Flying High with the Butterfly Effect

Photo by Fleur on Unsplash

You think that you are not pretty because you are a Caterpillar. But the reason is that you are not a Butterfly yet.

But, come on, I am not a biologist so I will not talk about a butterfly.

Everything happens for a reason. Everything affects everything. Now you decide to do something. You might not see the results immediately. But surely you will see the results later.

The butterfly effect is the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system. The concept is imagined as a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a typhoon (Farnam Street Media, 2020). Meanwhile, the APA Dictionary of Psychology defines the butterfly effect as the tendency of a complex, dynamic system to be sensitive to initial conditions, so that over time a small cause may have large, unpredictable effects.

It’s too complex, isn’t it? Because it is! Let me try to make it simple.

Every decision you ever made in your life has led you to experience or do something, including reading this exact sentence. Like now, why are you reading this? Did I send you the link to this article and now you are (un)willingly reading this?

Who knows after you read this you would gain new knowledge which would lead you to write a thesis entitled The Analysis of the Butterfly Effect on the World Market? And then one day you wonder, “That’s fortunate that that guy wrote an article about the butterfly effect.”

Ellen DeGeneres has told viewers she is ending her long-running TV show. But do you know that it is because Gerard Way watched the towers fall on 9/11?

Gerard Way and his band, My Chemical Romance

Okay, here is the chronological order (taken from several Tumblr posts):

• Gerard Way watched the towers fall on 9/11 from a dock on the Hudson River
• He starts writing music as therapy to cope with the trauma of that day and ends up forming My Chemical Romance (MCR)
• MCR’s early albums had a kind of gothic style and had many references to vampire
• Stephenie Meyer woke up from a vivid dream on 2nd June 2003
• Meyer’s dream inspired her to write Twilight
• Stephenie Meyer cited MCR and their music as major inspirations behind the Twilight series
• Twilight was published in 2005 and the books and the movies became a global phenomenon
• E. L. James wrote a BDSM Twilight fanfic entitled Master of the Universe
• Master of the Universe was later published as Fifty Shades of Grey in 2011
• Fifty Shades book series became popular
• Fifty Shades was adapted into a movie in 2015, in which Dakota Johnson was cast as protagonist Anastasia Steele in her breakthrough role
• The Fifty Shades movie series also became popular and Dakota’s acting career took off
• Dakota went on Ellen Degeneres's talk show, where Ellen tried to play Dakota for a fool and Dakota shut that down
• People started noticing that Ellen has a tendency to make her celebrity guests feel uncomfortable and she is terrible to her employees
• Ellen makes the decision to end her talk show in 2022 after 19 years

See? Gerard Way made Ellen Degeneres end her show!

Lol no. That’s just one example of the butterfly effect tho. Another concrete example: had the driver of Archduke Franz Ferdinand taken the alternate route, Gavrilo Princip would not have been on the same street as the car and would not have had the chance to shoot the Archduke and his wife that day. Were it not for a failure of communication, both world wars might never have happened.

I personally have just experienced it by myself. I have a “personal psychologist” just because I didn’t listen to my mom to sleep early. How?

I am going to tell you the story. But first, let me tell you the outline of the story.

1. I worked in Wall Street English in 2019
   It is just it is. There is no backstory here
2. I didn’t sleep early and I had a bad relationship story
   My mom always tells me not to sleep late. But, being a stupid son myself, I always deny that. I was still working in IALF at that time. In the middle of the pandemic situation, we were forced to work from home. At that time, I didn’t really care about time. Different from a normal situation where I must sleep early on weekdays because I have to go to work the next day. But working from home? I could sleep late or not sleep at all at night. I didn’t have to wake up early, take a bath, and ride my motorcycle all the way to my office. I would just wake up and went straight turning my laptop on, and boom, I was ready to work. Then one night on 30th May 2020, I was still alive and was surfing on Twitter. I met a girl there. We talked, we went along, and we had a relationship. Long story short, our relationship ended on 10th November 2020.
3. My best friend, Mega Dayu, applied to Wall Street English
   She’s been my best friend since we were still in college. After our graduation, we still communicated. Mostly from Shopee Tanam. It’s not that we always had a conversation every day via call or text. We just communicated via Instagram or Twitter where she and I would reply to each other’s posts. One day, on 19th November 2020, she texted me. Have you ever heard about the right person at the right time? Mega texted me right in the time where I was at my worst, down on my knees. She asked me about the recruitment process in Wall Street English. Of course, as a good friend and as a person who has worked there, I offered to explain it via call. With one condition, I would tell her about my problems. And until now, I often tell her my problems, my story, and anything else. At first, I only told her about my relationship problem. But now, it is almost everything. And that’s the story of how I can have Mega as my “personal psychologist.”

Based on the outline, have you already found the pattern? Right. That’s the example of everything happens for a reason and everything affects everything.

Had I listened to my mom when she asked me to sleep early on 30th May 2020, I wouldn’t have had a complicated and sad-ending relationship and I wouldn’t have ever been a lunatic in love. Then when Mega asked me about Wall Street English on 19th November 2020, I would just explain to her about it and done. Thus, I wouldn’t have any “personal psychologist.”

Or, if somehow Mega had never applied to Wall Street English or I had never worked in Wall Street English, Mega wouldn’t have contacted me and I wouldn’t have told her all about my story. And again, I wouldn’t have had a “personal psychologist.”

The conclusion: If I listened to my mom to sleep early, I wouldn’t have been close again with Mega and she would never have been my “personal psychologist.”

Life is funny, isn’t it?

That being said, everything happens for a reason, everything affects everything, and it’s just life showing its behavior. Everything that you do now might not be able to show you the immediate results. They are waiting for the moment. When the time comes, they will reveal themselves and surprise you.

Basically, this is just an appreciation article for my friend Mega Dayu. Massive props to her for willingly listening to all of my stories almost every day. To the point that she is already fed up with me. Sorry about that!

Everything happens for a reason. It causes a change. It might be bad or it might be good for you

References:

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Butterfly effect. APA Dictionary of Psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/butterfly-effect. (Retrieved on 21st May 2021).

Farnam Street Media. The butterfly effect: Everything you need to know about this powerful mental model. Farnam Street. https://fs.blog/2017/08/the-butterfly-effect/. (Retrieved on 21st May 2021).