On my favorite paradox.

My favorite paradox to contemplate is:

Everything matters and nothing matters.

I waver significantly on this for small matters and big. Given this conundrum has been on constant rotation for years, the best answer I’ve landed on is: you choose what matters. Maybe its true that everything matters for you during your own personal lifespan and maybe your kids, (if you choose to have them), and MAYBE your grandkids. This suggests your influence even reaches THAT far.

However, things only matter significantly if what you are doing impacts YOU or someone else within your close-knit bubble in a concrete way. Sometimes the dominant impact made is by means of something else (ie: you don’t like your job but it gives you the amount of money you need to feel comfortable) In this case, maybe your job doesn’t feel like it matters in the existential “purpose” way but it does matter in a present financial stability way. The question of what matters is subjective and is a staggeringly broad scale. I often see situations and details as exuding importance. I picture they will impact many people, akin to the butterfly effect, but it’s rarely that big of a scope.

When faced with mundane tasks that seem to imply nothing really matters, I often have a strong desire to push it aside because if it’s not fun or going to enhance my perception of the meaning of life then I want no part of it! Unfortunately, menial tasks sustaining our world that are neither fun or meaningful happens to be most of them.

One way to combat this confusing query is to pull your energy to the present moment and ask yourself these two questions:

What would I be doing otherwise?

How does this task impact my mental state over time?

Like vacuuming the house- it feels quite meaningless. How is this going to change or influence the world? The task itself doesn’t, but the impact perpetuates it. If I vacuum the house, I will feel better and a better me can positively impact the world we live in as I interact with others. Everything you do matters in some way and nothing matters to the whole world on a large scale so life is about YOUR little life and that’s the difference. You are the curator of YOUR life, YOUR speck and those people within it. 

The word arbitrary comes to mind when I think of this concept. 

So what matters is what you prescribe meaning to. And the same goes for what doesn’t matter. 

Initially when you hear either everything matters or nothing matters it is attributed to the perspective of others or God or a higher power you believe in. Everything matters when we think of it as affecting others or being attributed to God or the connected universe. Also, nothing matters if it’s not going to be felt by others or be attributable to gods will or connected to a higher powers purpose for your life.

That can leave you frustrated and asking the question, well who am I, if not a piece necessary to completing a grand puzzle of connecting to others or the universe? Who am I by myself?

Then THIS question leads to the determination that we are never alone and that yes, in fact, there is a reason we are here after all, if only for one that you create. So, in this paradox, the winner is everything matters but the scale of the amount it matters is the variable.

Some things matter much much less and some things matter a ton.

Vacuuming the house to a person who is unaffected by a dirty house matters a small amount. To the person who would be bothered by a dirty house, it means a ton more because they and then others are highly affected by the result.

So how can we ever feel confident in preaching that nothing matters when it’s pretty logical to come up with a chain of events of impact for everything?

People WANT nothing to matter to take the pressure off of them so they can do it at the time they don’t feel like doing it. It’s like writing a paper in college. People say they are just B.S.-ing the whole paper but I am convinced that’s not really true. They are just saying that as a ploy to feel relaxed while writing. If they are just rattling off their thoughts while including citations from research papers, then guess what? You’ve just written a fully valid paper sans pressure.

If we deduced that everything does in fact matter, we might feel way too much pressure and go into paralysis mode. “Nothing matters” might be a matter of survival. It helps you prioritize your life. You have to choose just a few tasks within the infinite amount of choices.

Only you know yourself fully. Use yourself and everything you are to choose the tasks and lifestyles that perpetuate you being you.

You don’t have that long to be yourself anyway. My biggest frustration is always thinking about how many of the tasks I have to do are tasks that are mundane and don’t align with my priorities. They are mundane to me because I don’t often agree with this worlds priorities. But here we are. I’ve learned that I feel much better when I accept it and then operate from our current reality as best I can. If you are familiar with the method of meeting people where they are, I just meet Earth where IT is. Then, tasks and lifestyles are much easier to choose.

If I lived on another planet with different expectations and values, I’m sure my choices would change. However, I am the curator of my life on this one, so I suppose I will continue to vacuum.