Qualities: CONSEQUENCES

People know what they do;
They frequently know why they do what they do;
But what they don’t know
Is what what they do does.
––Michel Foucault, The Order of Things

Take a day in your life where you will meet people, work, make decisions, or even change your own understanding or thinking for later use. Then, convert each action into the tactic of a chess game: Try to see as far ahead as you can the alternative results of your moves, the new chessboard patterns that appear, the way a wrong move can set you up for an unavoidable checkmate six moves later that your inexperience may not be able to foresee. As you move through the world, the alternative paths grow, like a roadmap of the world with a million branches, and your influence far beyond yourself becomes a thing of beauty, opportunity, danger and unintended consequences. One of the greatest joys of life is planning all this, making it happen, and then enjoying it.
––John Roberts

Perhaps you have heard the Chaos Theory, which suggests that if a butterfly in the Amazon beats its wings, the tiny disturbance in the air can set off a chain of consequences that could result in a tornado in North America. We cannot be sure that this is possible, or that it is not. The point is that we should apply the theory to our own behavior. Even a single word or a glance can result in a tornado in someone else’s life––or your own.

We have noted under TEACHER the famous quote of Henry Adams: “A teacher is for eternity; he never knows where his influence stops.” The teacher teaches, the student learns and changes, and teaches others. 2500 years ago, the teaching of Socrates through Plato through Aristotle, even if they had never been preserved on paper, still have had an influence on the culture of the West through the ripples and waves of change in people and thinking and, therefore, events. Whose DNA lives on in the great people of our generation? Today, each of us, and our futures, are accumulations of the past.

Consider the consequences, frequently unintended, of single events in your own life. One person, one book, one big decision can easily set you on a course to a new life. How much better it is if these results are planned and coordinated, part of a grand design. How much better that is than simply learning as you go and grasping opportunities as they arise.

In a fair and orderly world, there should be consequences. This means we should be responsible and accountable for our actions, and be willing to pay the price or reap the rewards.