March 7: The Butterfly Effect

According to Wikipedia, "Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, physics, and philosophy studying the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. This sensitivity is popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for chaotic systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general."

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Sitting on a white IKEA Boliden armchair at three o'clock in the morning in a hot apartment in suburban Whitehall, PA, a wise guy (A legitimate wise guy. Not a smart alec. Very different.) posed the philosophical question: Do you ever wonder how you got here? Throughout your life, you're given choices. Which paths do you take? How does taking one route over another affect your here and now? Do you ever think about that?

Yes. Yes I do. I think about it all the time. I was born in San Diego to two loving parents. I was given a sister at the age of five and went through my childhood with every decision made for me. Upon graduating high school, I was forced to make the first critical decision of my young life. I could stay in San Diego with my then-girlfriend and continue living at home and attend a community college. I could continue working at the local grocery store and eventually become a clerk and possibly move up to management. Instead, I moved two hours north and went to a private university.

The next choice came at me immediately following my acceptance to Chapman. This was the choice of what course of study to take. Looking back on the last five years since graduating with a degree in Communications, I still feel like I chose the wrong path. I was really involved with theatre in high school and I wish I would have stayed on that path. I was afraid that getting a degree in Theatre would not have been the smartest choice given the unlikelihood of getting into the industry. But look at me now! I'm no better than I would have been. I'm waiting tables which is probably what I would have been doing anyway. At least I would have tried.

The next major fork in the road came at me in my Junior or Senior year at Chapman. This was a very subtle opportunity and I didn't realize its presence until after graduation. I was sick of attending classes so applying to graduate school never crossed my mind. Where would I have been if I had gotten my Master's instead of screwing around for the past five years?

I would probably have a decent job which means I would have never moved to Pennsylvania to pursue a career in baseball. If I never chased that career path, I wouldn't have ever come to the conclusion that it was the wrong industry for me which means I wouldn't have ever moved to Austin at the end of the baseball season.

What if I had continued in my pursuit of a career in acting? Would I be a successful actor by this point in my life? Would I still be struggling trying to make it? Would I be in California, or would I have moved to New York? What would my group of friends be compared with the friends I have now? What would my hobbies and interests be? Would I be listening to the same types of music in this alternate universe as I'm listening to now? I know I wouldn't have near the ping-pong skills that I have now because of the hours spent playing in college, but what unknown skills would I have developed?

What events would take place because of my other life? I could have been on my way to an audition and gotten into a horrible accident leaving me paralyzed. Maybe I would have had more exposure and been selected to be a castaway on Survivor. Maybe I would be obsessed with getting on a different show. What if I made it big and never needed the attention that I thought being on a television show would bring me?

How would my decisions affect others? If I had stayed in San Diego after graduating high school, would I still be with my girlfriend? Would we have gotten married? Divorced? Would I be a dad? What if I had befriended another struggling actor and he or she was in the accident with me leaving him/her paralyzed or worse? Somewhere, that person is living out his/her life with friends and family completely oblivious to the what-if scenarios of what could have been.

I know that novels have been penned and movies have been produced on the subject. Lost is in its final season and in a way, it too deals with the topic at hand. What if things had gone differently? How different would my life be? Would the grass be greener or have I been taking the right paths all along?



Listening to Regina Spektor