Do you matter? Do you really matter?
It’s interesting. We live in a time where it seems that more people than not are committed to the idea that all lives matter and should be treated equally. But why? Why do all lives really matter? Do they? It’s time we figure out why we matter.
Things seem to be getting worse. There’s so much violence, tension, and controversy in this country. It’s hard to have a civil conversation with anybody. Suicide rates are increasing. Psychological disorders like anxiety and depression are at unprecedented levels.
If we really believed that all lives matter, including our own, why are we not acting like it? It seems like maybe we believe that all lives can matter, but not that all lives do matter. What makes life meaningful and why our lives matter is quite possibly the question of our time.
But we’ve lost the knowledge of what makes life meaningful and why we all matter. That’s why we lack respect for one another. When we don’t know why somebody else’s life is valuable, it’s hard to treat them as equal. It’s why we struggle with insecurity, with our self-worth, and our very identity. The idea of who am I and what I am supposed to do with my life. But again, we’ve lost the knowledge of what makes life meaningful. It’s why we lack purpose, lack direction. It’s what keeps us up at night. The list of implications of forgetting why we matter goes on and on.
Yet we do believe that all lives matter. We believe in equality. But what supports that belief? Try writing out what you believe. Seriously, take a minute and write it down. You just might find that it is hard to put into words. We often nod along thinking “of course!” but haven’t really developed a thought-out answer.
Some questions are so important because the way we answer them affects everything else about our life. Why you matter is one of those questions. The answer changes what we think about ourselves, how we treat others, how we navigate struggles, everything.
The good news is that there is an answer. It’s not elusive. Though this is a timeless question—one people have been asking themselves and asking each other for centuries—there is an answer to the question of why you matter. You do matter more than you know, but maybe not for the reasons you think.
To dig into the answer to this age-old question, read the first chapter of my book, Why You Matter, here.