Once upon a time, when moving into a new neighborhood, I spent a few days meeting the new neighbors. Nothing big, just visits to say hello to the other family with kids my age, another family with a High School age daughter who often babysat for other families on the street, the usual sort of thing. I had a bunch of innocuous intercations with them that didn't look like anything special at the time.

Fast-forward five years. Over the next few years, I came to learn that some of the most inane, unimportant little things I had said or done had impacted several of my neighbors in enormous ways. Not necessarily good or bad, but significantly, and in a generally positive fashion, or so it seemed to me.

If I'd chosen different words to speak, or timed my actions only slightly differently, it might well have altered their lives-and if I hadn't been paying close attention, I might not have realized that it had happened at all. It was my first real-life lesson in the law of unintended consequences--and the basis of my belief that big, important things are built from small and commonplace things, and that even our little acts of petty, everyday good or evil have a cumulative effect on our world. A lot of religions make a distinction between Light and Darkness, and paint portraits of dramatic battles between their champions.

But maybe the "fight on the ground" is a lot more commonplace than we ever really think. It happens every day, and a lot of the time we might not even be aware that it's even going on-until five years later, I guess.

Our smallest actions and choices matter. They tell us about who we really are.

-J. Maki