The Butterfly Effect

"The flap of a butterfly’s wings can create small changes in the atmosphere which could then amplify and ultimately cause a hurricane."
The Butterfly Effect (2004) is an interesting movie that tells about a guy who used to have 'blackouts' when he was young during traumatic experiences. Years later, he chanced upon the old journals he had written and found himself to have the ability to travel back to these periods of 'blackouts' by reading the journal aloud. With this new-found ability, he travelled back to the past and altered events, only to return to the present where things were worse than before.

Every one of us would have, at one point or another, wished ourselves to have the ability to travel back in time to change something that we did in the past in hope for a better future. But if we were really given such an ability to do so, I have a feeling that most of us would consider it a curse rather than a gift, for every action altered in the past will create a new parallel world that may differ greatly from our present world. Between the differences of the 'new' world and the 'old', no matter what we may have gained, we would have lost something in return.

In every difficulty lies new opportunities, and sometimes, if we had not experienced the pain, the grief, and all these undesirable or negative emotions, we would never grow and better ourselves. Think back to defining moments where you had to make a difficult decision much as a person standing at the crossroads would. Without experiences of hardship that conditioned our minds to be stronger and more resilient, we may choose to walk to easy path rather than the right path.

Furthermore, even if such an ability is used to correct a past where a wrong action on your part had led to immense suffering to everyone around you, there is also an issue of moral hazard. Moral hazard arises when you grow to be so overly-reliant on these time-travelling abilities that you slide into the never-ending chasm of making frivolous decisions, confident that even if the decision you make is wrong, you can always travel back to the past to change it.

I guess the essence of the butterfly effect, other than the fact that it spells the impossibility of predicting the future, lies in the ability to effect significant change through insignificant actions. It emphasizes the importance of seemingly-unimportant actions that could shape our own destinies and that of others. It highlights the need to be careful and considerate in our actions and decisions. Most importantly, it teaches us to learn from retrospections and gain wisdom from reflections.

The Butterfly Effect. It just proves how small this world really is.