The Ripple of Choice: What Happens After We Choose

Years ago, I watched a movie called Unfaithful. In one scene, Connie says to Paul, the man with whom she is beginning an affair:

“I think this was a mistake.”

Paul responds:

“There is no such thing as a mistake. There are things you do, and things you don’t do.”

That line stayed with me.

For years, I thought there was something profound about it. Maybe life really was that simple.

There is what I do.

There is what I don’t do.

Everything else is judgment and meaning I attach afterward.

Ironically, almost everything that follows in the movie demonstrates what the statement leaves out. A choice made between two people spreads into a marriage, a family, and other lives.

There is what I do.

There is what I don’t do.

And then there is what happens because of what I do.

That may be where the real lesson begins.

Does Every Action Have a Reaction?

Physics gives us Newton’s third law of motion: forces between interacting objects come in equal and opposite pairs.

It is tempting to borrow that language and apply it to human life:

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

But human consequences do not work that neatly.

If I insult someone, I do not receive precisely one insult’s worth of pain in return. If I love someone, the universe does not deposit an equivalent quantity of love into my account.

Human beings are not billiard balls. We are complicated systems interacting with other complicated systems.

A sentence spoken today might be forgotten tomorrow. Another sentence might be remembered for fifty years.

A teacher encourages a child. The child gains confidence. That confidence changes what she attempts. What she attempts changes whom she meets. Those relationships influence still other people.

Something that began with one sentence may eventually affect people the teacher will never know existed.

There is a consequence.

It just is not necessarily equal, opposite, immediate, or predictable.

It is a ripple.

The Stone in the Water

I picture human relationships like water.

Drop a stone into a still pond and circles move outward. The stone does not control where every ripple eventually goes. It changes the water around it, and that water affects the water around it.

Perhaps our choices work something like that.

When I treat someone with kindness, I may alter their internal state by only one degree. But they may carry that altered state into their next interaction.

Fear can propagate the same way.

One frightened person frightens another. One angry person walks into a household and changes its atmosphere. Soon, several people may be reacting to an emotion that originated somewhere else.

We call some of these larger systems families, groups, organizations, cultures, and nations.

None needs a mystical collective mind for collective behavior to emerge. Human beings influence one another. We imitate, conform, seek approval, rebel, and absorb assumptions from families, religions, political movements, and cultures.

Hidden within these systems is individual choice—but not unlimited choice.

We are carried by currents we did not create: biology, childhood, culture, history, habit, and circumstance. Some people begin with more freedom, safety, and awareness than others.

Yet within those currents, some degree of freedom usually remains—the freedom to notice, interrupt, redirect, or respond.

Perhaps this is not absolute free will. It is participatory agency.

The group influences the individual, and the individual continuously helps recreate the group.

The ripple moves in both directions.

When the Ripple Comes Back

Some of the ripple may eventually return to us—not as cosmic punishment or reward, but as feedback.

My choices help shape my relationships. My relationships help shape the environment in which I live. That environment then influences the choices available to me tomorrow.

If I repeatedly respond to someone defensively, I may help create a defensive relationship. Then I experience its tension as though it were simply happening to me, even though I participated in creating the environment I now resist.

The same can happen in the other direction.

Trust can create conditions for greater trust. Patience can interrupt an escalating conflict. Kindness can change the emotional temperature of a room.

Not always. Other people have choices too.

But my choices become part of the system in which everyone’s next choices occur.

Perhaps the pattern looks like this:

Choice → consequence → feedback → learning → next choice.

Then the cycle begins again.

We Cannot Judge Only by the Outcome

Consequences teach us, but they do not always tell us whether the original choice was wise.

I can act with honesty, compassion, and the best information available and still produce an outcome I did not want. I can also behave selfishly and temporarily benefit from it.

Other people have agency. Circumstances change. Information is incomplete. Ripples collide with ripples I did not create.

So wisdom cannot mean controlling the outcome.

Perhaps it means choosing as intelligently and lovingly as I can, remaining attentive to what follows, taking responsibility for the part that belongs to me, and adjusting when I learn something new.

I am responsible for the stone I throw.

I am not the sole author of the entire ocean.

Meaning and Consequence Are Different

I explored this idea more deeply in The Meaning We Give Things—the possibility that events and circumstances don’t necessarily arrive with the meaning we eventually give them.

There seems to be truth in that.

A rainstorm does not inherently mean wonderful or terrible. The farmer and the bride having an outdoor wedding may give the same rainstorm very different meanings.

But I need to be careful.

Meaning and consequence are not the same thing.

I can change the meaning I give an event. I cannot necessarily erase its consequences.

If I drop a glass on a concrete floor, I am free to interpret the experience however I want. I can call it a tragedy, an inconvenience, a lesson in gravity, or an opportunity to buy better glasses.

But the glass is still broken.

Consciousness participates enormously in creating my experience of reality. That does not mean my consciousness dictates all of reality.

My choices encounter a world filled with other people, physical laws, uncertainty, and consequences.

Maybe wisdom develops partly by learning the difference.

What Would the Soul Do With Choice?

If life were simply about experiencing everything possible, perhaps the philosophy from Unfaithful would be sufficient.

There is what you do and what you do not do.

Try something. See what happens. Try something else.

But that seems incomplete.

Experience without learning becomes repetition.

Experience observed becomes information.

Information understood becomes insight.

Insight integrated into future choices becomes wisdom.

Perhaps one purpose of consciousness is not merely to accumulate experiences, but to become increasingly capable of choosing well.

This connects with what I mean by the soul in Ego & Soul: What I Mean by Them—not something fighting against the ego, but a deeper perspective from which I can examine the choices I make.

This fits with the three principles I keep returning to:

Intelligence. Love. Entropy.

Intelligence asks:

What is actually happening?

Love asks:

How does my choice affect the other parts of this system?

I do not use entropy here in its strict scientific sense. I use it as shorthand for the unnecessary fragmentation, confusion, and disorder our choices can create within ourselves and our relationships.

Entropy asks:

Does this choice support greater coherence, or does it add avoidable disorder to the system?

Morality then becomes something more interesting than a list of commandments.

It becomes navigation.

Not simply:

Am I allowed to do this?

But:

Where might this choice lead?

What does it create inside me?

What does it create inside another person?

What kind of relationship or community does it reinforce?

The Ocean Moves Through the Wave

I do not need to prove a supernatural global consciousness to recognize practical interconnectedness.

My choices enter relationships, families, and communities. They mix with choices made by other people and become part of the environment in which future choices occur.

I do not control the ocean.

I participate in it.

And participation carries responsibility—not for everything, but for my part.

There Is What I Do

Perhaps that old movie line was right after all—but incomplete.

There is what I do.

There is what I don’t do.

There is what happens because of what I do.

There is what I learn from what happens.

And then there is what I choose next.

That last part may be where growth lives.

The soul, as I am coming to understand it, does not demand perfection from the wave. It invites awareness.

Watch the ripple.

Learn from it.

Notice what returns.

Take responsibility for your part without pretending to control the whole ocean.

Then choose again—with a little more intelligence, a little more love, and perhaps a little less entropy.

Maybe wisdom is becoming increasingly aware that there is no such thing as a completely isolated choice.

Every stone touches the water.

Every choice enters the ocean.