Motif Madness: The Butterfly Effect

It has been said that “a butterfly can flutter its wings over a flower in China and cause a hurricane in the Caribbean.” Basically, the “butterfly effect” refers to a theory that a small action now would have a big impact on a future outcome. (Chaos theory … google it when you’ve exhausted all other methods to combat insomnia.) More likely, the reality is that a small action in a complex system may have no effect or it may have a massive one. Often, it is virtually impossible to know which will turn out to be the case.

More about the butterfly effect in a bit. First, the photos you see in this post were taken a year ago and never made to the blog. What the topic of the post would have been and any idea I had initially behind this outfit escapes me at this point. I came across the photos as I was going through a folder labeled “holding”. Coincidently, I was going to wear the same jacket for photos for this post so I decided not to waste the earlier efforts.

Second, for those who have been following this blog for a while, I’m again changing around the themes on which my Saturday posts are based. For a long time, the theme for the first Saturday of the month has been floral. However, lately, I’ve felt a little hemmed in by the narrowness of options and concerns of posts becoming repetitious. With a more generic theme of motifs, there is a world of endless possibilities to inspire me. After all, if nothing ever changed, there would be no such things as butterflies.

With motifs, the dilemma is how much is too much or too little. If I’d taken new photos, I would have paired this jacket with a butterfly infused tee (images only, not the real thing) so as to reinforce the theme.  Perhaps a necklace and/or earrings?  I have neither as of this writing and since I’ve chosen to go with photos at hand, the randomly placed butterfly patches on my jacket are left to stand out on their own.

                                      The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity.  – George Carlin

When looking for quotes about butterflies and information on the butterfly effect, I came across this blog post. The author, Micael Widell, writes an easy-to-read and thought-provoking essay about the butterfly effect in human behavior. Specifically, on how the micro-decisions we repeat over and over, on a daily basis, over time can often lead to very large consequences. He shares a couple of relatable examples of how we tend to self-condition ourselves through repetitive micro-decisions. Often, when we change a micro-decision, we can experience a big change in the expected outcome.

If you’re anything like me, then once or twice you’ve thought about how the butterfly effect could have played out in your life.. go back and change something thing to see how different your life would be today. It’s not in a “if I only had” kind of way but a pondering on which seemingly minute event changed the course of your life without your realization. Do I even remember that event?

Please excuse me now as I’m going to flutter my wings for a moment and see if I can stir up a hurricane.

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