Your Butterfly Effect

We never know the impact the little things we do or don’t do may have on the lives of other; even the unborn.
In 1963, Edward Lorenz, an American mathematician, offered a hypothesis to the esteemed New York Academy of Sciences, which he later named “The Butterfly Effect.” The effect related to the theoretical example of a single butterfly flapping its wings, which moved molecules in the air, and like one billiard ball hitting another, these molecules began a chain reaction that ultimately led to a typhoon forming on another continent. Granted, on the surface, this sounds esoteric and most unlikely. So unlikely that Lorenz was promptly laughed off the Academy stage.
The Butterfly effect in chaos theory is the “sensitive dependence on initial conditions.” More simply stated, this means that even very small moves or changes at one location or time can result in great differences at another location or time. Further, these future results are unpredictable. Today, these results are called deterministic chaos, or simply chaos.

The butterfly effect spawned a science-fiction psychological thriller by the same name released in 2004 and starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart. It also inspired my fellow author/speaker Andy Andrews to write the New York Times bestseller, The Butterfly Effect: How Your Life Matters, which is a short read. In less than an hour, Andy shows, using two powerful examples, how everything we do in our life, every move we make, every action we take, matters.

For this Rambling, I share one of Andy’s examples. In 2004, ABC News named Norman Borlaug, then 91, “Person of the Week.” Although you might be unfamiliar with the name, it is reported that he is responsible for saving more than two billion lives through his work to hybridize high-yield, disease-resistant corn and wheat to grow well in dry climates. Borlaug’s hybridized crops soon were growing worldwide; Western Africa to the plains of Siberia and everywhere saw these amazing seeds thrive and regenerate.
However, if you take a closer look at the butterfly effect on Norman’s life, and you might think that someone else deserved the “Person of the Week” moniker—someone such as Henry Wallace.

Although I’m certain that few of us recognize Wallace’s name, he was Vice President of the United States under Franklin Roosevelt. Yes, I understand that because of the atomic bomb, we immediately think of the Vice President who followed Roosevelt into the Oval Office—Harry Truman.

However, let’s look at a little American history here. Roosevelt had three vice presidents. The second vice president who served from 1941 to 1945 was Henry Wallace whom was named Secretary of Agriculture after he was dropped from the reelection ticket for Truman.
During his tenure at the Department of Agriculture, he opened a facility in Mexico whose goal was the hybridization of corn and wheat for arid climates. Secretary Wallace was solely responsible for hiring young Norman Borlaug to run this Mexican research facility in the 1940s.

Although history remembers Norman Borlaug, an eventual Nobel Prize winner, because his life’s work was the catalyst for saving the lives of two-billion people, maybe Henry Wallace deserved the credit… Or could it have been George Washington Carver?
Yes, we each know about Carver’s work with peanuts, but what you might be unaware of is that when Carver was 19 studying at Iowa State University, one of his professors allowed his 6-year-old son to go on what they described as “weekend botanical expeditions” with his brightest student, George Washington Carver. The 6-year-old boy’s name was Henry Wallace. Wallace later wrote that while he was still a boy, Carver installed in him his lifelong love of plants and a vision that plants could change the planet.

Think of George Washington Carver’s butterfly effect as he so profoundly affected the life of the young Wallace and along the way developed more than 260 uses for the peanut and almost 90 uses of the sweet potato. Maybe George Washington Carver deserved to be named Person of the Week. Again, it might have been that Missouri farmer…

The farmer’s name was Moses, and although he lived in the South, he was very much opposed to the concept of slavery, not a popular stance for a Southerner during the Civil War. His vocal condemnation of slavery made him a target for Quantrill’s Raiders, the sadistic group of criminals who cloaked themselves in the gray uniforms of the Confederacy as they terrorized Yankee soldiers and Southerners alike.

In 1864, Quantrill and his Raiders rode through Moses’ farm, burning several buildings and killing several of the farm’s inhabitants. George’s mother Mary Washington was kidnapped by the Raiders but refused to let go of her newborn son; both were taken.

There’s a strong friendship between Mary Washington and Moses’ wife Susan. She was distraught over losing her friend Mary and began a letter-writing campaign to area farms asking for information about Mary and her infant son. Eventually, she succeeded in setting up a meeting with Quantrill.

Moses rode the farm's last horse into Kansas for the late-night meeting. The white Southern farmer offered Quantrill the only thing he had of value—his horse. They took his horse, and in return, the bandits tossed on the ground a filthy wet burlap sack. As the thunder of hooves became fainter and fainter, Moses pulled from the bag a naked, cold, and almost dead black baby boy.

The only way to keep the baby warm was by placing him inside his shirt skin to skin, as he walked a full day back to his farm. Moses and Susan committed that they would do all in their power to see that this tiny boy was cared for and educated to honor the memory of his loving mother Mary. On that first evening, Moses and Susan gave the boy their last name Carver.

So, you could say that Moses saved the two-billion people, or are maybe it was Susan. Unless it was…
Yes, if we could go back and drill into each of these people’s lives, we would learn even more details—details that shaped their lives. I believe we can all agree there were many people responsible for saving those two billion lives, to either a large or a small extent.

How about you? How far forward would we have to look to find someone who, because of you, made a difference? How many people yet unborn will live a better life because you were here? As Andy says in his book, "Every single thing that you do does in fact matter."

You are a unique person created by God to differ from anyone else who ever lived. You have your unique way of looking at things, of taking action, of making a difference. You have always had, and you still have, the seeds of greatness deep inside you. The question is how you will use those seeds. Will your seeds save two billion as the seeds developed by Borlaug did? Or will you make someone else’s life just a little bit better.  So I encourage each of you to flap your butterfly wings and create your own typhoon.

I close this Rambling with the same words Andy used to close his book. “Your life… and what you do with it today… matter forever.”

Keep Rollin'
,
Richard Parker

I encourage you to read Andy’s book The Butterfly Effect.
http://www.andyandrews.com/ms/the-butterfly-effect/