On the matter of mattering

"A painter facing a blank canvas, a writer facing a blank computer screen, an actor facing a cattle call audition, a researcher facing a mass of data all face this postmodern question: 'Do I or my efforts matter?' "  - Eric Maisel

Practically everyone I talk to recently seems to be struggling with questions about who they really are and whether they are doing what they "should" be doing with their life. Maybe I just have a particular radar for it right now, because I have been grappling with questions myself about what I want and need in the short and long run, and which of my pursuits, (when it seems clear lately that something has to give) are worthwhile.

But it's more than just a question of, "What do I want to do when I grow up?" (or as I Grow old!) Over and over I hear the theme that resonates so strongly with me: People who, like me, don't just want to be and do. They want to mean and matter.

One friend told me recently: "Everyone I know has someone who is the most important person to them. But I am not that someone for anyone."

Another said, about their long career in an unsatisfying but well-compensating line of work: "I could do this until the point I'm physically unable to work. Everyone expects me to. But all these hours of mindless existence, all that tuning out to get through the workday-- I'll never get those hours back, you know?"

With whom am I really close and connected? What actions, what accomplishments will give my life meaning, in my own view, as I look back?

Of course, plenty of people don't grapple with such questions. They do a job because it fell in their lap or it's a career they chose decades ago and now they know it well, so why bother to ask one's self if the fit is still right. They stay in a situation because it's familiar, or they leave someone on a whim. There are times and ways in which I even envy those people. How freeing it must be not to assess and reassess, to dig deep and soul search as an extension of being who you are.

As for me, I will continue, I'm sure, to grapple with questions of meaning and mattering. But I will also try to see examples of them in the things I am already doing, the cast of characters I am currently sharing the stage with. Surely even as I try to figure out, say, my work life or the creative writing project I'm working on, there is meaning in the way my daughter squeezes my hand as I walk her upstairs to put her to bed. Surely I am helpful to some clients some of the time, which matters hugely to me. And maybe even this blog post matters somehow, the writing of it and perhaps even to somebody reading it.

Sometimes I think we are all fireflies, scattered apart and only blinking faintly, intermittently. Nevertheless, our paths do cross, and our light does shine. We might not always know for sure that our faded blinking matters for anything. But we don't know for sure that it doesn't matter, either.