THOUGHTS I NORMALLY KEEP IN MY HEAD, part XIV

     I wonder how many people have died on account of me being alive? I'm talking Butterfly Effect here. Over my years I have been alive, I have consumed or otherwise used resources that might have otherwise been allocated and have taken up spaces which could have been alternatively occupied. Did someone end up in a worse school and never prospered because my family lived where they did, occupying what would have been "their" apartment? Has someone starved to death because I bought a package of carrots back in college? Sometimes when crossing a street, I've come close to being hit by a car through a combination of negligences. I've had that thought when the fault was clearly theirs (e.g. talking on a cellphone), that had I left home a mere fifteen seconds earlier, that I would be dead. Have I caused someone's death (or prevented one?) in a similar manner when, by virtue of me crossing a street, I've delayed the progress of a vehicle? Could one such vehicle have later been involved in a fatal accident that would have been avoided had I decided to not get Chinese food that afternoon I wonder? Have I ever borrowed a book from a library thus denying it to another who would have had an otherwise lucrative career in a field they didn't even know they loved and now never will because the moment had passed? This all flips about too. I could be the unwitting savior of lives as well...a person ignorantly responsible for bringing together lovers...a man who has unknowingly inspired a eureka! moment. Who knows. Such are the quantum realities of life I suppose :-)