The butterfly effect – very small events having a major effect on seemingly unrelated major events at a later date – is hard to appreciate fully due to the apparent lack of connection between the happenings. The term was coined by Edward Lorenz drawing from a metaphorical example of the details of a tornado arising from the flapping of butterfly wings weeks earlier. It may be hard to prove at times, especially when trying to link distant events to weather conditions, yet it’s humbling to consider the importance of the butterfly effect in our lives.

Photo by Annie Spratt, Unsplash

We often give credit or blame ourselves for the outcomes of our lives. We pride ourselves for successes and criticize ourselves for failures. To some extent this is justified. Certainly, self-pride is in order if we choose to work hard, target what we want and achieve our goal. We also correctly blame ourselves if we neglect responsibility, avoid effort or engage in illegal activities and fail to live up to our dreams.

However, we seldom give sufficient credit to the butterfly effect – apparently neutral, disconnected acts of happenstance – as the templates guiding our lives.

The butterfly effect has even played a heavy hand in our becoming human beings, and it challenges the meaning of “neutral,” or without effect. Gene mutations (changes in DNA sequence) are considered “neutral” if they do not cause a visible change in the organism. The protein product of the mutated gene may continue to function as always, yet at least some small undetected change in its structure has almost certainly occurred. The change may cause the protein to interact slightly in some fashion with another protein, which in turn may set up another minor perturbation, and so forth. Then, much later, independent changes in conditions of various types may occur that favor the organisms that made that so-called “neutral” mutation long before, and evolution takes place.

Voilà! And here we are, pondering how we got here. It wasn’t by our choices or our direction in any way. It wasn’t by changes that followed one another in any logical sequence. It was the accidental joining of a series of unrelated events separated in time. In that sense, the butterfly effect was the driving force of evolution, and that early mutation wasn’t “neutral” at all. It had a major effect.

The butterfly effect runs our lives. Think, how did you find your spouse? Did you make an exhaustive survey of possibilities? Probably not. You might have gone by chance to a party or moved to a different city for a job unrelated to who you married. All happenstance, apparently “neutral” events, but not really neutral at all. Disconnected events led to one of the, if not the, most important choice of your life. I met my wife Lona on a blind date with a woman who just happened to work at the National Institutes of Health, like I did, and had a friend in common with me.

Love that butterfly!

We seldom give sufficient credit to the butterfly effect – apparently neutral, disconnected acts of happenstance – as the templates guiding our lives.

Photo by Luca Huter, Unsplash

The same can be said for so many of the important, and less significant, events of our lives. We win or lose a competition depending on which ones we happen to enter, who else made the same decision, and the plethora of tiny events that led to our readiness to compete.

I believe that “neutral” is a cousin to “nothing” (see my next blog). Both are labels for ignorance: “neutral” means we don’t know what will ultimately be consequential, and “nothing” refers to what we don’t know or understand. The significant (and insignificant) happenings in our lives are driven by small, unnoticed events that occurred independently and separated in time. These events play a major role in what we do and who we are. It follows that we are identified in no small way by independent, external happenings, leaving little room for conceit, and much space for gratitude.