For When You Think Your Existence Doesn’t Matter

This month we’re looking back on 2015 and sharing the most popular blog posts from this year. You can see the top ten blog posts here. 

Remember that even though your existence may not matter to you, it is still the reason someone else exists. You can take the second-to-last “s” out of “exists” and wish upon every star and coin to disappear, but someone else somewhere in the universe is wishing you would appear and will continue to do so for a long time.

If the cloud of dust and gas that created the Big Bang had been missing even one tiny particle, there would have been no Big Bang. Therefore, there would have been no universe.

You are made of all these particles. They are a part of you. And you are just as important as each and every single one of them. You made the universe. It wouldn’t be here without you.

The body falls into a routine of being alive. And your body always returns to you. You’ll always have it no matter where you go, no matter how hard your skin is to live in. And your body wants you to live. It wants you to exist; your immune system is a prime example.

No matter how badly you want to click your heels together like Dorothy and evaporate instantly, to end your own existence, your own body is doing everything it can to protect you every second that you continue to breathe.

For as long as you choose to keep inhaling and exhaling, your body will choose to take care of you. It will carry you through the heartbreak. It will eliminate the pathogens and put up preventative barriers to leave you safe, leave you calm, leave you alive.

And eventually you will learn to love the body that loves you back, for it’s the only thing that’s been with you your whole life. It is the only constant. It’s glad you exist.

Remember that everything changes. The human ear evolved from pieces of the jawbone, and maybe that’s why it’s advised to listen before you speak. Pangaea eventually broke apart 100 million years after it formed, and every year the glaciers melt just a little bit further. The seas wear down the rocks and coral until their rough edges turn smooth.

But the body stays. The body stays. It changes too – through growth spurts and the advancement of age – but the body always stays the body, no matter what shape or form it ends up taking on. It will always be there for you, as long as your lifelines remain intact. So let your body stay, even when you wish it would go.

And please know – your existence does matter. Even if you think the only existence it affects is your own, remember that it really affects thousands and thousands of other existences. There are days when a lonely stranger on the street is just having a rotten day; maybe she spilled her coffee and was late to work; maybe his dog died or his significant other recently broke up with him. And then they make eye contact with you, however accidental, and just for a brief second, they’re reminded that they are still human. No matter how alien or empty they feel, your eyes fill them.

And maybe you mistakenly brushed a stranger’s hand on your way past. It’s just a glance of fingers, but perhaps, for the first time in her entire life, she felt loved, even though you were a stranger too.

Other people can fall in love with you without even knowing you.

You can save other people without even meeting them.

You are made of particles and water and blood filled with cells that want nothing more than to keep you safe.

Your existence matters to others; it matters to your blood, it matters to earth and complete strangers, and it matters to the person who looks back at you in the mirror every day.

Your existence matters.

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