Impact Always Exists
- Mar 16
- 4 min read
Each of us occupies a position that no one else can replace. You are a unique combination of experiences, relationships, skills, and perspectives. The particular vantage point from which you see the world is yours alone.
Because of this, there are things you are uniquely capable of doing, understanding, and contributing. Only you can fulfil this role in the particular way that you do, for you alone have followed this exact path that brought you here, consisting of every instant you have experienced alongside the unique set of traits you were born with.
This precise combination exists only once; you will never occupy this exact position again. If you encounter a similar situation in the future, you will already have gained new experiences that change how you interpret and respond to it. The person you are in this moment, facing this situation, is therefore unique and unrepeatable.
Beyond this, the way others experience you introduces another layer of uniqueness. No one holds the same place in another person’s life as you do. Nor do two people see you in the same way; you are a different person in each person’s reality.
Each person who encounters you experiences something that only you can bring, both because of your uniqueness and the singular place you hold in their heart.
Your impact on the world around you, at any point in time, is truly unique.
“Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life… This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone” — Viktor Frankl
When chronic illness arrives, it can feel as though purpose has been erased, that you can no longer occupy the specific role you once held. But the underlying logic behind your uniqueness, and your unique contribution, does not disappear.
A chronic condition can be severely limiting, but limitation is not the same as irrelevance. It becomes part of the experience that flows out of us, towards others and into the situations we encounter. As with all instances of new experiences being obtained, it changes the vantage point from which we see the world. And each new perspective reveals parts of reality invisible to those standing elsewhere.
Every moment presents a slightly different set of circumstances: a conversation, a difficulty, a person who crosses our path. Within each of these moments lies the possibility for a unique response.
Often it is something small: patience in a difficult moment, a question asked at the right time, a story remembered that brings warmth or clarity to another person. These responses could not exist in the same way without you. It is from your unique vantage point that makes them what they are.
Consider an interaction you might have with someone else facing hardship. Your patience and kindness may have existed before illness, but your understanding of suffering will have been shaped by your own experience. That experience changes what you bring to the interaction, and therefore changes what the other person receives from it.
Purpose emerges in the moments when you meet the situation before you. And in each moment, there is a response that only you can give.
This remains true regardless of the size of your contribution or the condition you live with.
“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in.” — Haruki Murakami
The way we respond will have consequences beyond our knowledge, unfolding in ways we will never fully see. Much of the influence we have in the world remains unknown to us.
The effects of our actions rarely end where we see them stop. They continue through the people touched by them. A sentence spoken casually may stay with someone for years. A moment of kindness may change the course of someone’s day, which in turn alters decisions that ripple outwards in ways we will never see.
Each of us sits inside a network of relationships: friends, colleagues, and strangers we briefly encounter. Changes at one point in the network travel through the connections that surround it. Because of this structure, even small actions can move far beyond their point of origin and compound into effects much larger than their beginnings. Remove a single person from the web, and countless downstream outcomes change or might never occur at all.
The influence continues outward, often long after we have forgotten the moment itself.
“The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of the same boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.” — Hannah Arendt
So if you are feeling insignificant and powerless, when your life has changed in ways you never thought it would, and the circumstances you find yourself in have stripped away all sense of purpose.
Know that you are constantly leaving fingerprints on the future, in ways that only you can. Every action permeates into the world around you, no matter how small. Each choice has a ricocheting impact that drives change for you and others.
Your actions echo further than you know, and their impact wouldn’t exist without you.
