Today was about 13.75 billion years in the making. Any one of those years, months, days, hours, or moments since the beginning of time could have happened differently and contributed to a wildly different present.

Likewise, my actions at this very moment could be influencing billions of years of history before it's even made.

This is why I strive to return the toilet seat to the down position.

It's at this point where chaos theory and cosmology meet to create quite a dissonant worldview. My actions, beliefs, or even my entire life - even the lives of every living thing on the planet, are relatively minuscule in "the scheme of things." But "the scheme of things" must be understood as a system of actors which are interconnected in mostly undiscovered relationships, where minute changes in any part of the system can have a surprisingly substantial impact elsewhere in the system, or even on the system itself.

Even in a still bucket of water, the addition or subtraction of a single molecule impacts the position, orientation, and behavior of an incalculable number of molecules sharing the bucket.

For some people, these beliefs could paralyze day to day decision making, but for me, it comforts me to know that perhaps my negative thoughts toward that Pontiac that just cut me off will perhaps cascade into a lifetime of misery and dissatisfaction for the driver.