Sometimes it seems like your efforts are all for naught — nothing matters. On the other hand, if a butterfly can create a hurricane, then everything matters. Which one seems more correct to you?
Share why if you wish.
Everything Matters Or Nothing Matters?
Wow, this is heavy for a Throwdown Thursday.
My first instinct is to say that Everything Matters. Ultimately, everything we do, everything we achieve, everything we learn, every person we meet, every bit of difference we make in the world comes from decisions we make. Moreover, we can’t predict just which decisions will be consequential. We can try, but are very often unsuccessful. Decisions we make that feel momentous at the time may turn out to have very little consequence; seemingly trivial decisions may have an outsized impact.
If there is no way of predicting which options will “matter”, then they *all* matter.
However, it does seem hard to imagine how my choice to wear, say, a blue shirt or a green shirt today really makes any sort of significant difference to me or to the world at large.
Ultimately, of course, it doesn’t matter, in the sense that a hundred years from now, I’ll be dead, and everyone who ever knew me will be dead. Several billion years from now, the expanding sun will swallow the earth, so what difference could it possibly make what I have for lunch?
So that makes a case for Nothing Matters.
I guess it depends what you think the point is for our existence. If the point is to live a full, meaningful life for the relatively brief time we are here, then everything you do — from the clothes you wear to the food you eat — can work toward that goal.
With that in mind, I’m going to stick with my original decision and say Everything Matters.
If I were to comment on my vote, it would be exactly what you said, Lee.
I’d only add: We matter a lot to those we love and who love us, a bit less to friends/acquaintances, and to the rest of the world, and to history, we matter not at all.