"How Important are You?"

From the day we are born till the day we die, we may struggle to understand the “what,” “where,” “when,” and “how to” of our importance to others. From the earliest age we strive to be important and special to those we love. The first moment comes when we perceive the face of our mother, and, as our vision stabilizes, we see and feel love and adoration for the first time. It “explodes” in our tiny brains giving us a feeling profound security that is permanently imprinted. When we lose it, we experience terror that is expressed in screams that bring us the comfort we feel in our mother’s arms, and gradually we internalize the trust that is the building block for giving ourselves the necessary feeling of safety and security when we need to navigate the “storms” of life. In the next stages, at about age three, we become explorers who can leave the safety of our mother’s arms until anxiety overcomes and we run back to the arms of love and reassurance. We feel loved and important.

There are many more developmental bridges we have to cross in our families, our friendships, our schools, our community. It is not an easy journey to build the confidence, self-worth and feeling of importance we need to finally be true to ourselves. If, for some reason, we don’t get across those bridges successfully we struggle to figure out what will give us the importance we need and relieve the pain of not feeling valued and important. At this point, we may begin a lifetime of trying to manufacture that importance we failed to internalize in our childhood.

There are many paths we may take to find the importance we need. We may seek the declaration of our importance by rebelling against authority or by controlling others and become a bully. It may manifest itself in how we dress, the grades we make, the sports we excel in, the career we choose, the money we make, the kind of person we marry, the car we drive, and even the accomplishments of our children. However, these things we think make us important never quite make it happen the way we non-consciously intended. It does not fill the void we feel. The emptiness is filled with superficial things and ideas that do not give back love. We feel and believe that we are not good enough and that what others have is better and would make us feel good and important if we had what they have. This is envy, and it “eats our souls.”

It is often in our desperation to feel worthwhile and important that we become “human-doings,” and we lose track of what it means to be “human-beings.” Our real importance is not found in how we perform and what we have. It is only in the context of relationship that we experience our real importance. When we allow ourselves to become vulnerable and form nurturing, safe relationships with others, we become far more important than we dreamed we could be. It is not based on what we do but on who we are. It is based on the love and understanding we give and the love and understanding we allow others to give us. We perceive our importance most clearly when we are vulnerable and realize how much others really do care about us. It is those times we feel truly understood and accepted “warts and all.” Then we KNOW we are important.