What Is The Matter? NDP Episode 169

What IS the matter?

Matter is an interesting word. It’s a noun and a verb. The noun means something of substance and can be physical or metaphysical. The verb means for something to be important. There’s matter, and there is the matter. I like words like that, but the complication of communication and understanding.

The idea of something mattering, as a verb, has been on my mind lately. The last two episodes (here and here) have focused on the relationship between our experiences and our stress. What matters directly affects our bodies, our minds, and our well-being.

Everything can’t matter

Many of us don’t discriminate among the barrage of experiences we face. Our inability to rank things in our lives means that everything matters. If everything matters, we’re exhausted. We can’t pay attention to all the things.

And why would we? So many things don’t matter. So much of our lives are inconsequential. I would go so far as to say MOST of the things we worry about don’t ever amount to anything. 

Awareness, inventory, and ranking are required

The first step is self-aware. Truly, I think this is the ultimate cause of human suffering. Lack of self-awareness leads us to two ways of being. Either we are completely unaware and hedonistic, or we are hyper-aware and overcome with worry. 

I talk a lot about self-awareness and I don’t know how to create it where it doesn’t exist. I do know that things like journaling, meditation, mindfulness, and healthy living help nurture a state of awareness. 

Once we are aware, we can inventory the things that we experience in our lives. We wake up. Have coffee. Maybe we give care to the family. Maybe we go to work. We drive a car. All of the things we do have the potential to matter — but not all of them!

An inventory of our life things and experiences, the physical and metaphysical, facilitates ranking and prioritizing. This process is similar to and often benefits from following a personal values assessment. We identify what matters, and then rank these things are high or low. 

High-ranking values demand our attention and energy. The low-ranking stuff? Not so much. This immediately frees up a lot of worry, reduces stress, and helps us maximize the things that DO matter.

Our minds dream up the story

No one can tell you what matters. Though I do believe there are universal values that are critical to all forms of life, our inventories will differ. The important part — the part that matters — is the process of figuring this out for ourselves. It is dynamic and requires frequent reassessment.

This process of continually identifying what matters is our dream of life. This is the story we tell ourselves and others. To some degree, we have control over this story and we get to choose whether it is a horror film or a fairy tale. Some things we cannot change and our privilege, or lack thereof, certainly comes into play. 

Can nature advise us?

Can we let evolution provide a lens to consider what matters? In nature, the things that matter are selected for while the less important stuff tends to go away. Traits or conditions that benefit a species start showing up with greater frequency whereas less beneficial features might decrease. 

So, what matters to you? What matters to all of us?

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