June 17, 1905

It is astonishing to think about the butterfly effect, and what it really encompasses. Just

the fact that a split-second decision, or a tiny picture frame of your life could ultimately shape

the next fifty years. Typing this sentence with a few seconds does not alter my life much at all.

But reading a sentence in the time it took me to type this one could change someone’s outlook on

life enough to completely change what their future was “destined” for. About a month ago at my

workplace, as my shift had just come to a close, I was hurriedly getting to my car to go home. I

remembered that I had left my jacket in the workroom, and at that very moment, I thought about

whether I should go back and get it, or just leave it and get it the next day like I usually do. For

some reason, I thought that for this one time I would go back and get it. Eight minutes later, I am

stuck in traffic on the highway home because of a car crash. It was a huge pile up, and it was

caused by a car losing its tire while driving. I was called by my anxious and worried dad, who

then informed me that the very car crash occurred just five minutes ago. If I had not decided on

that very night to get my jacket, my entire life could have been completely changed. At the very

moment that time was halted, all because of my jacket, I could have made the biggest change in

my life, and one that was definitely for the worse.

My favorite quote from this vignette is “...somewhere in the deep pools of the woman’s

mind, a dim thought has appeared that was not there before. The young woman reaches for this

new thought, into her unconscious, and as she does so a gossamer vacancy crosses her smile…

the urgent man noticed it and taken it for his sign” (Page 110). I just loved how the smallest

change in her expression, even the smallest muscle movement, caused the young man to believe

that she did not love him, and thus prevented a possible life full of matrimony between the two.

This is the very thing that I constantly worry about today! Recently, I have discovered that after
talking to someone, I become so paranoid about my first impression that I normally go into the

bathroom, and make the same expression I made to the person to myself. By doing this, I can see

whether my expression was friendly, or rude. Even if we do not mean to show an ugly expression

towards someone, sometimes it comes off as that, and changes can still happen to the future.

Someone you were going to be friends with suddenly never does, all because of a slight muscle

change in your face as you talk. It truly is remarkably nefarious.

When I was in fourth grade, I remember my mother pulling me aside into her classroom

after school, and telling me that my great-grandfather had just passed away. I was absolutely

devastated. I thought that the entire world was caving in. I saw the other students just outside in

the hall, racing to get out of the school, all smiling and laughing. To them, the world just

continued to move steadily onward. For me, it seemed time had completely stopped. In this

vignette, along with almost all of the others, Lightman is showing how time, although constant,

forward, and scientific, still alters our personal life experiences, and that those same experiences

alter our consciousness of time. When I was grief-stricken, it felt like time was off, like

something in the current of time had changed. To the other children, time just kept going

forward. I was like the young couple in the vignette, All of the other townsfolk did not notice the

pause in time for a single millisecond. But the young couple did. That brief acknowledgement of

time caused the astronomical changes in their future.

I have come to the conclusion that, in life, there are two different moments. Moments that

feel as if time does not exist, and moments that make time stop. Sometimes, the ones we wish for

are the ones that do not involve time. But it is those moments that purposefully halt time that the

biggest changes occur in our lives, whether for the better, or the worse.