The Butterfly Effect

I am a movie buff, well, not as much as my dear friend Pankaj, but pretty close. I have fond memories of him dragging me to movie halls every alternate Friday. Sometimes the movies were good, sometimes they were not so good. Those days I was kind of short tempered, and I was fortunate to have him with me to carry me through that insane phase of my life. He lives in Dubai these days, we don't get to communicate too often, but we are connected. I miss him, and whenever I fondly remember those days, it leaves a smile on my face.

The title of this post is borrowed from a movie by the same name. A lot of you must have seen this movie, but as usual I have got a different story to tell out of this known story. The plot is rather complicated and I had to see this movie with subtitles twice to fully understand it. I am not a very good listener – just an excuse, I couldn’t understand what they said in intense scenes. Whatever.

This guy goes through some “blackouts” in his life. Those are important events in his life where his mind went blank. Well, happens to me all the time. My mind goes blank just like that and little too often. My father used to say about me – this guy is good but sometimes he goes off – off the hook he meant. Nevertheless, those blackouts in the movie provided him traversal points to his life. He didn’t realize it until he was in his college. Unlike me, he used to write his experiences, and this diary provided him with the tool to communicate to his traversal points – you there?

By time traveling this guy tried to figure out what happened when he went blank. He did, and he was rather shocked. He then realized that he could change certain things. He did. When he came back to the present time everything around him changed. His life changed. People around him changed, some were disfigured, and once he found himself without limbs. In short, he was never able to get the perfect combination for an ideal life. Whatever he did resulted in a surprise in a bad way.

Did I mention about his best friend? She was his childhood friend – part and witness of his blackouts. She was involved in some of the major events. In order to live his life with his best friend, he was trying to get the combination right by altering his past. He never succeeded. Only once he did, but then they met as strangers, and passed through – that was best for both of them, and that eventually was the end of the movie.

People sometimes try to fix things and then they try to figure out the best way forward. They however don’t realize that there is a separate program that is doing all this for them – the Architect of this Matrix. Whatever he does, might not be the best for you in your opinion, but because he has to take care of everything around you, he figures out the most optimal solution that works for everybody. You might want to traverse through those blackouts but I am sure that’s not going to help. Well, that guy tried at least five combinations and they all backfired. One of them I thought was pretty good, but it wasn’t.

All I want to say is that you don’t have the privilege of doing what this guy had, and don’t even try- I am sure it will not work. Make the most of what you have got today, and be very prudent of each decision that you take from now on. That’s because each one of your decisions potentially is a traversal point in your life.

I wish I had changed a certain 6th June in my life, when I was very rude to one of my best friends ever. I wish I could change the way I talked to Pankaj when he insisted for a movie – he was just trying to be nice to me. I wish I could be very nice to all of them who were or who are a part of my life. But, that’s all gone, that time is not going to return. There is no redemption, but there is and there will be opportunities. Go ahead, grab your chances, and make somebody happy. You will realize eventually that true happiness is making people around you happy. They needn’t be physically present but they must be connected.

Just a food for thought!