Gordon Flett
speaker
1,089 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard 15 Jun
Gordon Flett’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 2.
Appearances
You know, if they relied on external validation, they are in a spot where they're alone or isolated and they may not have these people, such as when people are in a transition like moving to a new town or, you know, where they don't have the usual set of people in their environment to call on right away.
The internal witness part is critical, though, and I think it's related to the notion of eventually learning to matter to yourself as well.
people do need to remind themselves of the ways that they have mattered and they continue to matter to various people.
And this can be family members, other people in the community, but it can also be to pets and to the community in general.
When I talk about mindful mattering, this is what I mean in terms of reminding yourself at times and just reflecting on
the ways that you still matter and have mattered and know that you still have the capacity to matter and that you can perhaps build up some more relationships so that you can have the external witnesses as well.
At the end of the day, mattering is something that's very subjective.
It's inside of us.
People are often incorrect where they feel that they matter less than they actually do or they have got an inflated sense of mattering that doesn't tap into how they're actually regarded by other people.
But at the end of the day, people need to matter to themselves and to reflect on what makes them unique and how they have contributed.
And when somebody is in a situation, maybe through illness or injury, where they're feeling that they've lost the opportunity to matter, it does have some comfort for them to remind themselves that they have made a difference.
And I also believe that
they will find a way to show that they matter going forward.
And as an illustration of this, you can look at people in the disability community, including essentially the mother of the disability movement, Judy Heumann in the United States, who was instrumental and fundamental in getting
the rights for disabled community, you know, she started out and had polio as a kid and ended up actually being barred from going to school initially because she was told that her and her wheelchair were fire hazards.
But she was able to convince herself through the support of her initial family that she still had a role to play.
And I'm sure there were times when
She was thinking, well, I'm up against this in terms of an anti-mattering society who treats people with disabilities as if they're invisible or discardable.
But she was able to remind herself of the ways that she could indeed make a difference.
Yes.
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