Eons ago, in my early twenties, I moved into my own apartment for the first time, a small studio on Q street NW in Washington DC. It was barely furnished – besides the little kitchen nook I had an eating table and a mattress on the floor, a floor lamp and some kind of chair.
I had also bought some fabric that I liked, thinking to brighten up the place a bit with a little color by making curtains; but I hadn’t been able to get around to sewing in a hem and hanging them up. I kept putting it off. Having gotten the basic furnishings, the curtains felt like a non-necessity, especially since I lived on a high floor and no one could see into my apartment.
The curtains weren’t the actual reason I decided to go into therapy, but I’d say they were a representation of how I was feeling at the time - stuck and unable to move forward in my life.
So there I was, sitting in the therapist’s office for the first time, and I remember seeing this quote, printed and framed and sitting on a table next to my chair:
I had never encountered those words before, and they blew my mind.
I matter! Moi! What a discovery, what a challenge and what a relief that I could permit myself to be the deliberate conscious center of my own attention. My MO of upbringing – my modus operandi, my way of doing things, my approach to the world – had been directed towards pleasing others. These words were a warning and a promise that if I don’t take care of myself, look after my own needs and desires, then no one else will. It was a challenge and a relief and a discovery to consider the truth that I matter.
And if not now, when
What was I waiting for? I was in my twenties after all, life was passing me by! We are mortal, and anything can happen.
With some therapy, I got those curtains hung up.
AND I PICKED UP A VALUABLE SMATTERING OF MATTERING: I MATTER.
What I didn’t learn for many years is that these words that had affected me so deeply were not a modern hey-it’s-the-sixties rallying cry on behalf of one’s ego. It was so much more, and way older. And, it was incomplete.
The original words come from an ancient source of rabbinic commentary called the Mishna, specifically from Pirkei Avot, which is translated as “The Ethics of the Fathers” (literal translation is “the Chapters of the Fathers”). Pirkei Avot contains a lot of wisdom, including the following from chapter 1 verse 14:
הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי.
וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי.
וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי:
Wait - there are three statements, not two!
The middle line had been omitted from the therapist’s desktop version.
And if I am only for myself, what am I?
ANOTHER SMATTERING OF MATTERING – ACKNOWLEDGE THE MATTERING OF OTHERS
My mattering, my humanity is incomplete without considering the other.
ONE MORE SMATTERING OF MATTERING: YES, AND
Acknowledge and nurture self-worth and self-care, AND recognize the necessary connections with others. Both matter. Hold two seemingly contradictory directives at the same time.
Or not so contradictory.
We are individually and we are collectively a part of humanity. With the planet in peril, democracy under threat, hate and violence increasingly normalized -
If not now, when.
Beautifully written Sandy, and so timely. No idea these words were so old!
Lindi