The best gift you can give is to make other people matter. We, as humans, need to be needed. That is something we tend to overlook. People fall into overeating, over-drinking or any other excesses because they feel they don’t matter. People troll others to feel heard. People become activists. They regurgitate slogans with little thought about the consequences. Merely, to feel they belong.
Our need to matter
The most extreme examples are mass shooters and terrorists who murder to become famous. “[My friend] said that my face and name would go across the world”, one of them stated, “He said I’ll become famous.”
There are some excuses for doing harm, but they do not include sputtering a social media post at 3 a.m., cheered on by a bottle of wine.
There is no excuse for wasting our lives. Such as binge-watching Who Kills Who, Who Sleeps With Whom or Who Bakes What, day after day, to make us escape our inner pain and lack of mattering.
Or maybe this could be you: Spending hours each day staring at that rectangular item in your hand? Oblivious to what is going on around you?
But, no matter how much our demeanour depresses us, we must dig out the reasons why we feel we don’t matter. Why do we escape into a world of numbing distractions? Why the need for all this fluffy entertainment?
Work
A good place to start is work.
Work is at the top of the list of what may or may not make us feel valued. A majority of people around the world feel disengaged at work. On top of that, many feel humiliated.
How much of the world’s suffering and harm could not have been avoided if people instead felt appreciated and useful? “I have a role to play here.”
Alain de Botton at the School of Life puts it like this:
“What really makes our work exciting and meaningful is the power it gives us to help other people.”
And that is the case not just at work but in any aspect of life.
What to do?
So, what can you do to make people matter? To make others feel helpful?
Every one of us must find out that for ourselves. But you don’t need to change the world, run a country or sit at a high-level meeting under crystal chandeliers to add value.
Do the little things. An excellent way suggested by the School of Life is to ask for help.
People’s urge to be helpful is what has made me attract groups of strangers when asking about the way in Colombia, Coventry and China. (The latter with a pick-pocket among them though, who diminished my stock of traveller’s cheques). It was the urge to be helpful that made a lady come running after me in St. Petersburg telling me that she had given me wrong directions.
So, don’t forget: Give people opportunities to be helpful. Being helpful makes people feel good about themselves. If you have had an awful day, at least make somebody else’s day less awful.
Watch the video from the School of Life. They suggest you take asking for help one step further: To ask for help about what you really care about.
Make people matter. That is the best gift you can give to yourself and others.
