What If Everything We Do Matters? The Profound Weight of Our Daily Choices
- Bobby Jakucs, Psy.D.
- Jul 5
- 10 min read
Updated: Sep 8
"What we do in life echoes in eternity" - Maximus Decimus Meridius, Gladiator (2000)
There are moments in our lives we do something noteworthy and realize the weight of that choice - good or bad. Maybe it is something we said to our children or spouse, or a coworker or friend. Or maybe it is a decision we make to move across the country, leave a job, or go back to school. Sometimes it’s events like a wedding, a graduation, or the funeral of a loved one. Maybe it is a grand or heroic gesture, like volunteering our time or talent where we can see the very real impact our actions have, sometimes immediately. When we look back on life, we often find profound meaning in these major life moments. And well we should.
We mark the big moments because their meaning is obvious. But perhaps meaning isn't reserved for life's milestones. What if it's hidden in the folds of the everyday?
In fact, what if everything we do matters? Not just the grand, heroic acts—the moments of visible sacrifice, the major life decisions—but the small, seemingly insignificant choices we make each day. What if the way we speak to a stranger at the grocery store, the way we respond to a difficult email, or the way we treat a tired loved one late at night has real, lasting consequences?
This idea is both empowering and terrifying. It means that every moment holds meaning, not just as a prelude to some future state but as an end in itself. It also means that we are always in motion, shaping ourselves—and those around us—by our choices. We are never static; we are always becoming and growing into someone.
C.S. Lewis captures this beautifully in Mere Christianity, where he writes:
“Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your lifelong, you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature.”
In other words, there is no neutral ground. Every interaction, every decision, either moves us closer to grace or further from it. And it does the same for those around us.
Meaning in the Moment: The Choice Before Us
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once wrote, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” That is the paradox of human existence: We live in the present, but we often only recognize meaning in retrospect.
Yet, this does not mean that meaning is absent in the moment. Rather, it is precisely as the moment unfolds that we are forced to choose. Friedrich Nietzsche posed the haunting idea of the eternal return – that we ought to live each moment as if we’d choose to it live it over and over again. For all eternity. Nietzsche envisioned this as the ultimate act of the self-triumphant will. An act that was meant to be the greatest achievement of man.
While Nietzsche envisioned the eternal return as a test of one’s will to meaning in a world absent of it, the Christian imagination offers something gentler and deeper.
G.K. Chesterton saw in each moment not torment, but delight. His brilliant work Orthodoxy, offers a stunning vision of these recurring moments, not as a burden as we so often see them, but as a joyful echo of the divine life:
“Because children have abounding vitality...they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again!’ and the grown-up does it again. Until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning ‘Do it again!’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘do it again!’ to the moon.”
That each moment is eternal not because of our control of it, but rather, because it connects us to others, to creation, and ultimately to the Creator. Christianity tells us that we are not the author of our own meaning, working feverishly alone like a recluse genius. But rather, we are icons – each one of us an image of the invisible – made in the image and likeness of God and wholly interconnected. Each one of us, like irreplaceable threads in a tapestry, woven into a masterpiece. Yes, even and perhaps most especially in those daily interactions and mundane moments. And perhaps it is in those very mundane moments, we can find our deepest joys.
Because so often we are tempted to believe that meaning is something to be found, like a hidden treasure buried somewhere in the future. But what if meaning is not something waiting for us at the end of the road? What if meaning is made in the very act of choosing? In fact, what if it is in the ordinary choices in those ordinary moments that make up the vast majority of our ordinary days that account for nearly all of our ordinary lives? If so, then there is nothing ordinary about those moments at all. They are the substance of the extraordinary. Like gemstones in a mosaic, each moment is a fragment of the infinite.
This perspective aligns with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which emphasizes the importance of present-moment awareness and value-driven action. ACT literature suggests that living with intentionality—aligning actions with deeply held values—leads to greater psychological flexibility and well-being (Hayes et al., 2012). In other words, when we recognize that each choice matters, and when we make choices that align with what we most deeply believe, we create a meaningful life not someday but now. Not out there in the future, when we "have it together" but right here in the middle of our messy existence.
The Ripple Effect of Our Choices
Our choices do not occur in a vacuum. Every action, no matter how small, has consequences—many of which extend beyond what we can immediately see. And over time, they often are far greater than the sum of the individual actions. St. Therese of Liseux, patron saint of the “Little Way” recognized that no act however small when done with love, had an infinite meaning. She writes, “miss no opportunity of making a small sacrifice...a smile, a kind word, a small act of love.” We simply do not know the weight of those small actions. But every so often we can get a glimpse.
Nowhere is this better illustrated that in Man’s Search for Meaning, where Frankl recounts the story of a garbage collector in post-war Germany. On the surface, garbage collection would seem to be a very necessary but very mundane job. Same route, same houses, same garbage cans, a stop off at the dump, rinse and repeat. This particular garbage collector noticed that his route took him through a very well-to-do neighborhood and a very poor neighborhood. In the well-to-do neighborhood he noticed that people would throw out gently used toys that had become damaged. Meanwhile in the poor neighborhood children were just scraping by. So, this man did something remarkable. He spent his evenings fixing up the toys that others had discarded and passed them out to the children along his route.
Think of how many hundreds or thousands of smiles this man produced on the children he saw over his career. Think, in turn, what happened in those families and homes when those smiling children returned.
All because one man looked at his ordinary day and saw the extraordinary.
In behavioral science, this is sometimes referred to as the second- and third-order effects of our actions. While the first-order effects of a decision might be obvious (e.g., choosing to exercise leads to better health), the second- and third-order effects often reveal themselves later (e.g., improving health gives us more energy to engage positively with family, which strengthens those relationships, which then impacts others in our social network).
Research on habit formation supports this idea. A study by Christakis and Fowler (2007) found that behaviors like quitting smoking, losing weight, or even becoming happier can spread through social networks, affecting not just close friends and family but also acquaintances several degrees removed. In essence, our actions send ripples through the people around us.
When we develop habits of kindness, patience, and resilience, we don’t just improve our own lives—we change the emotional and behavioral landscape of those around us. Including and perhaps most importantly, those closest to us.
The Weight of Slowing Down
If every moment matters, then the way we move through time matters. Yet, modern life often compels us to rush past the present, constantly reaching for what’s next.
Father Walter Cizek, a Jesuit priest imprisoned in Soviet labor camps, wrote about the power of surrendering to the present moment. In He Leadeth Me, he describes how, in the midst of unimaginable suffering, he learned to let go of his own plans and expectations:
“Every moment of our life has a purpose, every action of ours, no matter how dull or routine or trivial it may seem in itself, has a dignity and a worth beyond human understanding.”
For Cizek, slowing down was not a passive retreat but an active, even terrifying, confrontation with reality. It meant accepting life as it was—without numbing, without distraction—and embracing the responsibility of the present moment.
There is a paradox here: slowing down is simple, but it is not easy. It requires a kind of courage. When we rush through life, we can convince ourselves that meaning will come later. But when we slow down, we are forced to confront the weight of now.
Perhaps take a moment now to slow down and think of a kind soul who helped you along the way. The smile from a stranger when you were at your lowest. The clerk at the store making you chuckle after a rough day. The friend who called you out of the blue just “because I was thinking about you.” The coach, teacher or mentor who “saw something” in you and took the time to mentor you, perhaps even setting you along the path you are on today. What if you went through life recognizing that today you might be that person to someone else? Better yet, what if you went through life today trying to be that person?
Angels or Devils in the Making
Returning to C.S. Lewis, his observation about our choices forming us into either angels or devils in the making is not merely poetic. It is deeply psychological.
Studies on moral and ethical decision-making suggest that our actions reinforce certain neural pathways. The more we practice kindness, honesty, and patience, the more likely we are to act that way in the future (Tangney et al., 2007). Conversely, the more we engage in deception, selfishness, or cruelty, the more those traits become part of who we are.
In theological terms, this is the shaping of the soul. In psychological terms, it is habit formation and neural plasticity. Either way, it suggests that who we are becoming is not determined in a single grand moment of decision but in the thousands of small choices we make every day.
Sometimes it's not the weight of our choices that crushes us, it’s the memory of the ones we didn’t get right. I once sat in a group with a patient who carried deep regret. He made serious mistakes – ones that hurt people he loved. And for a long time, he was stuck in those moments, frozen by the shame of his past. One day, he looked at me and said: “You know Doc, the problem isn’t that I threw all those rocks in the pond. It’s that I stopped throwing rocks altogether.”
He meant that he had gotten so caught up in the damage he had done, the ripples he had made, that he forgot he could still choose. Still make new waves. Still shape the water.
And that’s the danger of shame: it convinces us that the story has been written. But the truth is the next rock is ours to throw, and the next ripple is ours to make. And most importantly, someone may be standing on the opposite shore, counting on us to make the throw.
Living as Though Everything Matters
The Stoics understood that, despite what our mind’s often tell us, we are not the protagonists of life. Marcus Aurelius reminded us that “men exist for the sake of one another.” Epictetus taught that our role in the cosmic play isn’t ours to choose, all we can do is play it well. Taking these together, we are not just living our own stories, we are supporting characters in someone else’s. Perhaps our quiet, steady presence in someone else’s scene is the very grace they need to carry them through.
So, what would change if we lived as though everything we did mattered?
- We would slow down. Not out of fear, but out of reverence for the weight of each moment.
- We would be more present. If every choice is shaping us, then we would be conscious of the opportunity in each moment, however mundane or difficult.
- We would act with greater intentionality. If we are always becoming either more noble or more corrupt, then no choice is too small to take seriously.
- We would recognize that our actions ripple outward. When we choose love, patience, or truth, we are not just affecting ourselves but those around us.
This is not meant to create an unbearable burden, but rather to serve as a clarion call to the beauty of our agency. Every moment is a fresh opportunity. Even if we have made mistakes, even if we have drifted into patterns we regret, the next choice is still ours to make.
Perhaps the most hopeful aspect of all of this is that meaning is not something we have to wait for. It is something we can discover—right now, in this very moment, as the moment unfolds.
And if you haven’t lived this way up until now, that’s okay. The beauty of our human freedom is that meaning is never out of reach. We can begin again. And again. Right now, in this moment.
Small beginnings hold sacred weight. After all, like individual frames in a movie, eternity is made of moments. So ask yourself, starting now, how do you want the rest of your movie to play out?
Venerable Fulton Sheen is widely attributed as saying “As we enter Heaven, we will see them, so many of them, coming toward us and thanking us. We will ask who they are and they will say: ‘A poor soul you prayed for in purgatory.’
Perhaps too we’ll be greeted one day by the person who overheard our kind word to a stranger, or the friend of a friend who was lifted up by a habit we cultivated, or the child who grew into mercy because we showed their parent grace. We may never know the full story on this side of Heaven. But as St Paul says, “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”
(1 Cor 13:12)
So, let’s live life now with the quiet faith that nothing offered in love is ever wasted. That if anything in this life has meaning, then everything, including our smallest action has profound meaning.
And let us live in the tension that perhaps, everything we do really does have an echo. Not just for today – but for eternity.
Because it does.
