This is a chapter from my fourth book called When hunger yearns
I was thinking about butterflies. The word butterfly. Why did we decide to combine butter and fly to create the name of an insect? There is probably a normal explanation for that but then my mind decided to be weird. What if butter was made from flies? Then we would really be able to combine the words butter and fly. But then that would be fly butter or flutter. It is a crazy idea but not a novel idea. My friend Gemini tells me that research and experimentation is being done that takes fly larvae and soaking and blending to separate the fat to produce cooking oil. This is not exactly butter but is still called bug butter and can be used as a replacement in some baking and some cooking. The researchers actually made a cake with the bug butter. But what about the word butterfly? How did this originate? Gemini tells me that it remains a mystery but there are a couple of popular theories. Like from the yellowish colour of some butterfly wings or from folklore where butterflies or witches disguised as butterflies were stealing milk and butter.
In my quest for an answer I came across the butterfly effect concept. My silly thought journey has led me here. Something I have thought about before. But I did not know there was a name for it and that it has been widely discussed. The idea that an action can cause a much larger one in the future through a chain reaction. This is from the realms of chaos theory. Imagine that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world might cause a tornado many miles away. Sometimes I hear someone say I was going to play that number in play whe, I would have won some money. But then I think, if you had played the number, it is possible that your change of action would have caused a ripple of events that caused a different number to play. My silly caterpillar of a question has become a butterfly of curiosity in my mind now.
But does that mean that our small acts of kindness can cause tornadoes? Gemini tells me that the butterfly effect deals with physical systems like weather patterns. While primarily acts of kindness influence the social and emotional environment. But what if the butterfly effect applied to all of life? In that case it makes sense to focus on the outcomes that we can positively influence with our actions and leave the rest up to God. This reminds me of the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr, "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference." There is also the concept that unlucky events can lead to lucky events and vice versa. I wish I had found in my research a theory that was versus chaos theory that describes the group working together to have massive impacts. I would think group theory would be a fitting name. Normally I would say when life gives you lemons make lemonade. But I think when life gives you flies make butter would apply to this chapter. A fitting ending message would be for us to make the best of where we are and what we have.
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