Matters

A man named Andy Andrews appeared on my TV screen a few Sunday mornings ago on one of the multiple praise-God channels. A late-middle-age couple who appeared to be husband and wife hosted this program, and they spoke of redemption and rescue from the edge of the abyss. The first thought that occurred to me, though, was whether this fucking guy's name really is Andy Andrews. Is his full name Andrew Andrews, but that was too weird, so he made it Andy Andrews? Apparently that is his name, and he has a website that bills him as an inspirational author and speaker.
On this particular show, or at least the part I watched (sometimes I just can't change the channel, so mesmerizing a spell having been cast by such peculiarities on my screen), these people discussed a book by Mr. Andrews called "The Butterfly Effect: How Your Life Matters." From what I gathered, Andy Andrews asserts in this book that everything everyone does matters. He says on his website that "every single thing you do matters...."
As an example, Andy Andrews cites Joshua Chamberlain, whom he describes as "a school teacher from Maine who made one move 150 years ago that positively impacted an entire nation. By charging the enemy without ammunition–and defeating them–he set off a butterfly effect that lasts to this day." Andy on this TV show said Joshua Chamberlain's actions at Gettysburg during the Civil War altered the course of history to such an extent that otherwise the world would not exist as we now know it. While Joshua Chamberlain indeed appears to have exhibited gallantry at Gettysburg, Andy may have been reaching. How the fuck does he know what would have happened had Joshua Chamberlain not ordered his men to charge? The North might have won, anyway. Or maybe the South. Andy contended that had Mr. Chamberlain not singularly preserved the Union, nobody would have stopped Hitler. Andy can't know this, but he used it as the foundation of his argument that everything we do matters.
Let's not even take him literally, like that piss I just took matters to anybody but me. Let's say a ripple effect exists. My mother has told me a story roughly seven thousand times about how she once buried herself as a child in a pile of leaves in the gutter of the street and her father dashed to her rescue and fished her out just before a car about to park would have run over her. For the sake of argument, let's also say this isn't apocryphal. It logically follows that if the car had compacted her along with the leaves, conception of my siblings and I never would have transpired.
So, how would that have changed the world? Much as I considered the majority of my youthful indulgences significant, in retrospect I'd have to say they didn't much matter. Okay, I got good grades, went to college on a scholarship and got decent jobs. As a result, I own a house and my kids have a relatively cushy situation. That doesn't matter to too many people, aside from my immediate family. But as far as I can tell, I haven't changed history's course. Wait. Maybe if I hadn't bought that house, a group of terrorists would have moved in and hatched a nefarious plot in which they would have blown up the local elementary school and killed the future doctor who was going to come up with the cure for cancer. Maybe that will be one of my kids. Maybe one of my kids will become president and keep us out of a war that otherwise would have cost the lives of thousands. Probably the older kid. The younger one would get us into a war. But I can't hang my hat on either of those. I'd like to have Clarence the angel visit me and show me the world as if I had never existed. Alas, it won't happen.
And I can't help but think that so much of what I do and have done makes a difference to a relative few. That's enough, especially as it relates to the children. But the premise that we all matter remains unconvincing.
What about all the stuff that matters in negative fashion? The father throws his toddler off a bridge in Baltimore. The mother drowns her babies. Or drives her car into the canal with the kids still alive and strapped in the back seat. Those kids won't cure cancer.
Beyond the obvious and the immediate, we just can't know what matters. If I punch you in the fucking head, it will hurt. I get that. Putting my dick in a vise, likewise. On the other hand, surely winning the lottery would please me, at least for a while. Only pretenders claim to know anything beyond. The Pollyannaish fucks who try to persuade you that they know. They believe it, though, and that makes them dangerous.