The butterfly effect

I have heard some many wonderful things about this film, but for some reason I have never seen it before. That is until last night. And I have to admit that the psychology behind this film was kind of scary and it made me think of how important one person or an object can be in your life and how that life develops.

The butterfly effect is a metaphor that encapsulates the concept of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory; namely a small change at one place in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere. The butterfly effect is a common trope in fiction when presenting scenarios involving time travel and with “what if” cases where one storyline diverges at the moment of a seemingly minor event resulting in two significantly different outcomes. (Source)

As I was reading about what the butterfly effect actually is, I could not help but wonder about everything that is happening in this world. People are meeting someone on the other side of the world and several years later they meet and some amazing secrets are revealed, or a person who is perpetually ten minutes late are not one day and because of that she is not involved in an accident. Perhaps this is too Hollywood but I cannot help but wonder if there is something to it. Is there really a destiny or can we change the past in order to make the present/future better?

Last night I saw the film called the butterfly effect starring Asthon Kutcher. The film is about Evan Treborn (Kutcher) who blocks out harmful memories of significant events in his life. But as he gets older he discovers a way to remember these lost memories and he travels back in time to redo parts of his past in order to make his future better. This does not turn out like he wanted to, and the consequences to his actions are less than desirable.

Even though this is a Hollywood film I cannot help but believe that there is some truth to it. There is a reason why we cannot change the past because one small insignificant object can turn out to not be irrelevant for a person who is crossing its path. Perhaps everything happens for a reason and we are to accept that. The people you meet and the choices you make are shaping your future and the forces outside of that should not be played with. Perhaps I am being naïve but I believe there are some truths to this. Maybe we should stop dwelling on what happened in the past on concentrate on what we want to happen in the future. After all, we do have the ability to choose our own paths in any direction we want. 

Pictures from http://meme-evolution-and-culture.blogspot.com/ and http://www.rlslog.net/the-butterfly-effect-2004-720p-bluray-x264-sinners/