Are you okay?

Same.

Turns out, when I’m stressed, I like to make merch and open a merch store. Have a look, and shop your feelings!

At the heart of all disagreements, fights, and war is the need to matter. Every one of us wants to be seen, and we’re triggered by suggestions—implicit or stated—of erasure.

To live, we must matter.

To thrive and grow as infants, we must matter to our parents to care for us; to prosper and attend to others as adults, we need to feel that we are worth helping.

One cannot matter to themselves when they believe they don’t matter to others. 

To matter means to live freely without fear of extinction. To matter means to have our truest selves reflected back by loved ones. To be validated, confirmed, and seen is to matter.

Collectively, this sense of being valuable and important to others is called Mattering, and it’s a core component of self-concept (one’s internal sense of who they are as a person).

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