The butterfly effect refers to the significant impact of a seemingly insignificant action. by pixabay.com

Butterfly Effect

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The year stretches out ahead of us. As did last year, it holds uncertainties – will this year be the one that sees China move against Taiwan? Will the US again re-elect a twice impeached, four times indicted ex-president - who incited an insurrection, and currently faces 91 criminal charges – as its next President? Will Russia or Ukraine triumph? How will the Israel/Gaza conflict be resolved? Will the nations wake up, this year, to the extent of the environmental crisis facing us? Will our new tripartite NZ government go the distance, or dissolve at the 18-month mark?

Each and every one of these issues will ultimately affect life here in Aotearoa. Would we have accurately predicted the state of the world when we stood at this point at the beginning of 2023?

Yet, as Steven Covey points out in his ‘Seven Habits’ literature, we need to recognise the difference between the size of our circles of concern and influence. While we may be deeply concerned about all these things, how much energy can we afford to give them recognising our relative impotence?

Each of us has a measure of agency. For making a positive difference. It may not feel like much, yet we do not know how a simple loving conversation will affect the rest of the planet. I remember hearing the explanation of the ‘Butterfly Effect’ given in the movie ‘Jurassic Park’. It was something along the lines of ‘that the thunderstorms we are currently experiencing were caused by the way a butterfly fluttered its wings three weeks ago in the Amazon jungle’. This is to suggest both the difficulty in accurately giving detailed long range weather forecasts and the effect of small factors to have a significant influence; a wee bit like the biblical model of a small rudder at the back determining the direction of a supertanker. The problem is that none of us know the effect of any action, of any word, of any withholding.

My father-in-law died over the Christmas break. At 97 he’d lived a full life. I opened the funeral service by referencing a lunch wrapper that had an advertisement appealing to potential immigrants to New Zealand. For two Dutch soldiers guarding a bridge in 1949 in Indonesia, this lunch wrapper changed not only the course of their lives but has rippled on and changed the lives of all who have been part of their lives. We are all interconnected.

Physicists tell us that the movement of a single electron on one side of the universe affects the movement of another on the other side.

While it may seem ridiculous to suggest it, the decisions and choices we make ultimately have the potential to make a real difference in the lives of many. We just can’t know which ones the significant decisions and choices are. Rather than paralysing us, perhaps this realisation can release us into the awareness that our lives matter, even though they may appear mundane and ordinary.