Life and its Unseen Consequences

Something that has been on my mind recently is the fact that our lives are not without consequence. Our actions have consequences seen and unseen. The seen consequences can be the immediate or not so immediate tangible impact or results. The influence we’re cognisant of having. The unseen consequences can be the ones we aren’t aware of where our actions, unbeknownst to us, have influenced others for better or worse, or have set off chain reactions in the universe which are still felt years and even centuries after we’ve passed on.

One example of actions having consequences many years after the fact is the Titan submersible implosion which occured on the 18th June, 2023. The Titan was an experimental submersible which was the brainchild of OceanGate’s late CEO Stockton Rush. Rush was driven by the desire to be cutting edge, and to take people on what he considered to be the greatest ocean adventure of a lifetime: a trip to the ocean floor to the see the Titanic. However, in his pursuit to accomplish this goal, he purposely avoided the jurisdiction of maritime regulatory bodies so that he could have the freedom to create his vision of a submersible built using unconventional materials and design which could reach Titanic depths (3800 m).

Along the way his hubris and ego reigned supreme resulting in the continued safety and “dive worthiness” of the submersible being ignored even after concerns were brought by individuals involved with the project. This predictably led to the castastrophic implosion disaster which occured on dive number 88 claiming the lives of Stockton Rush and his four passengers, or as OceanGate called them “crew members”.

It occured to me as I reflected on this horrible tragedy that had the Titanic not sunk over a century ago, in 1912 to be exact, that there would have been no famous underwater wreck to drive Rush’s ambitions. And so I came to the macabre conclusion that Captain Edward Smith was still killing people over a century after going to his watery grave in the North Atlantic. Smith’s arrogance arguably caused him to disregrard the warnings he received and maintain speed in an area known to have icebergs. Smith’s decisions that night, in the April of 1912, cost over 1 600 people their lives, and would indirectly lead to the loss of 5 more over a century later.

Making the connection between these two events really drove home the point that actions matter, not just because of the consequences they have in the here and now, but also because of the impact good or bad that they can have on future generations. The Titanic and Titan tragedies may be two of the more strinking examples of lives from different time periods being intertwined, but I posit that even the little actions which seemingly have no visible consequence have distant echos in the future which are unseen by their doers in the present.

This in my view means that every life matters, even the ones which seem wasted, because we can never really know which deeds will function as catalysts for sweeping change, major events, or great inventions in the future. We may see the man or woman who does something great, but we don’t know all of the cumulative deeds throughout the generations which led to the conditions for the changemaker to arise. We can of course deduce the recent conditions and contributions to that person’s life, but there is always groundwork which would have been unknowingly done before.

We are all connected to the generations which came before, just as the ones to come are connected to us. So while we may not always be able to see the consequences of our actions, we should live mindfully and intentionally knowing that how we live can have a far reaching impact for many generations to come.