There is a theory that if a butterfly flaps its wings, then it has the ability to cause a tornado in Texas. A lot of people don't see how these two very unrelated events have anything to do with one another. I've been doing a great deal of thinking on this matter and I'd like to convey how the small decisions we make today have huge impacts on the future. The choices that we make today will have great consequence for our futures. When a person is just going through the motions a day at a time, it doesn't appear as though the little things make any difference at all, but what is strange is that they end up making all the difference. What started my thinking on this topic is that currently it is the frat and sorority seasons of rush.

If you're a freshman anywhere in the country, you have, are, or will soon be going through this stretch in time. You probably don't realize it, but the sorority or fraternity that you join has a great deal of impact on your future at any University that you go to. The people you'll meet, the interactions you'll have, the opportunities immediately available to you will initially be a result of the house in the Greek System that you join. Being associated with that house will be with you always. While in college and beyond. You're involvement will vary, thats for sure, but being a part of that institution will never waver. Be cognizant of what appear to be small decisions, for they happen to hold the most weight in the end. With this in mind, The College Answers presents some of the most interesting coincidences known to the world.

Mark Twain and Halley's Comet
Mark Twain, acclaimed author, was born on November 20, 1835, which was two weeks prior to the crossing of Halley's Comet over the Earth. Taking note of this fact, Twain recorded the following statement which is quite eary, "I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It's coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it. The Almighty has said no doubt, 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'" When Halley's Comet passed by next in 1910, Twain passed the day following. Coincidence? I think not.



The Bible Code
This is one of the most interesting phenomena and coincidences that cannot be explained fully known to the world. There is a theory that there are clusters of words or phrases that can be found in the bible which have meaning and exist intentionally in a coded form. People who believe in the Bible Code assert that the messages contain forebodings of the future. Using a system called Equidistant Letter Sequencing (ELS), researchers found a number of different findings from the bible. This idea gained a lot of momentum after the book, "The Bible Code" was published by Michael Drosnin. Drosnin's original book came out in 1997, but he has come out with subsequent volumes since then. Prior to Drosnin, Isaac Newton and 13th-century Spanish Rabbi, Bachya ben Asher, had experimented with the idea of ELS. The Bible Code has come under a lot of criticism and doubt, because similar studies have been done with texts like "Moby Dick", using ELS, and have reported findings relating to the assassinations of MArtin Luther King Jr. and Yitzhak Rabin. What a coinkydink.



Littlewood's Law
When was the last time that you saw a miracle? According to this theorist, seeing a miracle is more commonplace than you might think, occurring at a rate of one miracle every 35 days. That isn't too bad at all, but how in the world could anyone back up such a ludacrous statement. Professor J. E. Littlewood of Cambridge University supposed that with a large enough sample size, any outrageous thing is likely to occur. In his book, "A Mathematician's Miscellany," Littlewood discusses the law of truly large numbers, which warrant his claim of a miracle per month. The way Littlewood defines a miracle is what establishes this law. Littlewood asserts that, "a miracle is defined as an exceptional event of special significance occurring at a frequency of one in a million." With this definition Littlewood goes on to explain that if a human being experiences, on average, one thing a second during waking life, then after 35 days of being alert for eight hours a day, this totals to be 1,008,000 experiences. Therefore, one of those experiences must have been a miracle due to the definition of a miracle. Kinda whack, but you got to hand it to the guy, he thought of it first.

Henry Ziegland
The story goes that Henry Ziegland has just broken up with a girlfriend, and due to the fact that she was so sad, she ended up committing suicide. Her brother was so enfuriated with Henry Ziegland that he hunted him down and intended to kill him. He brought a shotgun and shot at Ziegland. The brother, believing that Ziegland had died , took his own life out of remorse. The reality was that Ziegland was only grazed by the bullet that was shot at him and the bullet was lodged in a tree. Many years later, Henry Ziegland was chopping down trees in the area for firewood. He happened to come across this tree that had the bullet lodged in it from many years before. Ziegland was having an exceptionally difficult time cutting down this particular tree, and decided to use explosives. The explosion ended up sending that bullet, lodged in the tree from so many years earlier, hurtling towards Zieglands head. The bullet killed him on impact. Did this really happen? So ridiculous?

Moral of the story: The actions we take today have consequences in the future. In our lives, we will form many bridges with people, and you would be surprised just how many times you have to walk over that bridge. Think about your actions today, because they echo an eternity. Be smart. Be aware. Be the solution.

This post was originally written by Tyrone Schiff
University of Michigan · Organizational Studies · 24 Sep 2007