I think about this phrase, and her, and wonder how different our lives would have been if she had adopted this attitude much earlier. When I was growing up, everything mattered to her, immensely and intensely. As her only child, I suffered the consequences of her extraordinary attachment to things that absolutely didn't matter. The landscape was constantly shifting, with huge seismic upheavals, as I tried in vain to keep up with the current set of rules, which were based on the current set of fears, which were based on the current set of incorrect assumptions. Everything wrong mattered to her, and everything right went completely unnoticed.
Most things, actually, don't matter. And if you are graced with a day in which the little things are bugging the shit out of you, it probably means that nothing huge is going wrong. So, in a way, being cranky and pissed off is a good thing.... because you have the luxury of being cranky and pissed off. I have found that, when things that really do matter start happening, all those little irritants magically just disappear.
So what does matter? For me, there are just four things that Actually Matter:
- Health
- People
- Art
- A sense of infinite potential
Health. Game over if that goes away for good. That's pretty self evident. But in the larger picture, I define health as the degree to which your body, mind, and spirit are harmonious and in balance. So health is important not only because without any of it, we're dead... but because with an abundance of it, we are very much alive, and able to appreciate our lives, and will be able to vitally enjoy the rest of the things on the list for a very long time.
People. Our connections. The love, the bond between people. Moments of compassion between strangers. A shared belly laugh. The way that one life can make a difference for so many people. That strand of green light connecting heart to heart to heart to heart. It's about the people, folks. It's about our shared experience, our amazing ability to heal each other (when we choose), the moments we look into someone else's eyes and see ourselves, our history, and the infinite, all reflected back at us. We are capable of inflicting such terrible pain on each other as well. We are assholes to the extreme, and pig headed, and ignorant, and it's amazing our species has lasted as long as it has. For all these reasons, both good and bad, people matter.
Art. Art is how we deal, how we understand, how we cope, how we escape, how we evolve, how we find meaning in all of the crazy randomness. Art is the glue. Art binds it all together. Whether creating or enjoying it, whether it's a killer episode of Family Guy or Van Gogh's Starry Night, art can give our souls some breathing room, a chance to reflect, a moment of insight. Without it, life is an endless line at the DMV. Think about it, and you'll know I'm right. Art is the difference between the DMV and an orchestra tuning up before a Broadway musical.
A sense of infinite potential. We need to hope. We need to have the feeling of possibility. I think we can sometimes find this feeling in believing in a classical God, or we can find it when sitting in meditation and realizing that all things are possible in the current moment. It's the idea that there's a sky beyond our ceilings, a world beneath the surface of the ocean, a possible order in the universe outside our little minds. I think our souls need to have a window open to this idea of potential. It relaxes the brain, it enlivens the appetites, it shines a little light on the darker days.
To me, these are the Things that Actually Matter. The rest? It doesn't matter, as my mom would say. And, I say this with great love, this time I think she's right.
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