The View From Here
By John M. Milner
docmilner42@hotmail.com

Some movies are just mindless entertainment. There's really nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's what movies are for: an escape from the stress and troubles over everyday life.

But then there are movies like "the Butterfly Effect", movies that leave you thinking and rethinking not just the major and minor plot pints of the movie but the premise behind it.

Not to spoil too much of the plot but the Butterfly Effect is based on the idea that changing any one thing in your life will completely change the route of your life from A to B.

The movie got me to thinking, as I suspect was the intent of the film-makers. How may decisions, major and minor, do we make every day that alter the course of our lives? How many of us stop to contemplate the mythical question of "what if"? What if I had decided differently in one situation or another? What if I had gone ahead and done something that I never got a chance to do? What if I hadn't done what I did in any specific situation? How vastly different would my life had turned out in comparison to where I am today?

In the last few hours, I have come to realize that there are several key situations in my life where, if I had the power to go back and change things, my life would have been changed to the extent where I would no longer recognize what is my present reality.

Take for example, the seemingly ill-fated decision I made in December 1999, to leave my job at the Bombay Company and getting involved with a friend's wrestling company. The fact that the wrestling company folded a month later prompted me to go back to school where I was introduced to several great people who I remain friends with. The fact that I couldn't get a job after graduation made me decide to take a job in retail and through that job, I've met some pretty cool people that I consider friends as well.

One could make the argument (and since this is my column, I'll do just that) that had I decided to remain with the Bombay Company, I probably wouldn't know ¾ of the people I am friends with today. What makes it all the more bizarre is that, prior to being hired, I frequented the Coles that I currently work at.and so I am now left with the weird feeling that there is an alternate universe out there where I pass one of my closest friends in the world in the aisles of a book store on average of once or twice a week.and we don't even know each other.

Of course, everyone always focuses on the big decisions: taking one job over another, receiving a promotion, asking one girl to the prom instead of the other, moving from one city to another. But what about the small, seemingly insignificant decisions that don't seem to be all that important at the time.

Suppose that you take one route to work but on a certain day you decide to go a different route.only to end up in a car accident, or run into an old girlfriend who you end up renewing your relationship with. It's like a paragraph in the novelization of Back to the Future where Doc Brown tells Marty that by his going to a movie, he may have kept a theatre open which could one day burn down, killing a child that would have grown up to be president who was inside watching a movie.

What that boils down to is that when you stop to think about it, we all make a thousand decisions every day which impact our lives and those around us. Our decision in each and every one of these situations dictate the course of not only our own lives but of those around us. Most are decisions that we don't even think about, and yet they all have an effect of some magnitude on how the rest of our lives and the lives of those we come in contact will be played out.

Hey, had I not decided to go see "the Butterfly Effect" I would have not written this column. Had I not written this column, you wouldn't have had to take the time to read it. How will my decision, coupled with yours, affect the rest of your life.and those around you?

Something to think about.


John M. Milner
Email Doc
docmilner.com