Jennifer Breheny Wallace

When we feel like we matter, we show up to the world in positive ways.

We connect, we engage, we contribute.

When we are chronically made to feel like we don't matter, we can withdraw, become anxious, depressed, turn to substances to try to alleviate the pain.

A study of suicidal men

and the two words they must often use to describe their suffering is useless and worthless.

Those are words that describe feeling like you do not matter.

We need to figure out how we are going to protect what it means to be human, and that is to matter.

We evolve to meet this need.

Jenny.

Yeah.

So, I mean, mattering just to give everyone a simple definition, I define it the way researchers who study it define it.

And that is feeling valued for who you are by your families, your colleagues, your neighborhoods, society as a whole, and then having an opportunity to add value back across those areas of your life.

And what I argue in the book is that we are going through a mattering crisis.

This has been evolving since the 60s and 70s, and Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone did a wonderful job of tracking this.

Mattering, this idea of feeling valued and adding value, used to be baked into our everyday life.

We knew our neighbors.

We relied on them.

After a storm, they'd check in to make sure the electricity was still on.

We had workplace social contracts where if you were loyal to your company, they'd be loyal to you with a pension.

We were a more religious society.