Sometimes words contain gems. Matter is one such rich word.
Matter is a verb: You matter to me = your existence makes a positive difference for me. We have discussed Mattering in 360°-gatherings, the importance of knowing that not only we but also what we do make a difference. Few things in our professional lives would be as soul-killing as putting a lot of effort into a project only to learn that, actually, it was taken off the table a while back, but nobody remembered to tell you.
The opposite of Love is not Hate but Indifference.
Matter is also a noun. We are made of matter, as are our surroundings. We don’t see water vapors floating in the air – or the oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, etc. in the atmosphere. We don’t touch the stars. Yet, all this is also matter on a very small or very big scale.
Light, sound, gravity, magnetism can be sensed: seen, heard, felt, but it is – as far as we know –not matter. Yet, it seems that at the quantum-physical level, everything – including matter – is made of light. Perhaps the wavelengths, speed, or energy load distinguishes whether it turns into matter? At what length/speed/load? Does that mean that matter turns into light if the wavelengths, speeds, or energy load changes the right way? Like water vapors condense into droplets once their temperatures fall – aka energy is removed from the vapor – Zen Benefiel says: “we are cosmic consciousness condensed into form.”
Having witnessed my mother leaving her matter behind as her energy went somewhere else, it occurred to me that fear of death might be related to our relationship with matter and mattering.
Do we fear that we will stop mattering once we stop being matter? As if the only importance was to the person one can hug and not to their thoughts, ideas, values, and the impact they have had on our lives. Is it the imposter syndrome telling us that we had no impact worth noting?
Personally, I don’t fear being dead. It is the dying part of the experience that I don’t fancy too much. In a recent New York Times opinion piece (gift-shared in the link), the author asked “what is a worthy life?” His father’s advance directive had a “do not resuscitate” clause, should he not be able to live a full life. But what makes a life full? For an intellectual, it might be the thought of losing the ability to have intellectual conversations that would make them want to end it all. For an athlete, the idea of reduced mobility might be scary. For many, wearing a diaper may feel undignified; they cringe at the very thought of needing help with their most personal functions. Yet, many people get reduced to much less ability than they once possessed and stay content. We don’t know in advance how we can adjust to changes in circumstances, but research and experience show that it is normally much more than we would anticipate. Perhaps as long as we matter to somebody?
Is there a time when our presence on the planet is not a net-positive? Who and what determines that? There must be something less radical than Huxley’s “Brave New World” and yet more humane than trying to keep very sick people alive, no matter what. (I am not quite sure what kind of matter is involved in “no matter what” in this context.)
Perhaps the real fear is that we will stop mattering while we are still matter? Or that our mattering will not be about us in our humanity but what profit can be extracted at the expense of our matter and dignity?
I better take a look at my living will to make sure that it is a little more specific than “living a full life”.
Have you written yours?
Remembering the dead also leads to thinking about death and therefore to questioning ourselves about the meaning of life. The certainty of having to die unites men and women, it is the basis of the ethics of empathy, of compassion, it is what pushes us to feel fragile all together, with a common destiny, and at the same time leads us to be aware of the value of our life: unique, one, a life of eternal moments.
“To love and be loved”, to quote Andee Scarantino, is the meaning of life. One now at a time. Now, the big question is then what we understand as acting of love and your comment answers that beautifully, imo.
Charlotte thank you for this thought provoking piece going between the two “matters”. We secretly or not so secretly want out time here to matter. Otherwise why are we here? When we leave with no “matter” to touch how will our lives matter after that? My friend lost his mom this week. The way he was talking about her made me feel she mattered. It is so nice to be remembered like that. Yet for how long? When he also dies will anyone else remember her? Unless you leave something like articles you write or books or poems things will “matter”, it is even harder to be remembered or unless you have been a real hero like our leader Ataturk in Turkiye who is always kept alive in our minds and hearts for what he did. Well you made me think and also think of my own life and death. I will never know if my life mattered or not yet I want to live it like it does.
Thank you for this rich and vulnerable comment, Brooke, “I will never know if my life mattered or not”. Isn’t that why we frantically run around doing, doing, doing in the vain hope that we like Ataturk will be remembered forever?
And yet many people don’t even want a grave marker.
I wonder what we can do more than love as best we can – and get help to become better at it if we aren’t very good at accepting ourselves for who we are?