THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

Dear Spike:

You fell feverish last night — not terribly so, but enough that you were up most of the night, alternately crying, screaming, fussing and whining.

By this morning, your temperature had dropped back down to a more normal 98.7 — and now you’re simply fighting exhaustion. (It’s not yet 10:30 a.m. and I’ve just set you down for your third nap of the morning.) By this evening, I’m sure, you’ll have recovered your usual, cheery disposition, but having gotten plenty of sleep throughout the day, I’m certain, you’ll be up most of the night again.

So it goes. And goes. And goes.

The laws of science tell us that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In the humanities, we simply say "what goes around, comes around," but it is equally incontrovertible as a principle of life as it is a principle of physics. Everything you do in this world — by choice, by circumstance or, most often, by both choice and circumstance — will set off an ever-splintering chain of reactions, the consequences of which might be felt today or years down the road. Some people call this the “butterfly effect” — based on the idea that if were you able to follow the infinite effects of an action as infinitesimal as a butterfly flapping its wings, you might find that, over days and weeks and months and years and centuries and millennia, an entire world is changed by an initial action not seen nor felt by anyone.

I’ve thought about this principle a lot as you, your mother and I have begun our journey through this world — at once so simple and so chaotic — together. What choices have we made today that will, in the decades to come, effect your life and the lives of others? What circumstances have occurred that will, as you live and breathe and grow, change your world and the worlds around you?

How will the dreams that you are dreaming this morning — at a time when you would usually be awake — inform the rest of your day? How will that day change your week, your year, your life?

You’re starting to wake from your nap, now. And coincidentally, the sun has broken through the winter clouds for the first time in weeks, so I think I’ll take you outside, for a moment or two, for a bit of fresh air.

We’ll breathe it all in. And change the world.

Love,
dad