedly alter the life of someone completely un related to us. Again, let’s look at my BITSAT score example. Had I scored 5 more or 5 lesser marks, my life would have changed, and along with me the life of the person would also have changed who would then end up in my current place, doing Electronics and Instrumentation in Goa instead of some other discipline or some other city. Not appealing enough, wait… here’s something that will amaze you when you look at it this way.  Suppose Dr. Manmohan Singh, our current PM, had decided not to pursue economics. It is a matter of choice for a teenager whether or not to pursue something, right? But if he hadn’t done that, he would have never ended up as the Governor of RBI and his chances of entering politics would have slimmed almost to nil. And behold, he would never have been Finance Minister in a Narsimha Rao govt and Globalization might have come a lot later than 1991-92 or worse would never have been implemented in Indian economy and instead of staring in your laptop or an up to date PC right now, you might have been staring into an ancient desktop!!  How the decision of an intelligent youth changed the fortunes of a nation as a whole !! Now you know, how perhaps a simple decision or action of yours can end up being more drastic than it seems at present. So think before you reject someone who says he/she loves you, think

before going against your own wishes, think before you do anything for that matter…! I leave you with this thought :


       “Life is all about a million possible situations and furthermore a zillion possible outcomes.”