A kinder flapping of wings.

 Sorry gamers, this is not a blog post about Angry Birds, Flappy Bird, or any other game app. Although I suppose it could be in the end, as I think this topic can apply to pretty much everything we do.  I'll go ahead and admit too, that this is a topic that I've had to make my own peace with.  Find a way to both ponder it and  accept it . . . without losing my mind.  I'm quite sure you've also heard of and pondered - the butterfly effect.

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 Mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz of MIT, loved to study and predict weather.  One day in 1961, while doing just that, he made the slightest of slight changes in a number about four digits to the right of the decimal point and found that even such a tiny divergence made a world of difference in the final outcome of his calculus.  This observation led to a phenomenon known as "sensitive dependence on initial conditions", or as we've come to know it, "the butterfly effect".  This better known moniker comes from the chaos theory concept of a butterfly flapping it's wings in South America ultimately effecting the weather in Venice, Florida through a long string of connected actions.  And any Ray Bradbury fans may be interested to know that he actually touched on the idea almost a decade before Lorenz in a short story titled "A Sound of Thunder" in 1952.

 But enough background, back to more important stuff, at least to me.  That whole thing of not losing my mind.  I've been known to be - from time to time - a tad obsessive compulsive.  Concepts like this one lead to over-thinking my next move, second guessing the most trivial of decisions, and getting hung up over whether or not to talk to the complete stranger behind me in the coffee line.  In short, for someone wired like me - the stuff of nightmares.  ( I'm not even kidding about that, but that's for another blog post )

 So I had to make peace with the butterfly.  Not deny it's existence, or even the validity of the concept.  I don't think there's any denying that the contacts we have with each other and our surroundings have effect. And that effect can alter other happenings down the line.  But this is absolutely true regardless of my decision in the now.  No matter what I decide to do now, there will be a ripple.  And here's the key to the strand of sanity I swing from - the only part of the effect I have any control over is the act I choose right now.  The rest is up to the universe.  And by extension, whatever happens is the universes damn fault too. So I ask myself in moments of indecision, what's the kind thing?  Which choice would seem least harmful, to a person, to the world around me, indeed to my own perception of self.

 As a result, I tend to talk to the stranger in line behind me.  I flash smiles to people who seem to be glum. And even bigger ones to those who smile first at me.  I'm working at being more spontaneous and unpredictable in the small stuff.  Like trying a new ice cream flavor for God's sake.  How much Superman can a person ingest in a lifetime anyway?  In short, I am trying not to obsess over what my contact with you may mean to your great grandchildren's college choice, but rather how it might affect your day...today.