Welcome to Chaos Theory

I talk about how the Butterfly Effect may be having much more of an impact on people’s lives than they may realize, in this short essay.

In the most concise terms, before I go more into depth, the Butterfly Effect is a theory positing that the tiniest moments can influence profound levels of change. It is like a candle, except that candle burns brighter than the sun. I think that this happened to me in my life.

I lit a candle, and now I am in the sun.

Welcome to chaos theory. 

If you have ever heard the saying, “A butterfly flapped its wings, and it caused a tsunami halfway across the world,” that is also an excellent representation of this effect. The way that the universe works is incredibly fascinating to me, and the more I learn, the more in awe I become. This notion that the smallest events in the universe and in life can result in such immense change is mind-bending, almost to the point of mental paralysis. 

Just imagine, for a moment, your life. Imagine all of the decisions you have made. You probably think of your most significant ones, such as your career choices, where you have chosen to live, or who you have chosen to date or marry. What if I told you that your trip to the grocery store back in 1994 actually had more influence on your life than any of those major life events? Or the fact that you saw just one video on the internet back in 2017, and it altered your mindset that has led you exactly to where you are now? 
There is no way of actually proving any of this, but it is something that can really change your perspective if you let it. It goes to show that everything we humans do matters, perhaps even down to the colour of shoes we are wearing, or being in the right moment at precisely the right time. This line of thinking through the Butterfly Effect has personally affected me in a way that is impossible to describe because I can not help but feel that everything I have ever been through has mattered. No matter how small those things may have been when they happened—it does not matter. If one thing had been different in my past, I would not be sitting here talking about chaos theory. I would not be in the mindset I’m in. I would not be the person that I am. These quantum changes have affected every aspect of who I am, the way I present myself to the world, and who I am internally.

If the process of human evolution occurred any differently, or if my brain developed differently as a child, I’d be a fundamentally different person. Everything is connected to everything and everything affects everything! (I promise I’m not insane. Not.)

Our world and society seem to be increasingly nihilistic, so for that reason, I think concepts like chaos theory can help people find meaning in every aspect of their lives, and eventually become something bigger than what they were in the past. It goes to show how unstable the universe is at its core if things can be so easily altered, let alone our lives. Our personal lives are so small in the grand scheme of the universe… but how can one actually know that? What effect has our little existences and our little minds had on the grand scheme of the universe? On one hand, the effects may be massively profound, and on the other, the effects may be completely invisible. Or maybe the right answer is somewhere in the middle—I don’t know. 

The only thing I think is probably true is that there is a lot more meaning in life than meets the eye. One day, you may find yourself in a similar position as me: lighting a candle, and then the next thing you know, the entire sun has presented itself to you and you’ve no choice but to accept that everything you’d ever known is different. 

“Time is tricky. You have whole months, even years, when nothing changes a speck, when you don’t go anywhere or do anything or think one new thought. And then you can get hit with a day, or an hour, or a half a second when so much happens it’s almost like you got born all over again into some brand-new person you for damn sure never expected to meet.” –E.R. Frank 

—Essay by Samantha Fuchsgruber 

Date // 24. November 2022

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