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Encarta Cascade. science: a succession of things such as chemical reactions or components in an electrical circuit, each of which activates, affects, or determines the next

Cause and effect is one my favorite topics when I want to wax philosophically about the nature of the universe and wonder at the cascade of events that leads from one point in our lives to the next. Often, the markers of succession go by virtually unnoticed. A innocuous decision snowballs into a major life event, a casual e-mail changes the course of your day, the inadvertent words of a friend hearken to the very solution you were looking for without ever having posed the question.

There’s a great number of different words to describe the same phenomenon. Serendipity is the concurrence of fortunate events. Fate is the prophecy of conclusion. Providence is the interference of a higher power. Murphy’s law, the endgame of misfortune.

Whatever you call it, destiny is something that we create ourselves, either systemically or individually or more often than not, a combination of both. Fate is the confluence of the decisions we make, that cascade one upon another until they reach a critical mass. There are decisions for which right and wrong do not factor in, only integrity and being true to ourselves. Some are hardly earth shattering. Deciding what to eat for lunch is, most days at least, hardly life changing. But human beings are largely oblivious to the cause and effect as it roils in the universal ether around them. It’s probably a defense mechanism built into our innate nature. Imagine worrying about how every action you take, every decision decided upon creates a butterfly effect that alters the fabric of your existence. You’d go bonkers.

Yet it sometimes becomes clear after the fact that something once decided did ripple out to greater effect than we originally intended. Call it dumb luck (good or bad being relative to the outcome). Unknowingly, our actions and intentions leave a footprint in our patterns of behavior and the end result, if it happens often enough and touches us deeply enough, leaves a permanent mark.

For what it’s worth, I do acknowledge as part of this philosophy that sometimes the decisions are not ours to make, the actions not ours to take, but the impact nevertheless resonates and disrupts our lives. And inevitably at that point, we ourselves are faced with a decision how to react, or counteract, the play of the game with the cards in our hand. That moment, too, is a critical mass. The point at which you choose to be swept along on the momentum of someone else’s orbit, or set your own course and accept the consequences and responsibility for your actions.

Life is rarely as simple or poetic as such, but the one thing that is clear is that what happens today affects what will occur tomorrow. Sometimes the alteration is small and insignificant, sometimes the tremors are felt for days, the ground beneath our feet shaking with a soundless fury. It’s not just a role of the dice. There are things that we do and decisions that we make that make up the substance of our future. As a participant and spectator, I embrace the cascade and watch in wonder as the succession of events leads to whatever will happen next.

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