Finding Inspiration in the Home Depot Parking Lot

The Home Depot cart return was a mess. Shopping carts strewn everywhere, jutting out at odd angles, threatening to escape back into the parking lot. Evidence of modern life’s haste and indifference.

I pushed my cart in and spent an extra second clicking it into alignment. Then I gathered up a few strays to keep it company. A small oasis of order amongst the mess.

As I headed back to my car, a man called out. His face lit with a broad smile. “I like the way you put those carts away,” he said. “I’m feeling inspired.” And then he thanked me.

I thought about that moment for days. And eventually, I thought about butterflies.

In 1961 geophysicist Edward Lorenz discovered that computer models can’t accurately predict the weather more than a week in advance. He found that slight differences in his starting parameters caused wildly different outcomes over time. Weather systems, it turns out, are highly sensitive to their initial conditions.

Lorenz lectured about his findings using the butterfly as a metaphor. Something as minute as a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane halfway around the globe. His description resonated and the “butterfly effect” was born. It’s less poetically known as chaos theory, but either way it points out that natural systems fluctuate based on the tiniest of changes.

The butterfly effect idea spread and took on a larger cultural meaning:

If the flap of one butterfly’s wings could have such a significant impact on the weather, imagine what one person’s seemingly small actions could do.

How often are we affected in large and small ways by the people around us? By an inspiring act, an encouraging word, or a smile when we’re feeling low. And yet we are that person for others, too.

We affect each other all the time.

Like the butterfly, we are an integral part of this supremely interconnected natural system we call life. It’s highly sensitive to changes, but as the weather models point out, the results don’t show up right away.

The butterfly doesn’t just flap its wings and immediately a storm appears. The effect builds over time.

I don’t know what the man from the Home Depot parking lot did with his inspiration. Or who he may have gone on to inspire in return. And my favorite part of that moment is that I was just putting shopping carts away.  

Maybe we don’t have to solve global problems to have a positive impact on the world. Maybe the shopping carts are enough.

The butterfly doesn’t know it’s creating a massive weather event—it’s just being a butterfly.