In the movie, The Butterfly Effect, a boy has the ability to go back in time and make minor changes to his childhood… then he goes back to the future to see the big effects caused by those small changes.
Do you ever wonder if life is really like that? I especially wonder that about key individuals in history. What if Christopher Columbus had decided not to sail the ocean blue in 1492? What if George Washington and Thomas Jefferson thought things were fine the way they were? What if Martin Luther King Jr just accepted his circumstances, lived his life, and died?
A small change in any one of those individual's life might have steered them in a completely different direction. Small changes that we think will be beneficial could have detrimental effects over the course of time. But, I think you could argue the other way… a small change could have extremely beneficial changes over the course of time.
What if Christopher Columbus had not come over and discovered America? Maybe we'd all be living peaceful lives in mud huts instead of worrying about the housing crash, deficit, oil, and wars? Maybe we'd be more concerned with family and friends and less about movie stars and fashion. Maybe we'd value people more than we do things?
But, I doubt it. Most of us would not be alive. There would be no way we would've been conceived if all of those things didn't happen exactly the way they did. So, are we lucky?
Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.