You Matter

You matter.

You already know this, but it’s been beaten down, trampled, and shat on.

Even after all that, down in the secret, locked place of your soul where only you can go, you still know it. That knowledge isn’t damaged — it’s just buried under filth, and it suffers constant attack from the outside, from people you’d hoped were telling you the truth.

It’s hard when you realize that the ones you trusted lied to you and used you. It’s harder still to find out that those you trust now are largely lying to you and using you, even if unwittingly. Hard as admitting this is, deep down you know it’s so — because if they were telling you the truth, they’d be telling you that you matter. And if they truly saw how much you matter, they’d tell you in ways that empowered you and freed you and made you feel like leaping and dancing.

If they don’t recognize that you matter, they are blind or deluded, so take their words about you like the words of people without eyes or the words of idiots. This is the wisdom of the second of “The Four Agreements” — Don’t take anything personally. Their words reflect their mentalities, not your worth, and refer to their illusions, not your truth. One of the hardest parts of this is realizing that you don’t matter to them as much as you hoped you did. That does not mean that you don’t truly matter, far less that you don’t matter at all. They do not define you — especially not if they can’t even see you.

If they tell you that you matter, but only if you join their cause or embrace their religion or sacrifice for their movement or adopt their views or die for your country or work hard to earn a living, gain status, become rich, drive the “economy”, conduct yourself like a good citizen — and so, ward off anarchy and chaos and the collapse of civilization as we know it (omg) — DO NOT LISTEN TO THEM. They see you as a tool and a fool, or even as a threat, and they’ve made you in large part believe it. But you are not a tool, and you are not a fool, and you are no threat except to defrauders and exploiters. So they must be blind or deluded, or they are thieves and profiteers. Treat their words like you would treat those of the blind or idiots or criminals.

If they tell you that you matter — in fact, that you’re stellar, awesome, rare, and beautiful — you just might have met people who truly see you, or you might have met those who just want to use you. Not to worry, though — it’s easy to tell the difference.

Those who truly see you will protest if you try to become dependent on them. The thought of the stellar, awesome, rare, beautifully precious person you are being subordinated to anything would be despicable and revolting to them.

Those who want to use you will do just the opposite: They will encourage your dependence on them, even demanding it, and will try to exploit your value. They might tell you that you are precious, but they don’t see you that way: They see you as valuable. There’s a difference. (Privately, they mock terms like “precious”.) They will claim that dependence isn’t just necessary and unavoidable, but that it’s your duty and your measure; that your submission and commitment to their programs for the “greater good” determine your worth. This is wholly alien to the core of you, the real person you are, what truly makes you matter; but they don’t care who you are. They only care about what they can make you do.

There are huge differences between those who recognize, honor, and appreciate you as precious and those who want to gain access to you to use you for profit; real differences you can see and feel unmistakably. This is why it takes so very many words and so very much ritualistic conditioning to distract you from what you see and feel, to create false images and narratives to replace what you already know, and ward you off from relying on yourself. Words and rituals are lightweight compared to knowledge from experience, knowledge you both see and feel. Verbosity and abundance of rote behavior indicate how weighty the truth they deny is.

Someone who truly sees you will simply say, “I see you. You matter. You are beautiful. In fact, you are stunning.” No reasons, no proof — they don’t need any, because seeing is its own reason and it forms the basis of proof. You don’t “matter because…” of this reason or that reason. Reasons, if they have any validity at all, describe the priceless person that you are. The reasons matter because you do, not the other way around.

There is no standard by which to prove a person’s worth, because before you can measure them against a standard, you had to change them from someone loved — inestimable, priceless, beyond value — into something used: a commodity; a resource; a property; a tool; a quantifiable unit. Artifacts of life and love and people can be quantified, but quantifying life or love or people reduces them to mere artifacts.

Reasoning, demonstrating, or proving the worth of a person you just degraded to a thing proves nothing at all, and the degradation was a dehumanizing lie. Whether about them or about you, if you accepted the lie, you rendered yourself either blind or deluded or both, supposedly unable to see through the ruse to the truth which you already knew and still know, hidden beneath the falsely degrading cover: Both they and you matter immeasurably.

Beware of those who come with reasons, demanding reasons — and don’t succumb to defrauders who deny you unless you give reasons and demonstrate proof of worth. That’s the same ploy Satan used in the wilderness to tempt Jesus, weakened with hunger; but he wouldn’t play the devil’s game. Defrauders actually have no question. They already know. Their interest in you proves that you matter and that they know it, which is why they got interested at all. They are just jockeying you into position to degrade you in order to exploit you.

Otherwise, reasons and proof are for the blind and deluded who can’t see what’s right in front of them. The fact that they need reasons proves that they don’t see. No wonder they want you to show them, because you do see. If they were honest, they’d admit their inability and ask for help. By pretending superiority, they make themselves hypocrites as well as liars.

These are the kinds of people your worth was subordinated to. You might have laid down for them, or it might have happened over your protests, or they might have thrown you under the bus despite your resisting tooth and nail. You even might have come to despair that it could ever be otherwise.

None of that matters.

One thing tells you that all that is false: You matter and you know it. Even if the whole universe and God himself claimed otherwise, you still matter and you know it. That’s all you need to pick yourself back up and get to work — and there’s plenty to do.

You’re important because you are. You matter because you do. You know this as certainly as you know anything at all — it’s just been blackwashed and buried. This is the rock you need to dig down to and start building from, the one that will enable your house to stand against the slamming of rain and floods and winds.

Clear away all the untrue dirt and shit that people have piled on you. It’s all false. Say so. But before you can hope to get them to stop believing the lies, you need to stop believing them. And stop waiting for a hero or a savior to dig you out. If one happens by, (and they will — you will meet angels along the way,) awesome! But no God or savior or hero or angel can answer questions that only you can answer, nor can they make your decisions for you:

• Do you believe yourself — or will you go to your grave distrusting you?
   
• Do you believe what you already know — or will you keep forcing it down to kneel and bow to those who don’t see you but want to use you?
   
• Will you be faithful to your truth, or keep letting yourself get injected over and over by lying rivals?
   
• Will you keep letting the bullshit of blind, deluded defrauders who can’t possibly know what they’re talking about bury your truth alive, and with it the inestimably beautiful person you are?
   
• Will you stand up honestly for who you are, or stay prone in false humility and modesty under the weight of crap claims about who you are “supposed” to be and what you are “supposed” to do to prove it?
   
• Will you finally raise your voice and speak the truth you already know, or just keep on parroting the bullshit of presumed authorities that are roaring precisely in order to drown out your voice and everyone else’s?
   
• And why would they need to rob your voice and drown you out if you are in fact wrong?
   

You can answer those questions. You can do something about this.

There is no authority in heaven or on Earth that can give you permission about something only you have authority over: yourself. Therefore, there is no authority that can prohibit you, either, except you.

Be honest. Speak the truth. Express the real you, not some phony version, regardless of the consequences you fear. Feared consequences are the chains of your enslavement to specters conjured by ravings of blind, idiotic, criminal minds. Stop serving their hysteria. Start living your reality. Be faithful to and delight in the stellar, awesome, rare, stunning person you are.

You know you are that, because you want to be that. You couldn’t want it at all if it wasn’t already a part of who you are.

The search for truth isn’t a search for something you don’t already have — it’s a search for ways to stop denying what you already know, and to stop listening to voices that freak you out into thinking that denial is a good idea.