18 Jul If you ever feel like you don’t matter … here’s what to do
Do you ever feel like you don’t matter?
I do, almost all the time!
And to be perfectly honest, it’s not good for my happiness.
When I feel my happiest I feel like I’m contributing, making a difference and, therefore, that I matter. Doing good, not just feeling good, boosts my happiness.
Anyway, if you’d like to feel more like you matter more often, keep reading…
via the Ladders by John P Weiss
What should a meaningful life be about? It’s an important question. Unfortunately, the answer is not likely to be found on social media.
Most of the idealized and carefully curated content on Facebook and Instagram focuses on vanity, fame and wealth. We pursue these things energetically, convinced they will bring us a meaningful life.
Yet the reality is that most people will not become supermodels, nor particularly rich or famous. In fact, most of us will lead seemingly ordinary, unremarkable lives.
Does this mean our lives won’t be meaningful?
Absolutely not.
Something beyond the self
Instead of relying on social media for shallow answers, let us turn to some serious literature. Consider the novel Middlemarch, by George Eliot (a pen name for Mary Ann Evans). In the novel, a character must relinquish her big dreams and find meaning in the small details of a faithful life, raising a family.
As Eliot writes in the novel:
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
In a New York Times article, writer Emily Smith reflected on the above quote this way:
“It’s one of the most beautiful passages in literature, and it encapsulates what a meaningful life is about: connecting and contributing to something beyond the self, in whatever humble form that may take.”
…keep reading the full & original article HERE