Freud thought life was all about sexual urges and phalluses; Dewey thought a bit different. He said it was all about being important. The deepest human urge is to want to be wanted. Like Cheap Trick said. It makes us do ridiculous things like postponing a justified break-up for several years or helping a friend move way too many times. It presents us the opportunity to be more awesome, too, volunteering our time to help the less fortunate or visiting our grandparents because they love to hear about what's going on in our lives.
Dale Carnegie said, "If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I'll tell you who you are."
The trick here is that it's not always you who decides your importance. I've stumbled upon this stepping back to see myself at my job and watching Soul Pancake's video An Experiment in Gratitude. Applying myself at work in all sorts of directions has begun to take over a major part of my week and mental brain-space. I've been juggling video-editing, writing glossary definitions, and chatting with customers, which, my buddy Rob cleverly calls "teaching people how to Internet better". It makes me feel important to receive praise and gratitude from my supervisors and customers alike. It makes me feel like I'm a part of something, makes me feel important. What Soul Pancake did with their video, The Science of Happiness - An Experiment in Gratitude, is visualize the results of scientific studies showing a correlation between being grateful and being happy. My thought is that not only can a person be happy being grateful for others, but the person on the other end of the line knows how greatly they impacted a life for the better. Everyone feels happy, everyone feels important.
What's your story? What's your friends' stories? Are they important because they furiously post important news stories on Facebook for everyone to read? Do they give their all to a significant other? Wake up at the crack of dawn to feed their pets? Or do you know someone who finds their sense of importance creating something to share with people - music, jokes, paintings, anything?
We all have something to contribute and it makes every bit of us important. Sometimes, it's just easy to forget the true impact we have on one another.
Make everyone important. Make yourself important.
Until next time...
I explode into space.
-dan