It’s easy to say but harder to truly grasp that every decision we make affects our lives and the lives of those around us. Literally, every decision you make changes your life and you don’t even realize it. We usually don’t think about the weight of our decisions until after something terrible has happened or we barely make it out of a tight situation. Usually it’s not until we’re sitting on our high horse looking back over where we’ve come from that we realize everything has changed. Even then it feels like there must have been a huge turning point when really it was a slow ticking clock full of twisting paths and choices that got us to where we are today.

Decisions happen every moment and every second of every day. I made the decision to type these words. I made the decision to eat a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast this morning. I made the decision to brush my teeth and then take a sip of sweet tea (which was a really bad decision). The point is, everything we do is a decision, and it is based off of other decisions we’ve made. Some people say they are bad at making decisions, but all that means is they’re worried about their decision not making others happy; because no one is bad at making the little decisions no one notices. However, when it’s time to make a big decision that everyone is going to notice, suddenly it gets a lot harder. That’s because in those moments we are fully aware that the choice we make is going to affect something and change it.

Pretty much everyone knows of Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Basically, there are consequences to every single thing you do. They could be good, and they could be bad. Either way, they’re still gonna happen. A lot of times we just go through life doing what makes us happy and not really stopping to care or notice how those things are going to affect us later on. Sometimes we may even believe that they won’t affect us at all later on. Then one day we wake up in a bad situation, or a bad relationship, or all our old friends have faded away, and everything is a chaotic mess and nothing is the way we wanted it to be. In that moment we do one of two things. One: we stop and look at all the decisions we’ve made to get us to this place, and we finally realize everything we do matters. Or two: we get angry. We start to play the blame game, and instead of looking for the truth, realizing we are the ones who got in this position, we look around for anyone or anything we can place the blame on.

Being aware of the decisions you make can be a double-edged sword for some people, but it shouldn’t be. You can’t be scared of making decisions because you might make the wrong one. Everyone is going to make wrong decisions sometimes. The problem only comes when you only think about the right now and not the big picture. It’s a blessing to be able to make our own decisions, even though sometimes it feels like it would be a lot easier if everything was just laid out there for us. God made us with free will, and that means we get to choose. That also means that sometimes we’re gonna make the wrong choice, but that’s what makes us human, and that’s what makes us different from any other animal out there. We get a choice. So let’s not waste it. It’s time to think about our actions, and it’s time to make the right decisions. Life is fleeting, and time moves so fast. Who wants to wake up and regret all they did or didn’t do because they didn’t think about how their actions could affect them later on? I sure don’t want to. And I don’t think anybody does. So never forget, everything you do affects something or someone, and since you’re going to make an impact whether you like it or not, you might as well make that impact a positive one.