Tuesday, May 31, 2011

What difference do you and I make?

How much are you worth? How much am I worth? How large is the ripple we've caused? What would the world be like without Captain Hook...errr...Me/You?

This is one of those alternate reality questions that can never be answered but it is fun to think about it on occasion.

The ground rule is: Not a scenario where the premise is "If I died today." because that's really depressing. Plus most of your scenario would be about people mourning you and that's just downright sad.

Ask yourself these questions:

What would my family be like without me? If you are the oldest, what would your closest sibling act like if they were the first instead of the 2nd child?

Where would my spouse be? I assume she'd be married to someone else...would she be happy?

What would my friends be like? If you are the glue that holds the group together, you have to consider that they'd have all hung out with different people. Maybe your friend who ended up going to college and getting a degree would have ended up hanging out with the wrong crowd, gotten involved with drugs, and OD'd before they were 17.

Would the population of the world be differnet? For example, because you were driving to the mall at age 16, was there a car that missed a light, which eventually led to them getting in to a car accident 3 hours later and dying? If you had never been born, would those people in the accident have had 3 more kids by now?

There are so many different questions. The Butterfly Effect that you produce can be simply amazing.

One of the best X-men story arcs of all time was "The Age of Apocalypse." This was where Legion went back in time and murdered Professor Xavier. Because of this action, the future was altered and Apocalypse ruled the world. Magneto led the X-men. Cyclops and his Brother Havok (along with a Darker version of Beast) worked for Mr. Sinister (one of Apocalypse's 4 horsemen) and Sabertooth fought for the good guys. Wolverine was missing a hand due to a duel with Cyclops who in turn was missing an eye from said duel.

The point is, there was a difference of peace or nuclear holocaust based on the presence of one man.

I like to think that as an English Teacher I've made a difference in some of my student's lives this year. It was nice to see so many old students come BACK to see me before they graduated this week. May we all make sure that our existence, our presence here isn't wasted. Be a positive ripple in the space time continuum of life- JR

1 comment:

  1. Great questions for reflection. The 2nd sibling would be in big trouble, by the way :)

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