I’m not talking about the Ashton Kutcher movie, although that was an entertaining “time travel” sort of fantasy.
The term “butterfly effect” originally referred to what might happen if time travel were to become a reality. The premise is: If you could go back in time, and happened to accidentally kill a butterfly, you might return to your own time in the future and find that you don’t recognize any of it. In a nutshell, the random death of that one butterfly in the past led to a chain of events that completely changed the history that you were familiar with.
Over time, the term has been broadened to include “any seemingly small, random event which completely changes your life or alters your apparent path in history.”
A coin toss causes you to not get on a plane that crashes. You put on a certain rock band’s T-shirt and that causes someone to start a conversation with you and that person offers you a career change. You randomly take a different route to work and end up avoiding a huge accident that kills dozens of people.
This type of “butterfly effect” actually happened to country singer Waylon Jennings. He should have been on the plane that killed Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens.
Waylon Jennings was hired by Holly to play bass for him on the Winter Dance Party Tour, which began January 23rd, 1959, in Milwaukee. Jennings, 21 at the time, had been in New York City recording sessions produced by Holly, and after taking a train to Chicago, met up with the rest of Holly’s band. Problems first arose when the tour buses hired to transport the group began breaking down. After a show in Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 2nd, Holly decided to charter a plane for himself, guitarist Tommy Allsup and Jennings so they could fly to Fargo, North Dakota, instead of taking the long, frozen bus trip. Richardson, who was suffering from the flu, asked Jennings for his seat on the plane, and Valens asked the same of Allsup. When Jennings told Holly that he was going to take the bus, Holly jokingly told him he hoped the bus broke down, to which Jennings replied, “I hope your ol’ plane crashes.”
“God almighty, for years I thought I caused it,” the country legend said decades later in a CMT interview.
Of course it works the other way too. You turn down a side street to avoid an accident and end up being shot by fleeing bank robbers. You trade places with someone scheduled to ride a certain bus and the bus crashes killing everyone.
I will be the first to acknowledge that I don’t believe in “luck”. I think God never relinquishes control of the universe and all seemingly “random” occurrences are part of His overall plan. I don’t wish to debate this; I’m just acknowledging it. YMMV and that’s not the purpose of this thread.
What IS the purpose of this thread, is to gather your stories of a genuine “butterfly effect” in your life or someone you know, where a seemingly insignificant, random occurrence led to a huge change (or end to) a person’s life.
Here’s my “butterfly effect” story:
I’ve been with my current girlfriend for over five years. Prior to that, I had only dated occasionally and have never been married. Usually my relationships had ended due to incompatibility or just outright being bored with someone. I had resigned myself to the solitary life at the ranch and had mostly stopped worrying about it. I’m the type of person who’s not afraid to be alone, and in fact I often prefer to be away from people. Finding a woman who dovetails into that aloof lifestyle proved to be futile.
One afternoon I had traveled from the ranch to the grocery store in the nearby town. I was eager to get my groceries home and put up before dark so I could enjoy some brews while looking at the stars later that evening. Upon returning to my truck from paying for my groceries, I noticed a piece of paper someone had stuck under the windshield wiper. I was used to the usual solicitations for psychics, roofers, and you-name-it endeavors. This piece was a little different. It was for a film showing the next day at a church I had not been to in over 20 years. As those flyers were under nearly every windshield wiper in the parking lot, I chalked it up to just random advertising and not by someone who might have known me from that church.
I read the flyer, and the film sounded vaguely interesting. I also had this “feeling” that attending that film might somehow be important.
So the next day, I got a haircut and made it to the church in time for the film. After taking my seat, I looked back toward the door occasionally to see if anyone I knew walked in. After 20+ years literally no one I knew still attended that church. As the seats filled up, a lady about my age was forced to sit down next to me. I didn’t pay her any mind since I didn’t already know her.
As the evening progressed, there were more and more opportunities for us to talk, and to make a long story short we have been together ever since.
The “butterfly effect” is that if that flyer hadn’t been placed under my windshield wiper, I never would have met her. Our career paths are totally different and we had literally no common contacts prior to meeting. I’m thinking of framing that flyer.
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To me, the “butterfly effect” is a random occurrence which causes a major event that comes after it to happen differently than was expected.
Merriam-Webster defines it as “…in chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the phenomenon where a small change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.”[/b]
Do you have a “butterfly effect” story?
but I said we had tickets. He said he hope that we will have a good time. I asked him if he would sign an autograph, which he graciously did. The elevator stopped at our floor and HE got out with us. We said good bye he went down one hall while we went to our side of the hotel.