Am I important?
Am I relevant?
Do I matter?
These are questions we have all asked ourselves at one point in our lives.
And the truth is most of us don't have the slightest idea of the answers to these question, even though we think we do.
The more I think about these questions, the more my mind brings up new ones.
What if there is more than one answer?
What if there are no answers?
Now I'm not trying to be one mystical guru,
I'm just as confused as any other human.
I do not have the answer.
What I do have is my mind (and maybe a little bit of chocolate)...
But upon obsessive rumination, I think I may have come up with MY answer.
For better understanding, I'd like us to paint some mental pictures.
Think of a person.
Now think of him within his household
How important is he?
Does he matter?
Okay now put that person within a society .
How important is he now?
Does he still matter?
Keep visualising this person in bigger and bigger places.
A country, a continent, the world...
What do you notice?
Well, if you think about it,
You'll notice that the importance or relevance of our chosen individual reduces the more we increase the scale of reference.
A person will most likely always matter in his household, to his family.
But in society, that level of relevance and importance starts to reduce.
Most people won't know you and you won't matter to a lot of people.
The higher our scale becomes, the less and less important it seems we become.
Everyone is in their own world, everyone is in their own story, you are just a side character.
And to add salt upon the metaphorical wound;
We are less than a speck in the grand scale of the cosmos.
The universe is so vast that if the Earth suddenly disappeared, it won't be affected in any way.
If we take a look at our sun, we see this massive glowing celestial orb that is paramount for Life on Earth. Without it, we are all quite literally screwed.
But to the sun, we're nothing.
Yet if you increase the scale, our sun is nothing to the universe.
If our sun dies now, just say bye-bye to everyone you love. That would be the real endgame.
But looking through the glasses of the cosmos it's just going to be one of the 275 million stars that die every day.
Look at this!
We had to zoom in to even see our sun.
And this star that's making our sun seem like stain on screen is also tiny compared to something else.
Our feeble minds cannot even begin to comprehend the scale of the universe...
So with all this information,
How then can we call ourselves important?
Well,
Let us ask ourselves the questions once again,
Am I important?
Am I relevant?
Do I matter?
MY ANSWER: It all depends of perspective.
Importance is dependent on influence.
Relevance is relative.
Relative to our universe, we are comparable to nothing.
Relative to our loved ones, we are everything.
If you feel you do not matter, take a look at the scale you are taking as your frame of reference.
The problem with most of us is that we think on too large of a scale when trying to answer these questions.
And that can lead to existential crisis (believe me, I'm talking from experience).
The truth is; even on a lower scale, a lot of us do not matter
At least not to other people.
Importance is dependent on influence.
Which is why celebrities, influencers, politicians are taken with higher regard than the average Joe.
They have influence and their influence elevates their importance... At least to the majority of people in the society.
It all comes down to influence.
If you feel like you're not important ask yourself these questions:
How do you influence the scale you're on?
What are the things you can do to contribute to your scale?
Meditate on your answers and you might find clarity.
BUT,
I want you to understand this;
You must not base your happiness on your importance to other people.
Humans have a low attention span and that also translates to people.
Just because you're relevant today doesn't mean you'll be relevant tomorrow.
A lot of people don't care about you... it's just life.
Your schools,
Your community,
Your social media...
You might be feeling unimportant and irrelevant in these places.
I mean, it feels great when people give you validation.
Whether it's likes on our social media or compliments from people,
We all love validation.
It makes us feel important,
It makes us feel like we matter.
But remember that self-validation is greater than external validation.
So next time you ask yourself if you are important,
Look inward.
Keep it in mind that YOU are the most significant factor that should be considered when looking for an answer.
Always make yourself the frame of reference.
Then it would not matter what scale you're on,
You will always matter.
This topic is a very complex one that cannot be fully encapsulated by just one article.
There is still a lot to talk about,
There still a lot to think about.
But I believe this is a good start.
Are you important?
Are you relevant?
Do you matter?
It all depends on perspective.
And the most important perspective... Is your own.
We are nothing more than a sentence in the book of the universe,
But we are the authors of our own stories.
Thank you for reading.
Stay buzzing,
Maximus✍🏾