Conditional Chaos

Everything is so dependent on context.  A smile, for example.  Between lovers, a hidden conversation.  Between friends, a warm exchange.  Between acquaintances, a friendly, if confused, interaction.  Between strangers, a potentially awkward or creepy moment.  And that's just a smile in the general case.  It also changes if the smile looked extremely fake or seemed elated.  But everything in the interpretation of this simple thing is determined by circumstance.

For most of us, every day brings us into contact with people with whom we are already acquainted and people we have never met before.  Sometimes we see people all around us, even if we don't interact.  And occasionally, we strike up a conversation, or find ourselves going to similar places, and then we become friends.  There is nothing more confusing than the interactions that lead two people to become friends.

Sometimes it is as random as the work-space you are assigned.  You happen to need a pen and turn to your neighbor and, well, the rest is history, as they say.  If you had been next to anybody else, there is a high chance you would not have met this person.  Maybe someone else would have become your close friend and, as friends are wont to do, would have influenced you, changed who you are in subtle ways.

How much do the people we come into contact with almost randomly wind up influencing our future?  It has to be an awful lot.  If we became friends with different people, in different places, at different times in our lives, wouldn't we be completely different people?

I don't believe in destiny and I don't believe in soulmates.  I believe in chaos.  I believe in entropy.  I believe that random occurrences in our lives set the stage for what is going to happen in the future.  While we can choose to talk to the person next to us or not, and the decision could maybe be predicted, we don't always get to choose who is next to us.  And sometimes even if we do, we do it not at all knowing the future outcome of our interactions.

As far as the butterfly effect...I don't know.  For those who are not familiar with it, the butterfly effect is the idea that if a butterfly flaps its wings in central America, it can set in motion air molecules in such a way as to cause a tsunami in Japan.  That's just an example.  It's the idea that everything is so interconnected that even the smallest motion here or there or somewhere else has unpredictable consequences.  And while I agree with the idea of each small change potentially leading to larger ones in the future, I don't know if we can apply it to something as drastic as a tsunami caused by a butterfly's wings.

It makes logical sense, if you extrapolate from the idea that things all influence each other.  But it is still difficult for the human brain to wrap itself around.  Is it really possible that such a tiny motion sets off something so huge and seemingly unrelated?  Maybe, maybe not.  I feel that it's probably possible for something like that to happen, but extremely unlikely.  Just as it is possible but extremely unlikely for a person to be able to quantum tunnel through a table, for example.