Thursday, March 1, 2012

THOSE AMAZING BUTTERFLIES

THOSE AMAZING BUTTERFLIES is the title of today's exercise because something reminded me of an idea that someone had a while back that he called "The Butterfly Effect."  It's the theory that small events can trigger big reactions over time.  The example given is that a butterfly flaps its wings in Canada and as a result there is a hurricane in the Caribbean.  I'm using this as the jumping off point to give you a little bit of Grandpa history and hopefully nudge you to think of examples of butterflies in your own lives.

This is a story from my high school days, which means that as I am writing this it is something that happened about fifty years ago.  (As your dad is fond of saying, I'm old.)  On this occasion, I was between girlfriends, which is to say, that my previous girlfriend and I had broken up and I had not yet found anyone willing to be the next.  I did however have my eye on one girl, Paula, who I really wanted to date.  We were at an after game sock hop, and as usual all the unattached girls were on one side of the floor and all the boys on the other.  I was standing with my best friend and working up my courage to ask her to dance, but hadn't quite gotten there yet.  What I didn't know was that he also wanted to date this girl and wasn't quite as timid as I was.  He made his move first, got the dance, and after spending the rest of the evening with her asked her for a date.  They ended up being a couple for the rest of our time in high school and (since she was dating my buddy) I never did ask her out.  The butterfly comes in at this point, because sometime later I began dating another girl who eventually was the cause of me  moving to Aurora where I eventually met your grandmother.  Had I been the first one to walk over and ask Paula to dance, all the events that followed might have turned out differently.

I can think of other examples, but you get the idea.  It's enough to make you wonder about THE PLAN.  Are our lives a series of random events that turn out as they do purely by chance; or was I meant to hesitate that night at the dance?  The only thing I know is that I don't know the answer to that question.  I hope you have fun thinking about the butterflies in your lives.

 Grandma’sBriefs.com

2 comments:

  1. WOW! This one will have me thinking for a few days! I sure have had a lot of butterflies in my life. I know I have done a few things that have really impacted my life and had I not done them things would be much different now. Most of those things I am glad I did! This is a very thought provoking post for all of us!

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  2. Butterflies are fluttering all over my life!!!

    Lovely post :)

    Thank you for sharing Grandpa :)

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