You Matter

**You matter, no matter what. **

When you don’t really like what you do and aren’t paticularly friendly with your colleagues, you matter.

When you’re not gracious because you’ve had a tough week, or year or just because you’re not gracious, you matter.

When you think of yourself because sometimes you just can’t keep putting other people first and need to responsibly take care of yourself and be number one for a change, despite other people, you matter.

When you don’t really do anything much to change the world and keep to your normal routine day in and day out, you matter.

When you don’t really strive for much and are pretty content to just stay in the same space and place and not really change anything about yourself or your life, you matter.

When you judge and demean, for whatever reason, and aren’t really understanding or forgiving, you matter.

If you don’t really have anyone whose life you think you influence or change or effect in any positive way, you matter.

If noone ever wants to be you, you matter.

If you have dreams of a better world, but insist on doing nothing, you matter.

If you inspire noone and aren’t even inspired yourself, you matter.

If the brightness of the room doesn’t change depending on your presence, you matter.

If you leave no legacy, and no family and noone who you’ve really impacted when you die, your life still matters, and so do you.

This is my response to the original poem submitted in a previous post. I find it often uninspiring and discouraging to be told all the things I should be and do and feel quite incapable of acheiving, so there is comfort for me in the truth that no matter how you spend your time or influence other people or live your life, for better or worse, just because you are human and loved by your creator, your ultimate value never actually changes. So I guess I’d entitle this poem, “You matter, no matter what.” For better or for worse. You can even matter in a bad way, but that doesn’t mean you don’t matter. To me that is more inspiring and encouraging than hearing all the platitudes I feel I’ll never attain to.

A person’s worth is not dependant on what they do or how they live. We are of worth simply because we are. Even the angry homeless man who demands money from other people and complains when they don’t give him enough has no more or less worth than a nobel prize winner. He “matters” just as much as. And perhaps a lot of the reasons people dont acheive all the things this poem lays out for people to do is because they feel in themselves that they don’t matter. I think if people really had a true sense of just how much they mattered, then all of what is written in the poem about those types of people might actually be how they would naturally behave.

Try reading the original poem again,(not mine, but the one submitted earlier by Michelle) but this time replace the words “When you” with “When you know you matter” and leave off the end “,you matter” and I think you’ll have a far more inspiring work and be far closer to the truth. Just a few thoughts.

Linda