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A week ago, I was watching a documentary on The Butterfly Effect and it widened my spectrum of looking at things, in a way, about how events in history have, more or less, influenced our present time situation in some way or the other.

And I realised that the Butterfly Effect is what you actually need to change the world.

Like, it’s so simple. It was always in front of our eyes, the butterflies, at the onset of spring, flapping their pretty wings in front of our faces and eager to give us the answers we were searching elsewhere for.

(Just a note here: This is the sixth part of a blog series My Formula for Changing the World, and in case you haven’t read the previous ones yet, you’re welcome to go ahead by following the link.)

Okay, recently I was thinking about humans and how we all were connected in one way or the other, and there was this one thing I realised that I hadn’t thought about ever before.

In a way, that thing became the seed for this plant that I’m watering right here through these words.

We humans might be different and all, very different, in fact—but still there’s this one thing that binds all of us together. No matter where we live, our likes and dislikes, what our personalities are, who we befriend and who we don’t, what we have for dinner, et cetera—this one thing is a link.

This is the one thing that’s common between all of the human population.

Now you might already be familiar with this, or might not. But I’m using that thing today to take forward the construction of my Formula for Changing the World.

The Common Link Between Humanity

One thing that binds all of us humans together is—guess what—our birth and death.

What happens in between is unique to everyone.

We all take birth, from our mothers’ wombs, into our families—and decades later we all die, with majorly the same thoughts and emotions going through our head.

These emotions might vary, depending on the lifestyle situations and of course the human’s personality itself, but more or less, we can say that our birth and death experiences are almost the same.

Because they are the two things we all go through. No exceptions, indeed.

What happens in between these two very important incidents is called life.

Life is different for everyone; sometimes it’s also affected by your birth and death, like where you were born, to which parents, and in what conditions you’ll die, etc.

But one thing we surely know is that life is always different for everyone.

You and I Are Never on the Same Boat

In the end, everyone is travelling alone.

You can’t understand my life because you aren’t living my life. And I can’t understand your life because I’m not living your life. It’s something I share with myself and no one else has any part in it.

Now, the incidences and situations in life might be different, but they all point to the same belief or notion.

It’s like, the experiences are different but the lessons we learn from them are almost the same.

Life is a great teacher and it teaches all of us the same thing, in different ways at different times. The questions change. Concepts don’t.

If this is the thing, it is safe to believe that all of us are fighting the same battles, only, with different weapons and varying levels of training.

Those dissimilarities shape us into who we are and so, it’s kinda insignificant blaming someone else for their behaviour or reaction to a situation being contrasting to others’.

But why is it so that people live so different lives even when two such very important aspects of their lives are practically the same?

Because they are distinct.

Because we all are distinct human brings and you can find someone in you spectrum, but you can’t find someone with identical life experiences and beliefs and habits and likes and dislikes.

Except maybe if you’re twins. Yeah twins work.

But aside from that, no two human beings are the exact same.

Don’t let this discourage you, though.

Our life and death connect us together, so we can’t just say that we are all different and there is no scope for any common ground. No, that negative mentality won’t change the world.

There is a common space. There is.

Similar situations shape similar minds. Like similar levels of heat and pressure shape similar sizes and shapes of metal.

So, we can’t find someone who shares our exact views and beliefs, but we can find someone who’s close to it.

There’s bound to be someone like that. We just need to search.

The Actual Research

Now, this brings us to another problem.

How can we search? Among 9 billion people? No, thanks.

I’m not spending all my life searching for some soulmate who thinks the same way as me and also wants to bring the same change as me. That’s tiring. And soulmates are rare.

So what do we do?

Where We Identify the Butterfly Effect

One person can’t change the world. Like, of course.

No matter how positive and inspiring those motivational quotes sound and look on your vision wall, just take a few minutes out of reading this and think about it.

Can one person really change the world? Yes? In what way? If, according to you, one person can change the world indeed, you must have some idea of the ‘how’. How can one person change the world?

If you’ve got the answer, congrats. You no longer need to read this blog so seriously.

Just go change the world.

But what I’ve realised after thinking and contemplating this over, is that an individual cannot possibly bring a moving, huge, revolutionary change to the planet and in the minds of its occupants.

One person can’t change the world. Many can.

Moreover, many like-minded can.

To bring a sincere change in the world, we need to find people who have faced similar problems and situations as us, and who have similar lifestyle-experiences.

Because that would increase the chances of a like-mindset. A similar mentality.

But we can’t hold a candle in our hands and go out looking for them, hoping to stumble across one. Remember, the 9 billion people? You can’t sift through all of them on the internet, because, you know, I doubt Facebook or Instagram would help with that.

And we can’t gather all of them one by one either.

And neither can we wait for them to come along. That would take years. Maybe forever.

So what do we do?

That’s easy. We learn from butterflies.

The Butterfly Effect (Explained)

Look at a small, sweet, stunning butterfly.

Observe. It flaps its wings.

Very quick, very sneaky, that little thing.

But alas, it’s also very small.

Like, can you feel the butterfly flapping its wings until you go closer? Uh-huh? Nah.

A butterfly brings no change to the world! It flaps its wings all day, all night to keep itself flying and still, it ends up doing nothing!

But a butterfly doesn’t need to look at the world to see what change it brought, does it? It just needs to look at the area immediately around it.

And by looking at the area immediately surrounding it, a butterfly sees that by flapping its wings at such a speed, it moved those tiny particles of air that were surrounding it earlier.

Now these moved particles, move other particles near them, spreading out along the radius.

And this goes on.

The Butterfly Effect (Implemented)

You just need to make a change.

Simple. Start a chain reaction.

And somewhere else, someone else, will carry on.

Some like-minded person you were earlier waiting for, would see the change, and would pick it up, and carry it forward.

I’m not saying that everyone will do it. No, if that were the case, we wouldn’t have to change the world in the first place.

Neither am I saying that there are high chances of sincere reaction from people. Not everyone will act upon it. Most people would just let it go past.

But someone who thinks just like you, or who has similar benefits in mind, and who wants to genuinely bring a change, would do it.

Not everyone. Someone. Definitely someone.

And then someone else.

Then someone else.

Then again, it’d be someone else.

Then maybe you again. You’ll see the spark coming back to you, bigger, brighter and you’d again put in your share.

Then you’d give it away again.

Then someone else will act upon it.

And change will happen.

Big, major, revolutionary change will happen because many people, who didn’t even know each other, would be linked and working for this cause.

It would just be a butterfly effect.

Moral of the Story

A butterfly doesn’t know what its flapping wings do, how they move the air itself. And the butterfly doesn’t care either, it doesn’t look for the change. It does what it does.

You need to have the same mindset.

You can’t make a little change and then hope to see it make wonders. Because that won’t happen, not immediately, though probably.

You needn’t think about what this small act of kindness will do.

You just need to know that the world is round and if you shoot an arrow, you’re bound to get a wound someday. Karma, yeah? It works. So, none of that karma-discussion here.

The moral of the story is that you need to just be like a butterfly.

A simple, sweet, minding-your-own-actions butterfly.

Flap your wings. Move the particles of air.

And then flap your wings again.

It’s that easy. And it brings a change.