Not Important?

I wonder if you are like me and contemplate your value. If you wonder what stature you hold in others’ lives?

Do they think of you when they are making plans, or are you just a convenience in their lives in their time of need?

This is a hard pill to swallow, and it makes you question everything. It affects your motivation, discipline, and focus. You can find yourself consumed with answering these questions—what’s even worse is creating scenarios in your head that take up entirely too much space.

Generally, this is a behavior that you develop over time. All the times you felt pushed aside or forgotten in your life combine to create this mess.

In my opinion, there is no worse feeling in the world than being ignored, pushed aside, and forgotten. The sad thing is that we often go back for more, and the cycle repeats.

But each time it repeats, it takes a little more of you with it.

Now, I am not innocent of this. In fact, I sometimes feel like I wrote the book on it.

If I could have back all the time I spent wondering and yearning about whether I am important in someone’s life, I would have an entire lifetime ahead of me.

The truth is that you are important to someone, but that is never good enough—because we want to be important to the ones who do not reciprocate.

We waste our time and effort in chasing the ones who do not want to be chased, when the relationships we should be nurturing are right in front of our face all along.

I could give the rah-rah speech about how it only matters that we feel important to ourselves, and the “I am good enough, smart enough” cliché tagline. But we all know that is bullshit. We are human, and it is human nature to want what we can’t have.

So what is my advice? It’s simple: don’t stop living your life, even though it does not involve the people you want in it. Take inventory of the relationships that are positive, and stop creating scenarios in your head about the others.

If you know that you are important, then act like it. Match the negligence others show you and your feelings: ignore them and let them come to you, or let them fade away. They will if they do—or did—care about you at one time. Or they won’t, but at least you will know.

When you make yourself available indefinitely to these people, they take advantage of you, and you end up torturing yourself. Is it worth it? I think not.

The philosopher Seneca has a great quote that I believe embodies these feelings:“We suffer more often in our minds than we do in reality.” The scenarios you are making in your head seldom reveal themselves as truths. Harboring them only increases the power you give to your absent relationships.

I am writing this as a witness to this. I am not innocent in this, and I should practice what I preach and swallow my own medicine.

But as I write this—and hopefully as you read this—I am making a covenant to myself, as you should as well, to heed this advice and put it into practice.

I hope you do as well. You are important to me, and I haven’t even met you. But if I didn’t feel that way, then why would I write this?

Do this with me. Put this into practice. Let’s become important in our own lives and put the time and effort needed to nurture the relationships we have in our lives that are positive, healthy, and encouraging.

REBILT “Never Broken”