Every little thing we do - matters.

Once upon a time, the Baal Shem Tov sent a group of his students on an important mission in another town. When they returned, he was not so interested in hearing about their mission as about the minutiae of their trip—what they ate, where the slept, how they traveled, etc.

They didn't understand the relevance of these details, but he insisted on hearing everything. When they related that one morning they sat down near a brook and drank some water there, the Baal Shem tov's face lit up and he said, "That water was waiting from the beginning of time for someone to come and make a blessing over it and drink it."

In Jewish mystical thought, space, time, and matter are understood to be forces of Divine energy—sparks which fell down to earth at the time of creation and which became embedded in all aspects of existence; these sparks must be elevated in holiness for the world to achieve perfection as per the Divine plan. This is why the little things you do in life are sometimes more important than the big things—the journey is sometimes as or more important than the final destination.

When we go to work or anywhere, let's take a moment to appreciate how we got there. Every second of our trip matters—the people we meet on the way, the cup of coffee we drink, the piece of paper we throw in the trashcan—all matter.

Quite often the things that are seemingly beyond our control are really opportunities to elevate sparks of Divine energy trapped in the mundane, and by doing so, to spiritual'ize the material.

It's a deeper way of looking at the world. And when we begin looking at life this way, a whole new world will be revealed to us—a G-dly world, an immortal world, the real world.

Every little thing we do - matters.