Yet another question to ask ourselves these frolicsome days. However, as usual, matter takes on a bit of different coloring here. It is not something that one can actually touch but rather a state of importance. Of being noticed. Or at least thinking that one has made a difference. I can understand, particularly in this stage of life, looking back and taking stock on one's life, that the knowledge or the feeling that one has made a difference to someone, for someone, is a comforting feeling.
Two recent books have taken up the topic of mattering. Essentially, they feel it arises from a feeling of loneliness. Now we know that these days there appears to be some kind of a semi pandemic of loneliness. But is that because we do not matter or because we are trying to protect ourselves from the aggravation that comes from getting close to people and then finding out that these people are not what one thought they were. They are not what we were looking for. What we can say perhaps is that we are sorely disappointed as we delved beneath the surface of this friendship.
Or in fact does the fault lay at our feet? Many these days even as they crave friendship, meaning and mattering, are finding themselves reluctant to truly open up. Become vulnerable. With the nastiness pervading society today, it is understandable that one wishes just to prevent bringing hurt upon oneself. In thinking we are protecting ourselves by keeping people at arm's length, the loneliness enters. As it grows, so does the mattering concern grow, and the less confident one is of their place within the ranks of society. The feeling of not mattering intensifying.
What then is the answer? In fact, is there an answer? In second fact, is this whole topic being overemphasized and jacked up? A concern which has probably always been around, and these books have just glommed onto the topic. Third fact. Does achieving a state of 'mattering' to someone, something, some cause actually guaranteeing of a state of happiness? Or do the two have nothing to do with each other? Can one be happy without mattering? Can one matter without being happy?
Are they perhaps even mutually exclusive? When one looks back at multitalented or important contributors to humankind, do they come across as 'happy', even as they certainly mattered? Actually, most do not, and one reads in their biographies or autobiographies how unhappy and troubled, even tortured and tormented they have been. How unsure they are of their importance and relevance, of their mattering, as would be termed today. Has their life made a difference at all? And while we, the untalented, the normal, look askance and wonder how they could be so questioning of what sems so obvious to us, we are apparently on different wave lengths.
How then can we determine the actual meaning in effect of achieving 'mattering'? If the term itself is defined as per individual understandings, different views, and can remain uncertain of belief, even within one who is deemed of 'matter' to the world, then what are we doing? Why are we stressing this whole topic and stressing ourselves in consequence? One author talks about devising a mattering map. What the hell is that? And does it help anyone to dissect their lives in this manner, to this degree?
Are we not making a mountain out of a molehill? Are we perhaps assigning levels of importance and difference where there should not be that judging, that weighing and measuring and according to what? Does not society change enough so as to cause the issues of 'mattering' to vary according to need and effect, of contribution and levels of importance to 'Mattering', being of relevance to the society of that time?
Personally. I believe that we are doing ourselves great harm by stressing this importance of an outward mattering. Or even of an inner mattering. History has shown, proven, that even the great did not think they were of matter and had grave doubts about their place in history even as the books were filled with their contributions. And those are the good guys. The talented. The contributors. The advancers of society. Who had deep inner need and desire to matter. To someone. To something. To some cause. To something in history.
But what about the bad guys? The Black Hats? Even if they wear red ones. In order to accomplish their level of 'mattering' they force their mattering upon others in negative manner. Too many times, in a vicious manner. Thus, they mattered indeed, are going down in history - with names cursed. And memories detested. Were they happy? Are they happy today? Not noticeably at all. Barely a genuine smile or ring of laughter; always tainted with a bitterness and a sense of Ha! Gotcha'! Always that driving never satiated need to do more. To cross other people. To track other people. Be aware of their evil plans against you. At least it is so in their twisted minds. As they act accordingly.
Surely these people matter. Surely, we would rather do without them. Is the fact that they are most likely mentally and emotionally ill enough to be used as an excusing factor? To prevent justice being applied to them and their deeds? Are they to be allowed to walk away from the world twisted and contorted by their deeds or rather misdeeds? Unable to function in proper manner nor move forward so wounded is it. All in the name of their "matterhood”.
Do not the rest of us matter and are we not entitled to reparative action? At present we are the ones paying the piper for the harm inflicted upon us in the name of satiating their sick need to matter above all. And please note - happiness has continued to elude them, for mattering does not imply an automatic happiness state of being. Not at all. For sure, neither are most of us happy, even if we do matter in other spheres of life.
Take some individuals of the day. Let's begin with Tucker Carlson. Believe it or not, he began as a liberal, even a progressive. A tidy young man burning with a deep desire to find a place for himself in society. Where he would be known. Would Matter. In the name of that goal which drove his life, he flipflopped and opposing antisemitism became a vicious toxic antisemitism. His politics morphed into the ugly, the terribly nasty.
All in the name of 'mattering', of being of matter to his new causes and his new audiences. He has found that place in his present persona as a backwards nasty creature. But he does matter. Is that what one is to seek in life? Is mattering to family and friends, trusting in them, is that not enough? Is that not a better life?
Of course, we cannot escape the one glaring example of a person driven by an intense need to matter above all. Even if only in one's own mind. Via the sick impetus in one's life, we arrive at the dictators and autocrats throughout history. From the past to the present. And most probably, assuredly, into the future. Putin, Xi, Khomeini et al. Driven to distraction by the need to be the boss. To be the most important matter of all. And here is our homegrown spawn of this twisted way of thinking and acting - Donald Trump.
This is a man with an outwardly overgrown ego, but I believe within he feels his unworthiness, the unhappy mess he has made of his life and of so many others, too many. In trying to erase that feeling he insists on proving he does indeed matter. As a consequence, we the people of this world, we Americans have been forced into a situation of actual distinct existential peril.
This is a man who thinks not of what is right nor what should be done to correct this world. To fix its errors. To heal its booboos. This is a man who thinks 'what is my next outrageous step". What will matter to me and to those out there as they watch me put my stamp upon this world. A stamp which crushes and demeans, which emanates odors of corruption and ugliness and immorality.
Be assured there is no lack of harm that he has already inflicted upon us. Nor is there a shortage. of future projects. He has a Pharaonic trait wherein he builds as he wishes, no matter the cost or harm resultant. The East Wing gone and a terrible, ugly, catering hall built instead. Such a low-class man. A Rose Garden turned into a yellow umbrellaed patio of a hotel. A golf course for the people turned into a dumping ground for the debris of his projects and intends to turn it into a luxury resort and course. The people? Oh, who cares? The Kennedy Center - G-d knows what it will look like as he turns it into a Las Vegas style entertainment venue. An Arc de Triumph, a destruction of Lafayette Park, a challenge to the content of numerous museums and places of history and culture, and on and on.
This is a man with autocratic intentions. A man who sees himself as the first of a neo royalty such as we have never had in this nation before. Nor tolerated. And yet, it is waiting right there down the road, not too far away. Once, we were a great nation. Now under the control of this man, under his dictatorship, yes, dictatorship, we have become oppressors. Destroyers. The bane of those in need. The hope is that the resistance movement will amp up. We will have squads of vans. Hordes of people with whistles and horns. Hopefully politicians who will understand their true duties and responsibilities and will set aside their selfishness and look out for the nation. The hope is that we can stop this man before he destroys the world with his ugliness. His immorality, his lack of conscience must be removed from 'mattering'.
Will we? Can we?
Yes, we can, and without violence. If we act quickly. Use the power granted to us, the legal means stated within the Constitution and the amendments. To remove him for cause. He can no longer, if ever, carry out the responsibilities of his job - properly, honestly. No more a president who sits as a huckster within the White House. And sells this nation, all its buildings, all of its history, down the road to perdition and erasure.
Dishonor, immorality, amoral behavior and thinking. Deeds of violence and encouragement of hate. Denial of truths. Of needs of the planet itself. All have no place in the White House. Neither does dementia. Nor gold glitter and gilt attempting to cover all the ugliness, all the wrong, all the evil beneath. Nor do men of dishonor. Bottom feeders. Who see their future, their mattering only by following Trump and the chaos of his ways.
Does he matter? Do they matter? Oh yes, he and they do, too much so and we are at fault. We have allowed him to gain the upper hand. To insist on his importance. His mattering. His threat to history. To our legacy. To our mattering. We must right the wrong that we have permitted.
Yesterday, today and tomorrow. All times which will define. and delineate our mattering. Times where our contributions would matter but were sadly missing.
Citizen involvement must matter. It must be there. If not, we will have ceded the best of our past, bought into the dissonance of today, and imperiled the tomorrows, those times we hand off to our children.
On us, Folks, on us.
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