Jennifer Breheny Wallace

I'll show you I matter.

And that is what road rage is.

right?

Somebody feels cut off either literally or figuratively.

And so they are asserting their sense of mattering.

Oh, I will show you I matter.

So it's almost like demanding attention, demanding it.

Once you see the world through the lens of mattering, you cannot unsee it.

You will see that when people are rude to you, incivility, these are signs that they are struggling with a sense of mattering themselves.

I'm not saying to let people off the hook, but I'm saying instead of getting furious and judgmental when people are acting out,

you might get curious what is it that when are they feeling like they don't matter what might be going on in this person's life and again i'm not saying that you have to excuse it but instead maybe you can meet it with a little bit of compassion there are so many people today struggling with this unmet need to matter and it shows up in anger it shows up in loneliness it shows up in disengagement at work

these symptoms that we often look at as kind of separate things are really rooted in mattering, in feeling like I don't matter.

I think that is a great question.

And what I will say is it was first studied mattering in 1981.

So I don't have data before that day, but I could be pretty assured that back 50 years ago,

People struggled with mattering less and here's why here's why I believe that is there were Ecosystems there were neighborhoods close-knit neighborhoods people had a social contract at work Where if you worked and you were loyal for 40 years, you would be rewarded with a pension people felt more connected there were

We were a more religious society, and all the major religions talk about this idea of unconditional worth, unconditional value.

So what has happened over the last several decades is that these ecosystems that used to deliver mattering,

religious institutions, neighborhoods, workplaces, communities, those have eroded.

And so when we are struggling with feeling like we don't matter, we feel it so personally.