Mattering
Random Thoughts Column
By Michael Levy
Journal & Press
Today I want to wrestle with a question far more profound than “What’s for dinner?” and more alarming than realizing the overdue electric bill has been sunbathing on the kitchen counter for three days. This is the question that doesn’t just nag you. It is the heavyweight contender of human existence, “do I make a difference.”
A recent Wall Street Journal article put a sharper point on this question. It described a “retirement crisis no one warns you about” - not a crisis of money or health, but a crisis of “mattering.” Many retirees discover that what they miss most isn’t the paycheck. It’s the feeling of being seen, valued, useful, and needed. And like retirement, many other transitions in life can shake our sense of identity, usefulness, and belonging.
Work, for all its frustrations, gives us the entire package. Then one day after years of paid contribution, there’s a party with cake, usually coupled with a presentation of a plaque and a gift. And the next day… nothing! It’s not that you stopped mattering. It is that our culture is not actually designed to receive someone’s contribution once it is no longer tied to formal employment.
The WSJ article lands hardest because it highlights a truth we rarely discuss. Many of us carefully plan for our “wealthspan” and “healthspan,” yet almost no one plans for their “mattering span.” We prepare our finances and our bodies for the decades ahead, but we don’t prepare for our sense of usefulness, connection, or purpose.
Using retirees as an example yet again, we see this play out all the time. People retire expecting to volunteer or share their expertise and then discover that the world isn’t exactly lined up at the door waiting for them. Emails go unanswered. Offers to help go politely ignored. The applause stops, and the silence can feel personal.
And humans, like water, tend to flow downhill and along the easiest pathway available to them. When the familiar water channel disappears, we don’t stop being water. We simply look for the next easiest place to go. Our canals often arrive pre‑dug: the long morning with nothing on the calendar, the extra cup of coffee that turns into two, the sudden fascination to binge watch TV shows on Netflix, and the endless loop of “just checking” email, weather apps, or whatever the Facebook algorithm serves up next. None of these tasks are harmful; in fact, many are pleasantly mindless. But they fill the available space the way water fills a ditch - automatically, uncritically, without asking whether this is where we actually want to flow. The danger isn’t that we become idle; it’s that we drift into routines that keep us busy without helping us feel useful.
When we deliberately choose a new direction for our flow - one that gives our days shape, purpose, and a renewed sense of mattering - we begin to feel ourselves coming back into focus. And once we settle into the right place to flow after a life change, we realize that the momentum, direction, and capacity to make a difference were never lost; they were simply waiting for a new pathway that could carry them forward again.
That’s why everyone navigating any major life change needs a “mattering plan” - a thoughtful way to stay engaged, valued, and needed long after the familiar structures of work or routine disappear. The need doesn’t need to be coupled with retirement and might even surface: during a career shift, when the kids leave home, after a move to a new town, or while caught in a moment of introspection on an ordinary Tuesday when the coffee tastes weak and the day feels thinner than usual. You matter WHEN you place yourself where you CAN matter!
You simply need to place yourself where mattering is possible. Put yourself in a structure where your presence makes a difference, and you’ll naturally start doing things that matter again. Show up where you’re needed, even when the task isn’t glamorous, and offer a hand without waiting to be asked. Ask a question, share something you know, and tilt the world just a little, because when you do, even your smallest gestures begin to matter again.
And once you step into a place where your presence genuinely counts, you don’t have to manufacture meaning or go hunting for purpose. You simply fall into the things connected people naturally do by offering help, lifting others up, steadying the edges. It’s a soft, almost invisible kind of influence, the sort that never makes headlines but quietly changes the landscape all the same.
Purpose, it turns out, isn’t something we chase or capture. It does not have to be the result of any extraordinary effort. It’s the natural by‑product of being in the right place, doing the right thing, at the right time. And remember, if you don’t know where you are going in life, you will end up someplace else. And that, dear readers, is the kind of random thought that can make all the difference in the world.
Michael Levy is a retired government manager residing in Greenwich,NY, and is employed now as a technical consultant. He is also a Commercial Pilot and a Ham Radio operator.
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