Microblog 3: Stop Trying to Matter!

There’s a certain self-contradictory irony about people who make it their life’s goal to “matter”, and there are a bunch of lies that this desire is predicated upon.

Lie #1: You don’t matter unless a certain amount of people know who you are.

The dense population and interconnectedness of the world has caused us to pin value upon fame, which is an issue that has only worsened with time. It has caused us to factor how well-known something is into its value, rather than the quality of the item itself. We care far too much about how many (quantitative) people care about something, and not enough about how (qualitative) many people care about it. This mistake has bled into personal value and the concept of people mattering in a global scale.

Despite projecting theories about this, I honestly still don’t fully understand why we feel that things need to matter on a large scale, rather than on the appropriate scale to the thing. It’s like only caring about how wide a lake is rather than how deep it is, how big the perimeter of a mountain is rather than its height, or how bold the flavors are in a meal rather than how enjoyable those flavors actually are.

Lie #2: You won’t matter unless you can reach a certain arbitrary benchmark.

For some reason, we can so easily find ourselves buying into a concept that we fictionalize or allow others to fabricate for us. The concept I’m talking about is that importance of life/living are contingent upon the accomplishments made within the life. Humanity loves to take the value of goal-setting and bastardize it into a value system. Say what you will about him, but Jordan Peterson once explained that human beings are constantly evaluating things we see, determining the value they hold to us. This stuck with me and carried into my thinking about this subject. I think that this evaluation process is the cause of our over-evaluation of goals and personal value. We keep looking for metrics to determine the worth and value of things, which can lead to this sort of delusional process.

The intent of a benchmark is to create a standard by which to judge later tests and performance. Benchmarks only really work when you are comparing things that are close enough to identical to really be fairly compared. With that in mind, why would someone from a different generation, upbringing, socioeconomic status, temperament, cultural background, etc. be a good metric by which to compare your own life, situations, and performance to? Goal-setting is invaluable, but goal guilt-tripping is not worth the energy.

Lie #3: Your intrinsic value is directly tied to your performance.

Is a 100 dollar bill that paid for a painting that would later be worth $100,000 worth more than a 100 dollar bill that paid for art supplies? Not really! 100 bucks is still 100 bucks, regardless of what it was used for. Money is just a means by which two parties can agree on the value of an item. Two $100 bills hold the same value and possibilities. Likewise, what they are spent on holds the same value by those that spend them.

In order to really understand this concept that I’m trying to convey, we need to look at the difference between potential energy and kinetic energy. We like to focus on kinetic energy because that’s where the action is at. Kinetic energy is the expenditure of potential energy; it’s the painting, flying arrow, the chopping axe, and the impact of the punch. Potential energy is the art supplies, the pulling of the bow, the raising of the axe, and the swing of the fist. It’s easier to examine the impact of a hit because that’s where all the crunchy data is at. However, without proper use of the potential energy, the kinetic energy will fall into misses, breaks, and energy loss rather than transference.

Conclusion

Stop letting the numbers game trick you into buying into your own insignificance. Don’t let the distance or size of the goal to harm your ability to value the steps to get there. Get out of your own head and stop judging your kinetic energy (or lack thereof) when you need to focus on the potential energy you are putting in. What is the point in worrying about mattering or not when your very “matter” has already been set? Your intrinsic value is unchanging, but the value that you can add to the world is up to you.

The breadth of your impact is far, far less important than the depth of it. If you can make a big difference in 5, you’ll find much more importance in that than making a tiny difference in 5,000. Let’s be fair to ourselves, recognize that we have value, that we can add value, and that our efforts are best spent on refining the things that we choose to work at, rather than redefining what things we think we are.

Thanks for not reading.