Do-overs — what a concept. Unfortunately, life doesn’t dole out too many of those. Something good happens when we expect the worst, and we’re over the moon. Something terrible happens and we say ‘What the?’.  If we’re lucky, we get the chance to change direction, which may change the outcome – or not. Remember when you stuffed yourself dinner and became so green with a stomachache you had to ditch that Broadway show? Or how about when you bluffed on your resume, forgetting you’d be actually be expected to KNOW what you said you did. There are a million things, big and small, unimportant and critical, even tragic, that we’d love to wriggle our Bewitched-nose and change. Sorry, that only happens on TV.

If you ask any widow, whose love story suddenly ended or a parent who’s lost a precious child, if they would have cancelled the devastation those losses brought, their answers would be a resounding ‘yes’. But, if it meant they would also have to cancel all that went before, would any of us still choose to pass?

I think not.

Small things can have big effects. A tiny grain of sand can alter history and shape destiny. The smallest things can have the biggest impact somewhere we may never know.  Even if we don’t see the change, it can happen in our own lives, our friend’s, even in those of people we’ve never met. Scientists say that everything is interconnected. One single action can trip off something completely different in the future.

It’s been said that something as small as the flutter of butterfly’s wings can cause a typhoon halfway around the world.  Chaos Theory

In 1963, Edward Lorenz proposed that a butterfly flapping his wings can cause a hurricane somewhere in the world. Admittedly, that sounds a bit outer limits. But, by the 1990’s, physics professors, working together, proved the theory true and accurate. It can be hard to understand how seemingly random changes can effect the course of your life, but even small ones can cause huge changes in another time and place. Continue reading →