Jennifer Wallace

When we think about the most meaningful jobs in the world, firefighters are among the top of the list, right?

While most of us run from danger, they run straight into it, risking their lives to save ours.

The impact of their work is undeniable.

At least, that's what I had always assumed, until I met a firefighter named Greg, who told me that even firefighters can struggle to see the impact of their work.

Really?

How?

How can that be?

I remember asking Greg, and he explained with a story.

When he was a rookie, he and his crew were called to a horrific car wreck.

A woman was trapped inside, her legs were pinned under the twisted steel.

Greg's training took over.

He looked for an opening, and he found a jagged opening, slid through to put his heavy bunker coat around the woman to shield her from the glass as they worked to rescue her.

Greg promised he would stay by her side and they would get her out, and they did.

But here is the part of Greg's story that stuck with me.

After that intense experience, Greg would never know what happened next.

Did the woman survive?

Did she ever walk again?

Did their efforts that night make any difference?

It surprised me to learn that firefighters rarely hear about the outcomes of their rescues.

Over time, that lack of closure can erode morale.

fuel burnout, even cynicism.

So years later, when Greg became fire chief, he created a system to change that.

He tracked the outcomes of rescues because he wanted his firefighters to know when their efforts had saved a life or eased someone's suffering, because Greg knew something vital.

It is not enough to do important work.

We need to know our work makes a difference.

We need to know we matter.

I'm a journalist, and for the past six years, I've interviewed hundreds of people around the world, like Greg, asking them a question.

Do you feel like you matter?

For too many, the answer was no.

A doctor I interviewed described feeling powerless now that insurance companies were denying her patients the care they needed.

A college student described feeling like she only mattered when her GPA was high and her weight was low.

An elderly man described feeling like he mattered less this way.

He said the hardest part of aging is that people stop relying on you.

What these stories and the scientific research make clear is that to thrive in life, we need to know we matter.

That is, to feel valued and to have an opportunity to add value to the world.

When we feel like we matter, we show up fully, we want to connect, we want to engage, we want to contribute.

But when we are made to feel like we don't matter, we often withdraw.

Some of us might turn to substances or self-harm to try to alleviate that pain.

Others lash out in anger, road rage, online attacks, political extremes.

These are all desperate attempts to say, I'll show you I matter.

And this is about to get worse.

As AI erases jobs that once gave people a sense of identity and purpose, millions more will face this crisis of mattering.

The job ahead for us is not just to keep up with machines.

It's to protect what it means to be human, to feel valued, and the responsibility we have to remind others that they are valued, too.

In my research, I found that the places where we live and work can either fuel this crisis or be a key to solving it.

I visited a factory in Phillips, Wisconsin, where each workstation had a card that talked about how the piece being made fit into the final product.

On that card was a photo and a story of the person who would one day use it.

That story card was a powerful reminder to workers that they weren't just assembling parts.

They were building something meaningful.

Mattering at work is not some soft, squishy, nice-to-have idea.

It's actually good business.

When employees know they matter, they work harder, they stay more loyal, and they bring more energy to their roles.

To matter, we need to feel valued, but we also need a chance to add value.

And in my research, I uncovered a formula for doing this.

Identify a need in the world or in your community or in your neighborhood, and then use your strengths, your resources, your talents to meet it.

I interviewed a woman named Julie outside of Boston who discovered this for herself firsthand.

For two years, Julie was her mother's full-time caregiver.

When her mother passed away, Julie described feeling unmoored, purposeless.

But instead of retreating inward in her pain, Julie had the courage to look outward for a new way to matter.

And when she did, she noticed two needs in her community, grieving families like hers who were struggling with what to do with their loved ones' belongings, and other families who were rebuilding after a fire or experiencing homelessness.

So Julie connected the two.

With a friend, she started to collect gently used home goods and deliver them to people who could use them.

That simple act of care has transformed thousands of lives, including Julie's.

All of us here will go through painful life transitions, the loss of a loved one, an illness, maybe an empty nest, even retirement.

These transitions can shake our sense of mattering to its core.

But like Julie, we have an opportunity, even a responsibility, to make ourselves useful again.

The way back can start small, checking in on a neighbor or appreciating out loud a colleague who's always so kind and supportive.

What you will find is that the fastest way to feel like you matter again is to remind someone else why they do.

Now, at this point, some of you may be thinking, the problem isn't that I don't matter, it's that I matter too much.

At home, at work, what you wouldn't give to matter just a little bit less.

Am I right?

Well, this too can be thought of as a crisis of mattering.

True mattering is not about stretching ourselves to the breaking point.

It's about balance, balancing our own needs with the needs of others.

For years, I have personally struggled to find this elusive balance.

And then I read a study conducted at the Mayo Clinic that showed me how.

Researchers there were testing a simple intervention to strengthen resilience.

They recruited a group of medical professionals, and they had them meet for one hour a week to share their struggles and to support one another.

After three months, the researchers found significant improvements in these participants' mental health and well-being.

Their cortisol levels, the stress hormone, had dropped.

These women also reported feeling like better parents.

Why?

because as caregivers, when we are surrounded by a strong network of support, we've become more resilient, and that resilience ripples out to our kids.

This is not an isolated finding.

Decades of resilience research find that a child's resilience is rooted in the resilience of the adults in their lives.

And adult resilience is rooted on the depth and support of our relationships.

Now, as caregivers, we're often told, put your oxygen mask on first.

But this research revealed something deeper to me.

Friends are the oxygen.

We need one or two or three people in our lives who know us intimately, who can see when we are struggling, and who will reach over and put that oxygen mask on for us.

That is a very different level of support than we normalize in our busy culture today.

But here's how I've come to look at it.

When I don't reach out for help, not only do I deny myself the support I need, I also deny my friend the chance of being a helper, of feeling needed, like she matters to me.

So the next time you hesitate, I hope you'll remember this.

Asking for help isn't weak.

It is an act of generosity.

Now, to matter, it is a very personal experience, but it's also relational, and it has the power to connect our disconnected world.

A wonderful example of this is taking place at the Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo, where they have instituted slow checkout lanes where the cashiers take extra time to chat, especially with elderly customers.

Amazing, right?

This simple fix for loneliness has now been rolled out in nearly 200 locations.

The lesson for us?

We don't need to build new spaces to unlock each other's mattering.

We just need to be more intentional about the spaces we already have.

Once you see the world through the lens of mattering, you can't unsee it.

It may even start to feel like a responsibility.

It has for me.

It has changed how I show up now for my family, my friends, my colleagues, even strangers I meet on the street.

Affirming each other's worth, it's not just the right thing to do, it is the glue that holds a healthy society together, and we need this now more than ever.

What I have learned in these hundreds of conversations is this, that deep down, we are all searching for the same thing, to know who we are,

and what we do make a difference in this world.

We want to know that our lives, our very existence, matters.

Thank you.