Would You Do It Again?

Are you familiar with the Butterfly Effect? It is a term closely associated with an obscure branch of physics called Chaos Theory. Maybe you're a physicist, in which case you will rip me a 'new one' for my simple, neanderthal-like oversimplification of this idea. Or maybe you for some reason hear John Williams's Jurassic Park theme song playing in your head, thanks to Jeff Goldblum's infatuation with Chaos Theory. Perhaps, you are familiar with the Butterfly Effect through science fiction movies that focus on time travel, and its unintended consequences. You might also just wish for me to get to the point.

The Butterfly Effect postulates that small changes in initial conditions in a non-linear system can lead to significant differences in later states. Put more simply, small choices or events can lead to a myriad of unintended consequences. This is not just when I visit my younger self, once time travel is perfected, to make me promise I'll invest my allowance in Apple stock. This applies to life as we now live it. Life is many things. Life can be beautiful and joyful. It can be filled with sorrow and anguish. Life is often stressful and causes anxiety. It is funny, boring, angering, purposeful, confusing, thoughtful, debilitating, miraculous, etc. etc. etc. Do you know one thing life is not?

Life is not linear.

Therefore, the Butterfly Effect is in action every single day. The choices we now make, and moreover, the circumstances we find ourselves in can dramatically alter the future, in ways we couldn't possibly imagine.

Back to the title of the blog... As we cannot see into the future, we can only retrospectively analyze our choices from the past and try to ascertain their effect on our current state. To answer this simple question, we must define 'it'. We all have many 'it's. A friend you made, a date you went on, a sport you played, a job you took, or a move you made are all obvious examples. However, if things go according to plan, many of these decisions turn out to lead down relatively linear paths. For example, if you take a job and stay in that position every year until retirement, sure, it still produced butterfly effects in other aspects of your life, but the job itself was what you expected. For this exercise, and for the sake of introspection, think about something you either did or something that happened to you that sent you down an unexpected path, one twisting, winding road at a time until you ended up where you are today, far from the starting point, and even farther from your anticipated ending point. This shouldn't be too difficult, as I don't believe I've ever spoken to someone who truly mapped their life out from the start and ended up where they thought they would.

So, what is your 'it'?

I'll give you a few examples from my life to help you evaluate your own.

I moved from Charlotte. North Carolina to Charleston, South Carolina immediately before starting high school. My eighth-grade class had around sixty students. When I went to enroll at Wando High School, I was shocked to find my ninth-grade class to have eight hundred students. Gone were the days of Wednesday chapel. My first day of high school, someone lit a blunt on the back of the bus while talking about their sexual escapades. IN NINTH GRADE. All of that to say, I had a difficult time making friends and felt like a fish out of water for much of my high school experience. Thankfully, I met my best friends in church. In fact, our group of four close friends all went to different high schools in the Charleston area. I had always dreamed of following in my parent's footsteps and going to Georgia Tech, but when college decision time came around, I merely asked my three other church friends where they were going to which all three replied "Clemson". Had I not been horrified by my first few bus rides to Wando High School, I likely would not have been involved with youth group at the church, would not have met some of the best friends I've ever had, and would likely be a Yellow Jacket, not a Clemson Tiger. If you know me at all, you know I firmly believe attending Clemson University was the best decision I ever made. Go Tigers!

Yes, I would do 'it' again. That one was easy. Now it's time for a harder one.

I live in Bozeman, Montana, or simply put, Heaven. In my opinion, Montana is the most beautiful state in the union. I wake up each morning and drive to work in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains. Everywhere you look there is a crystal-clear river, brimming over with trout. I see elk herds, flocks of mallards, bald eagles, antelope, pheasants, and grouse on a regular basis. If you drive thirty minutes in any direction you will feel like the only person alive. The sky seems to drape on the horizon in such a way that you can see for hundreds of miles. I can fish, hunt, ski, hike, camp, and explore more than any place I've ever lived. Two months ago, the night sky was the dancefloor for the aurora.

But like I said, I'm a South Carolina boy, who had basically never heard of Montana. How did I get here? And was it worth it?

Certain details of this story will be left out, for obvious reasons.

I attended veterinary school at the University of Georgia from 2016 to 2020. My second year of vet school I fell in love with a classmate. In an effort to get away from a previous relationship of hers, I changed my living plans for my final two years of school. Scrambling to find a new roommate, I happened upon a guy in the class below me, who needed a new living situation for a very similar reason. A couple beers later, the plan was set and we both had new roommates.

The years went on and we became best friends, spending our weekends fly fishing in the Appalachian Mountains. I married my classmate, and he married his. My friend had often talked about Montana, as he had an uncle who lived here that he grew up visiting. When vet school ended, he moved with his wife to his uncle's property, and I moved with mine to North Carolina and then, ultimately, back to South Carolina. Every year, however, I would find an excuse to visit him and spend a week fishing giant western trout streams and taking in the beauty of the Treasure State, secretly wishing I could join him in living there.

Well, as I said before, life is not linear. I will not go into detail, but my life back home was ripped apart at the seams, and the love I thought I had fostered died a heartbreaking death. I went through the worst few months of my life, wishing I could fall asleep and never wake up again, resenting that I had to trudge through each additional day. I wondered what the point was in anything. You make plans and try to do the right thing for your future relationally, emotionally, and financially only to have the future you knew was so certain you could almost grasp it completely evaporate overnight. It leaves your mind reeling and you struggle to care about any of it.

What choice did I have? You have to keep trying to move forward. With the help of my best friend, I began to see a new path for my life. I saw a path that led to joy again. Though I felt none at the time, I knew I could get there if I made a massive change in my life--one I had always wanted, but never dreamed would be a reality. My heart would heal if I could wake up each morning and drink coffee with a new background, and not just any background. I took several weeks to pack up everything I own and then I drove from South Carolina to Montana. I would finally live minutes away from my best friend in the most beautiful place God ever created.

Here I am, eight months later typing this blog looking out my bedroom window at the Bridger Mountain range with a smile on my face. My non-linear life took me for a treacherous ride, but one that ended with me in Heaven.

When I think about the original question, 'Would I do it again?', the answer would have to be yes. If it were not for the shattering of my world, I would have never said "F*** it, I'm moving to Montana". I find it hard to imagine literally any other scenario that would have ended in me fishing on the Gallatin River tomorrow afternoon or making breakfast on the banks of the Madison River on Sunday morning. Therefore, I'd do it again a thousand times over if I knew it ended the same way. Life has a way of being good if you let it. Even when you think it's evil, it'll surprise you in the end.

So, what's your answer? Would you do 'it' again?

--John