Serendipitous Profundity

Please excuse me for a moment from my usual moblogging and tech blogging for a moment to share something that I experienced today.

I was working on a little side project today during lunch that deals with operational procedures and stumbled across something that made me stop and think for a while.

Within the context of my project, I wrote that:

"Something has to happen before anything happens."

As I wrote it, I didn't think anything of it. The comment seemed to stand on its own. But as I re-read the paragraph I got stuck on this line. At first I just chuckled at myself for the obviously circular cause and effect relationship that I had made. What really caught my attention is that it's true. On every scale and in every situation.

Something has to happen before anything happens. No matter how minuscule or seemingly irrelevant, something has to happen.

I started trying to trace the cause and effect path back to its source, but quickly found that I was chasing my tail. Instead I chose to ponder this:

1. Nothing happens until something happens.
2. Things are happening, so something must have happened.
3. Which will I choose to be? The cause or the effect?