Earlier today someone else posted: "Part of growing up means admitting to yourself that you don't matter."
Like a lot of things, I suspect this lends itself to all kinds of wrong interpretations. Here's what I hope is the right thing (which I posted in reply, with some editing and extension here):
With enough care and introspection you reach a point where you realize you don't mean much in the big scheme of things, but that — paradoxically — you are of vital importance to the things that you are nearest to. Everything's interdependent, which means that no one thing is the most important thing.
Now we get to the part that screws people up. If no one thing is more important than any other, then how do you decide what to do next? There's a long and involved answer, but the short one goes like this: you pick the things that will bring the people around you that much closer to liberation. Yourself included, but by putting them first you do more for your own salvation than it might seem, because you're allowing yourself to be surprised.
It's entirely possible you will matter to millions, but what's more important is what effect you will have on the people immediately around you, and yourself as well. Start there, get that right, and odds are you'll transpose that behavior onto everyone else — including, potentially, those millions many people dream about being able to affect. You'll have gotten the practice right where it counts. The rest is just gravy.
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Very well put!
A bit like the Golden Rule ""do to others what you would like to be done to you"
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That wouldn't be growing up you'd be feeling, it's just disappointment.
If you sum up "growing-up" as being equal to "realizing that you don't matter" it means that at one point you thought you mattered but now you've become almost comfortable with the idea that you don't.
And it's not really true.
It's not true because there's so many more components to growing up and it's also not true because nobody can ever really know how much they will matter, we just have to do the things that matter to us. After all, who among us knows the name of the first proto-human to teach his kin to make fire or to throw rocks at prey?
Mattering, not mattering...these aren't phases of life so much as hang-ups of the ego. Most people who do great things don't do it because it mattered to someone else, they may not have even done it because it would affect their lives in some positive manner. They just felt free to pursue their interest.
Why should you need to matter? Why was the need to matter something you've decided was better restricted to your youth?
Life is not so much predicated by who or what you matter to, but who or what matters to you. We're not meant to go around just trying to please other people, because in their heart of hearts somebody would always love to see you picking up their extra garbage even if you're meant to be great as their king.
I hate to say it (since I don't like her)...but someone needs to read some Ayn Rand. And then immediately stop and read something compassionate right after.
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I think you said the same thing I did, albeit coming from a different direction?
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