The Butterfly Effect: Everything Leads to Something

By Precious Nelson Esate

There is this story I carry around with me like a personal purse. It can be very minute, unassuming, but very present. I would love to say it began on a Wednesday morning in February, but that’d be enormously untrue, because I have no current clue when it happened. However, I do know that during a week in February 2025, I applied for various writing positions. I was religiously broke, so I tried to get as many writing gigs as possible that could aid in seeing me through the month, or year, if I was lucky. And in order to get the type of gigs that paid more, I needed to switch my niche. Since storytelling didn’t pay as much until you were connected to the right source, I decided to try Web3 content writing. I mean, it was difficult, but if people were doing it, I could too. Fast forward to the future, I hooked up with an acquaintance of mine who was into the business and he told me how to get past it. Apart from teaching me and inspecting my samples, he proceeded to give me his former pieces, so that if I got a client, it’d be like I was into the game already, considering the fact that they rarely select novices due to a number of unrelatable reasons.  

So yeah, I got into it. A few folks declined my work, as was expected. However, in the midst of my hustle, I realized, not only was it leading to nothing but a solid brick wall, I didn’t even like what I was doing. I wasn’t connecting with my pieces like I usually did when I was telling stories or writing about life. It was just me, staring into an unstable laptop which went off whenever there was a power outage, scribbling notes that didn’t come from the heart. Rinse and repeat. One morning, I woke up and I told myself I’d had enough. If I was going to do something so unprofitable, the least I could do was be in tune with it. 

I’m not going to lie, though. Quitting was haaarrrrrrrd. First, I wondered if I was on the right path. You know that saying that goes, “It’s not always going to be rosy, but if you’re nosy enough to cultivate, then you just might see your roses”? Exactly. Actually, I just made that saying up, nobody says that. But, but… I kept thinking: if I could stay with Web3 content writing a little longer, maybe I was eventually going to reap the fruits of my labour. Nevertheless, my spirit wasn’t having it. Secondly, I thought about the guy who gave me the gig. What if he saw me as dumb? What if he saw me as someone who couldn’t even chase a… simple thing till the end? The fear of not wanting people to see me as a failure made my mind toil all night. But when I did quit, I took a deep drag of a blunt that I didn’t even buy, and said to myself, “I am just going to figure out how to get to the top of my storytelling game.” Because if I keep switching niches when things get rough, what are my readers going to know me for? Who knows, one day, I might just f*ck around and write about agriculture. No shades to agriculture, though. I absolutely love nature. 

Couple days later, I started writing stories again on Google Docs. Posted a few stories on social media and got a some ‘I f*cks with your content’ comments. Then I decided, why not create a blog where you can build a portfolio of all your articles and stories? And that was how Blunt Tales and Coffee came into existence. 

That period in my life where I felt like I was failing at something I needed to do to survive, led to a fountain of moments: I stayed at home, like I’ve always done, created a blog and my Substack account where I can post and send emails of my pieces to the three people who’ve subscribed, (a big shoutout to my subscribers), read a laundry-list of books that I absolutely loved and books that I would not have otherwise picked. And I began to write more and submit more. Actually, this is the period in my life where I have written more than I could’ve ever imagined. And then I realized that after I technically ‘failed’ at the Web3 content writing stuff, the experience that I got from it helped me get better at my storytelling pieces. And in that moment, so inconsequential to the world, was the hinge on which my life began to open.

This is what the butterfly effect is all about. 

What is The Butterfly Effect? 

The butterfly effect might sound like a metaphor to some, but it is also a fact. It refers to the idea that minuscule events can possess a wide range of effects. It was literally coined from Chaos theory and has a specified beginning from the suggestion that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Nigeria could set off a tornado in Atlanta. At first, it sounds poetic, doesn’t it? But then it begins to sound real—scary, even. That something so subtle, so unimportant, could set the stage for either creation or catastrophe. Mind blowing fact? The outcome of your decisions within that moment is totally not within your control. 

Mathematically, Edward Lorenz first introduced it in the 1960s when he discovered that a tiny variation in his weather simulation data, a difference of less than 0.0001, led to dramatically different outcomes. But for me, and perhaps for many others on the planet, it is less about data or numbers, and more about the poetry of cause and effects. It is about how our lives are structured, not on grand, foreseen decisions, but on nearly small invisible pivots.

We are taught to believe that the huge decisions define us—what school we attend, who we choose to spend the rest of our lives with romantically and non-romantically, what career we decide to pursue, etc. But oftentimes, it is the subconscious or thoughtless decisions we make in split seconds that shape us. That decision to turn right instead of left, just to come in contact with someone who changes the dynamics of our lives. That thoughtless, or thoughtful, decision to send one message, which ends up accompanying a silence that spreads you and that someone you used to know and cherish, apart. In my own scenario, it was the choice to quit my ‘not-yet-gotten-job’ and move onto something I really loved doing. And that decision became the axis on which my entire world began to shift differently.

Some people find the butterfly effect upsetting and unsettling, because the idea that one is in control of their existence becomes an illusion—a façade. A myth that’s only told to help you sleep at night. And that’s why they often refer to it as chaos. I sometimes like the idea, the idea of hope wrapped in uncertainty. The idea that I could imagine things into being, and it is a 50-50 chance that they’d become reality, fascinates me. Because, I have come to an understanding that if little things can ruin everything, ruin all the work that I have struggled to build, then little things can also redeem every disorder that has arisen in my life and in the lives of others. A stranger's smile might save a soul. A simple, random act of kindness might wavelet into someone else's healing and make it an awesome experience. And when you’ve lived long enough, as I have, or even longer than I have, you start realizing that the periods that crack you open and have you crashing out real bad, can also let the light in. And that light might just happen to outshine the cracks. There have been moments where I left a message unsent; a time when I failed a course, only to lash out at myself, rewrite it, and get an A; a time where I didn’t say the things that burned in my throat; a time where my glasses broke and I didn’t have a penny, just to get a new pair the following day. Those moments changed me. 

Additionally, regret too, I have found out, has its own butterfly effect. It suppurates not just in the things you’re left unfinished, but in everything that accompanies it. The relationships you didn’t pursue, the bravery you forget you once had, and the opportunities you missed either because of your carelessness, or carefulness. It makes you wonder if you could have done things differently. But the truth is, you’ll never know. So why linger on something you’d never even get the answers to in the first place? 

Our lives are not the only things full of butterfly effects. History too, is filled with its butterfly effects. Remember how it took the shooting at unarmed students by the Police, and the killing of Hector Pieterson for the entire black community to join the protest in June, 1976? And how a single bullet in Archduke Franz Ferdinand caused his assassination and sparked the First World War? Also, it took Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat, and the American Civil Rights Movement ignited. Furthermore, a man in Tunisia took it upon himself, to set himself ablaze and that was how the Arab Spring started. 

Thing is, we have a thing for remembering the fire, but not always the spark that started it. These were not always magnificent gestures when they occurred. People who saw it would have thought the people involved were either insane or merely overreacting, but these occurrences happened to be sparks for greater events. Tiny, stubborn, burning sparks that caught on dry grass. 

So What Do You Do With This Knowledge? 

I will not pretend to know what you can do with it. I only know what I’ve experienced and how I’ve lived. I know that every choice is important, even when we technically don’t make them ourselves. That every whisper, every silence, every spoken word, every momentary anger or failure, every push or pause, every praise, compliments or scorn, every forgotten and remembered call, carries its own significance. 

I no longer dismiss the tiny things. I treat every fleeting moment with importance, because it just might matter. I call the friend I’ve been meaning to. Text the ex-lover that I still admire. I give compliments to random strangers on the road or wherever I find them. I send the message I would have left in my drafts for decades. I say “I love you” to my sisters and parents without being asked. I read a book and alter a dress whenever I can. I laugh loud at a joke that I find amusing, and cry hard at an emotional series or movie. I say "thank you" for every kind gesture like it’s a prayer. And I say "I'm sorry" like it's medicine. Because if I’m not in control of the outcome, if I’m not in control of the storm, then I just might learn how to hold my boat a little tighter. I just might learn to do the things I know before I go. Because maybe, just maybe, the minute things are where mighty things begin.