Let’s Mean What We Do

I recently finished All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker, and I keep coming back to one line:

“Do something meaningful, or maybe just mean everything you do.”

That sentence is sticking with me. It is simple but pointed, and it captures what the book seems to ask of its characters and readers alike.

Whitaker’s novel is filled with characters who are wounded, lost, and searching for something to hold onto. It is a story about trauma, love, survival, and the long, slow work of healing. There are moments of cruelty, but also moments of quiet grace and goodness. It is a book about people trying to do the right thing in a world that does not make it easy.

We often talk about purpose as something grand, something we chase. However, this line inverts that idea. Maybe we don’t have to wait for something meaningful to come along. Maybe the meaning is in how we choose to show up in the everyday. We may not always control what we are doing, but we can choose to be present and intentional about how we do it.

The characters in this novel are not perfect. They make mistakes and carry regrets. But the ones who stay with you are the ones who keep choosing love, responsibility, and truth, even when it costs them. Meaning comes from that kind of effort. It comes from paying attention, from telling the truth, from following through.

There is a lot of darkness in this story. The title is not poetic without cause. But what Whitaker offers, again and again, is the possibility of light. It is not flashy or easy, and it does not always come in time. But it is there, and it comes from the people who decide to care deeply, even when it hurts.

This book reminds me that meaning is not something we stumble into. It is something we create by how we live.