The Desire to Matter

I’m young yet through my relatively short life I have encountered numerous people who are concerned that the individual story they are constructing has seemingly zero purpose when they look at the overarching narrative of society. On the surface that may be true, but I think to perceive the world in that light is incredibly misleading and not helpful whatsoever.

Variety yields the potential for things to be interesting and continuous. This blog post will never generate the same amount of attention as something Rob Bell were to write, yet I am reaching an audience who may never hear of or care about Rob Bell. Realistically, what I’m doing serves no purees in the GRAND scheme of things, but why do I have to be involved in the grand scheme rather than constructing and building my own scheme? The grand scheme is selfish, whereas building your own scheme of importance based on your surroundings and where your influence can spill into is beautiful and necessary. 

That sounds relatively self righteous, and that’s not my intention. All I mean to say is that humanity is going to continue to get bigger. We are always growing. Because of that, creating or doing something that will have a lasting impact is incredibly difficult.  Not impossible, but difficult. Therefore, if we are to truly pass the torch as we become older, we must analyze and determine where are influence is and how we can best springboard that influence to create change within the subculture we find ourselves in. 

After all, is that not how the greatest thinkers developed their influence? Look at the influential thinkers of the past. All of them were working within their direct area of influence which then in turn led to widespread fame. Aristotle, Jesus, Gandhi, Confucius. I don’t think any one of these individuals told themselves every morning when they woke up that what they were doing was going to effect every person on earth. They worked within the framework they had, what they said caught on, and now, in some cases thousands of years later, we’re still talking to them.  

Wisdom and influence are exponential things. They first gain headway within specific location or areas of thought and expand as they get passed along over time. Having the mindset of doing something that will impact the grand scheme of things is a very ill informed and needless goal. Develop a scope of influence, embrace it, and work with it. Who knows, maybe it’ll catch on so much in that setting that it will go on to alter worldwide perception. But never have that be the starting goal. All that yields is dissatisfaction with the self which is crippling to creativity and potential. And to truly progress as an individual, we need as much of those two things as we can get.