The Butterfly Effect by Yashesha

The Butterfly Effect by Yashesha - September 2022 Scholarship Essay

My human life directly parallels a deterministic system whose behavior my younger self-thought could predict. My life plans were written in dark-ink dye, instead of graphite. However, she failed to consider the loophole: chaotic systems are only predictable for a while, until they become completely random. They begin to sensitively depend on initial conditions in which the smallest change can cause the most massive changes. I would advise her to trust in the butterfly effect.

Reflecting on that one small step, word, coincidence, or struggle that has brought me the friends, family, education, health, and privileged life today, there are minuscule points that were masked by my unreasonable planes of worrying about fulfilling my words in pen. The main reason why I believe so strongly in the butterfly effect is that I have spent countless hours stressing about things I can not control. And as a control freak, it would freak me out, to say the least. This has prevented me from realizing that oftentimes the problem that I thought was so supposedly so big was inhibiting me from living in the present and appreciating the underdog events that ended up actually shaping my life. In simple cliche terms, I would tell young Yashesha to trust the process because “big” things don’t matter as much as you think; the “little” things do.