It is all too easy to think that what you do in life doesn’t really matter. After all, when you are just one person out of 8 billion, that seems pretty insignificant.
Moreover, the picture gets even more narrow if we expand the scope. Reading history, there are only a few people who have shaped the course of human history. Of all the people who have ever lived, we only know the names of a precious few. Those few have led armies, made breakthroughs, or influenced millions.
But the vast majority of people just live their lives. They are content making their small contribution to the greater whole. But do their lives matter?
This raises an important point: what does it mean for a life to matter? In order for a life to have meaning, what needs to happen?
Meaning doesn’t just come from changing the world. You don’t need to be an Alexander the Great or an Albert Einstein to be important. You just need to have an impact on the people around you — your family, your friends, your coworkers, and so on.
That’s the lesson of the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, that even when you feel that your life doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme, the world would be a different place if you didn’t exist. You can’t help but matter, because your very existence has changed the world.
So how can we convey that to others? How can we tell people around us that they mean something? Something to us, something to their community? How can we show people they matter?
Related questions: How could you show your appreciation for others more? How does your identity matter? How much power does an individual have? What gives a person value?