how to fail: live for the moment

Conventional wisdom tells us that we ought to live for the moment. Experts tout that the past is history, the future a mystery and so today is our present. Sounds wonderful and appealing to book marketers, even though it is deeply flawed.

Consider for a moment, the story of Norman Bourlag. In 1970 Norman Bourlag was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in hybridizing wheat for arid climates. The Nobel committee calculated that Norman Bourlag had saved two billion people from dying of starvation by providing a crop that could be grown in inhospitable climates. Master storyteller Andy Andrews believes that Bourlag is ultimately not responsible for saving two billion people:

Henry Wallace is.

Henry Wallace, as Vice-President of the United States under Franklin Roosevelt, worked with the Rockefeller Foundation to establish a research lab in Mexico for experiments in wheat or corn production. Wallace hired Bourlag as the lead scientist, so Wallace should be credited with saving the lives of two billion people.

But perhaps George Washington Carver saved the two billion people.

Before Carver became the peanut guru, he was a student at Iowa State University, where he used to pass the time walking in the surrounding fields admiring plants. Carver would often take the young son of his dairy science professor with him. In doing so, Carver instilled his appreciation of plants into a six-year-old Henry Wallace. So perhaps Carver should be credited with saving the lives of two billion people.

Unless we consider Etta May Budd.

Before Carver studied plants at Iowa State, he was an art student at Simpson College. Budd convinced Carver he had artist talent, but that he could earn a better income studying something else. Instead of drawing plants, Budd recommended he study them as a scientist.

Budd, Carver, Wallace, Bourlag. Who do we credit with saving the lives of two billion people? All of them. This story serves as an example of the butterfly affect, or the law of sensitive dependence on initial consequences. This law says that initially little influence accumulate over time and produce massive results. This is how a butterfly can presumably flap its wings and produce a hurricane on the other side of the world.

Every action you make, regardless of size, will affect others. Even if those effects are small, they will accumulate over time and create a lasting legacy of the change you brought to the world. Our actions in the present are all we have control over, however we can’t live for the moment.

We must live in the moment, for the future.

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