You've probably heard of the ‘butterfly effect’ from the 2004 American sci-fi movie featuring young Ashton Kutcher. But the term stems from the branch of math called chaos theory and is actually associated with mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz.
According to Lorenz, a tornado could be influenced by minor perturbations and a tiny change in the initial conditions would create a significantly different outcome. His ideas quickly spread among philosophers and mathematicians, but today, the whole concept of the butterfly effect is often used to describe a situation when a small change causes great consequences.
Like the decisions we make in life. So this time, we’re diving deep into real-life stories of the “butterfly effect” shared by people in this Reddit thread. Some of them are truly unbelievable, but hey, truth is stranger than fiction.
#1
TL;DR: I over-drafted and caused four marriages and five babies.
Longer version, I was just out of high school and new in town with no job. I was living off what savings I had left and my account went below zero without me knowing. I was overdraft charged like 10 times and owed $300+. I went down to the bank spoke with a teller and she ended up being a lifesaver. She worked with me and got all the charges removed. On top of getting the charges removed, we got to talking about my situation and she said that her son worked at a local restaurant and she would help me get a job. She was a woman of her word and by the end of the week I was working full time. Fast forward, I meet a cool dude who worked there, we became friends, I introduced him to my sister, they fell in love, got married and had two kids. His best friend came into town for the wedding and I introduced him to my roommate at the time, they fell in love, got married and had two babies. I also got my best friend a job at the restaurant where he met a girl working there, they feel in love, got married and had a kid. Right before I left I got my roommate a job at the restaurant, where he met a customer, fell in love, got married and had a kid.
As a bonus, my best friend, who I helped get the job repaid the favor and got me a job at a different restaurant, where I met a girl, fell in love and got married.
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576points
#2
I was walking to school and got distracted by a hedgehog that ran in a bush next to me then a big ass tree branch fell infront of me, would've crushed me if I didn't get distracted by a spikey little mouse scurrying in the bushes. I gave him a dead cricket the next day, he took it and ran off. God speed spikey mouse.
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547points
To find out more about this incredible phenomenon, Bored Panda reached out to Helen Marlo, a licensed clinical psychologist and Jungian psychoanalyst who provides psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and consultation. Helen is also a Professor of Clinical Psychology and the Department Chair at Notre Dame de Namur University.
“At its core, the 'butterfly effect' describes a phenomenon of interconnection between people and our larger world,” she explained and added that “This phenomenon has been expressed poetically by Walt Whitman in 'Song of Myself' when he describes the natural, inherent interconnectedness across space and time between individuals and the world.”
“Whitman writes:
I celebrate myself,
And what I assume, you shall assume
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Walt Whitman (1959, p. 25)”
#3
My teacher encouraged me to enter a poetry competition when I was 17 years old. I only entered because there was a cash prize, but I ended up winning and getting my poem published. Well, a couple of months later, I got a Facebook message from a girl who wanted to know more about my poem because she had to analyze it for her upcoming exam. It turned out that we were about the same age, so we decided to meet up and discuss it. We've been together for four years and are getting married next month. I often wonder what my life would look like if my teacher hadn't approached me back then.
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520points
#4
When my dad was 20, he needed to find someone's phone number, so he called the operator from a pay phone and she gave him the number. He hung up, and she accidentally refunded the money back to the pay phone. She called the pay phone back and asked him if he could put the money back in, which he did and hung up again. She accidentally refunded the money a third time and had to call back again to ask him to put the money back in...he did and hung up.
She was so flustered, she refunded the money AGAIN and called back AGAIN and, since it was such a funny situation, my father got to chatting with her and got HER number. They set up a date, got coffee, and — four years later — were married.
This coming August, it'll be 50 years for them.
If my dad didn't need that original phone number, I wouldn't be here. My dad still calls it 'The most expensive phone call he ever made.
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484points
#5
When I was in eighth grade, I had a really long bus ride home, so I would pass the time by reading. One day, I faced the very serious situation of having nothing to read and only a minute to grab something in the library. For whatever reason, I grabbed a book on astronomy. That book was amazing and grabbed me like nothing else had before. I remember being so excited to realize every astronomer on Earth was 13 years old once too, and that was a career you could actually do, even if you were from Pittsburgh!
Anyway, today I am a professional astronomer who studies gigantic space explosions for a living. There was a lot of work to get from that moment to this one, but I’m always grateful that I picked up that library book!
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436points
Helen continued that similarly, this phenomenon has also been described, psychologically, by psychoanalyst Carl Jung. “His concept of 'synchronicity,' which he defines as an 'acausal connecting principle,' involves the simultaneous occurrence of two meaningfully but not causally connected events,” she explained. So ‘butterfly effect’ is not only referred to in mathematics or philosophy, it also has a significance in psychoanalysis.
#6
My parents dream was to have a 'famous child.' When my older sister's figure skating career ended in her early twenties, the spotlight shifted to me. I was a fine oboist, and took private voice lessons with the intent to audition for the local music faculty. In any case, there was a lot of pressure and, while I was successful at school and with classical music, it was never enough.
At 17 — before senior year began — my sister gifted me a kitten. My parents had given her two in her senior year and the implication was that it was my turn. When my sister dropped me off at their house, my parents locked me out, saying that if 'I wanted my own pet, I needed my own place.' So I found one that night. I worked three jobs to support myself through my senior year and graduated with entrance scholarships to both of the local universities.
Still, I couldn't afford a music degree while living on my own, even with the entrance scholarships. It was a good thing. Entering the work force showed me how much I love active jobs. Three years later, I enrolled in college and became an industrial mechanic/millwright, to my parents great shame.
After a few years of this I landed a sweet contract where I work on Saturdays and Sundays, but receive a full week's pay. Although I am a living beacon of disappointment, I comfort myself with my 100k a year job, two day workweek, and two cats. So, basically, kicked out over a kitten saved me from wasting years chasing an improbable career just to please my parents
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435points
#7
My mother and her five siblings were deported to Auschwitz in May of 1944. Soon after their arrival, my mother was placed into a line of people assigned to 'take showers' after their long trip. My mother was 13 years old and very frightened, so she held her mother's hand. Well, a Nazi soldier happened to spot this, and he ordered my mother into a different line, thinking it would be funny to separate her from her mother and make her cry. My grandmother was gassed to death about 15 minutes later, but my mother had been put in the line for the work camp. She worked in that camp until the Russians liberated Auschwitz in 1945, then moved to Romania, where she met the man who would become my father
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398points
#8
I was going out to grab pizza and a case of beer for me and my roommate but he texted me that he had a stomach thing so I walked to a restaurant and ordered dinner at the bar and met a girl there and now we are married and have two kids because my roommate had diarrhea
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365points
The psychoanalyst also said that in the butterfly effect, these meaningful interconnections happen with such frequency and often trigger reflection. “I have found it valuable to work with them, as other sources of reflection, guidance and meaning, in my psychotherapy practice,” she said.
Helen even coined the term, “Synchronicity-Informed Psychotherapy,” “to describe treatment that is informed by these kinds of phenomena.”
#9
My mom made me sign up for French in high school since I already spoke Spanish. I didn't really care about the language, but I became friends with a girl in that class. Later that year, she became sick with cancer, and she passed away the following year. Well, I had become close with her family, and they told me that French was her favorite subject and that it was her dream to study abroad. Her parents asked if we — her friends from French class — would do that on her behalf.... I was the only one who worked towards it, and I finally spent a semester there during my third year of college. I had always enjoyed French, but it wasn't a passion until something shifted that semester. So I came home, finished my undergrad degree, got my masters in French, then moved back to France. It's been 11 years since my friend died, and three years since I've lived here, and the whole time it's been clear to me that she's been with me on this journey.
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361points
#10
My girlfriend and I were on a road trip on the West Coast, and we had planned to spend a night in Las Vegas, go to Zion the next day for some hiking, and then spend another night in Vegas. Well, when we woke up for our Zion trip, we discovered that our hotel's coffee machine had broken down, so we had to go to a nearby McDonald's to get some coffee to go. When we got there, however, they told us they had run out of milk, so we let our GPS direct us to another one around the corner. Well, we arrived to find that one was permanently closed... The third McDonald's we tried to find only existed on the map. So, we nervously arrived at the fourth and final McDonald's and agreed that if we can't get coffee there, we'll stop wasting time and just go to Zion. They did have coffee and milk, but after we got to our car, we realized our order was wrong. We replaced it and laughed the whole thing off, and headed to Zion late. Well, we got back to Las Vegas just before 10 p.m. and started getting ready to go to the Harvest County Music Festival on the strip. We knew we were late, but thought we'd go anyway. But we were stopped at our hotel exit by a policeman telling us to remain in our room. There had been a shooting there, and if not for wasting all that time in the morning trying to get coffee, we would have made it to the festival in time. 58 people were shot dead that night at the festival. If not for McDonald's, it could've been 60
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335points
#11
I had to renew the sticker on my license plate a couple of years ago and really didn't feel like sitting in the waiting room by myself forever, so I told my mom I'd take her out to dinner after if she came with me. The guy working at the counter turned out to be my mom's long-lost biological brother. If she hadn't come with me, I would have never known
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313points
Moreover, “Psychotherapy is a process where two people mutually constellate the unconscious. It is a unique dialect between two psyches where patient and therapist develop a meaningful exchange guided by their conscious and unconscious mind.” Such an exchange may include experiences from synchronicities or the “butterfly effect,” Helen concluded.
#12
Pregnant cousin usually takes the bus at around 5:10pm after work. She was about to hop inside the bus but she needed to pee really badly and the commute is about an hour long so she decided to go to the restroom instead and just catch the next bus. That 5:10 bus ended up falling from a cliff.
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301points
#13
So a few years back, I lived in Nice (South of France) for a while. As a musician, I would make a bit of extra cash busking, and one day, I figured I'd go and busk at the Promenade des Anglais by the sea. It's usually packed, but a generally pleasant place to be. I set up, played a couple of songs and was doing pretty well and making a decent amount of money. Then, suddenly, not one, but two of my guitar strings snapped (I even remember I was playing 'The Scientist' at the time).
I was massively gutted and decided to cut my losses early. I stormed off home (by the station) in a bit of a sulk at having to re-string my guitar and cutting short what was essentially one of my most productive days of busking since moving there. Literally one hour later, my phone starts to blow up with family and friends freaking out and asking if I was at the promenade.
It was Bastille Day, 2016. The truck drove into the same crowd I was playing to, killing 86 people, including my at-the-time gf's uncle. I had two other friends who were among the 458 injured. I moved home the next month because it was too much, and haven't been back since.
It's hard to explain, sometimes I think I was super lucky, sometimes I just kind of cry and wonder why I was lucky and others weren't. It's surreal, and despite what people think...it's a truly horrible feeling
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294points
#14
had to call my heart surgeon to give him my new insurance number, which was delayed by a bit because I was waiting on the insurance lady to call, but she had the flu. When I finally called, the receptionist said, 'Oh hey, we just had a cancellation for this Friday! Do you want it?' Of course I wanted to get it over with and not wait another full month, so I decided to take the open heart surgery cancellation appointment. Well, my surgeon said thank goodness I did because — once he got a look inside — he realized I would not have survived to the original appointment date.
So, if the insurance lady didn't have the flu, I would have gotten those numbers sooner, called at a different time, and probably never have gotten the offer to have the surgery when I did.
Someone else's flu saved my life
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286points
#15
I had been looking for direction, and went out for Chinese food one day. In my fortune cookie was a fortune that said, 'To teach is to learn twice.' I thought hard about it, and it led me to apply for a job at a local school as an ESL instructor. Well, two years later, there was an earthquake in Taiwan which caused many English teachers to leave. The school I was working for asked if anyone was interested in replacing those teachers at its sister school — I signed up, got a promotion there, then a wife, dog, son, and daughter. All because I like Chinese food
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247points
#16
Four years ago a kid I barely knew from school invited me to a Six Flags. I was a bit of a loner at the time and I heard rumors about this kid being 'weird,' so I intended not to go but, on the day he wanted me to go, I was extra bored and decided on a whim, 'Why not?' So I met up with this kid and two of his friends.
It's been four years and that 'kid' is my best friend, and I have three other very close friends I met through him. Not only that, but I also met my first ever girlfriend because of the connections some of my new friends had. It transformed my high school years from being lonely to having an amazing group of friends I could do almost anything with.
I intend to ask him to be my best man one day, and I don’t intend on ever falling out of touch with any of them. I’m home from college now, and we are still having a lot of fun together. Going to Six Flags was still the best decision I ever made
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246points
#17
My grandfather, then a toddler, woke in a night during WWII, and moved to his parents bed.
His room was a short while later decimated by a German bomb.
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244points
#18
High school, I didnt get into the AP history class wanted. Changed up my schedule, including a different gym class, without everyone I knew. I was heartbroken. I really wanted to teach, and without an AP class senior year, I was screwed.
Made a new friend in gym class, who was wearing a volunteer firefighter shirt. He had just joined. Seemed interesting, and he invited me to check it out.
They paid for me to get my EMT. Fell in love with healthcare.
Fast forward quite a while, and I'm an ER Nurse and 'precept' students and new nurses, teaching them how to survive in the ER. I also do public outreach and injury prevention. And I love it. Glad I missed out on my class.
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240points
#19
My mother wore heels to work and slipped on the carpeted steps, resulting in a broken high heel and a broken leg. While she was home recovering, she somehow developed allergies that led to her needing an inhaler*.
The inhaler* interfered with her birth control and now I have a brother 13 years younger than me.
218points
#20
When my now-husband was 18, he found out that his mom's side of the family was Spanish, not Mexican. He found this interesting, so he changed his country to 'Spain' on MySpace, instead of the US, which is where he really was.
Meanwhile, in Australia, I was helping my friend find Spanish people to add as friends, since she was learning the language. I came across my now-husband's profile and decided to send him a friend request as well. We got along really well and met in person after three years. We have now been together 11 years, married for seven. If he didn’t change his country to Spain (which he only did for a day or so) we’d never have known each other existed.
194points