You're Not Important

I think we all want to be important.

We want to be the MVP. We want to be the one who wins the award. We want to be the one someone thinks of when they are planning a party. We want to be the person people turn to when things go wrong, right, or in between. 

Even if we aren’t all Type A, we all want to matter.

All we see is our own reality, and as a result, we think that everything we do matters. Or at least, we hope that we matter.

We hope that we’ll be recognized for all that we are and are going to be.

The thing is…

No one can be the most important all the time.

Take the theater for example. While a solo is amazing to listen to, many of the pieces would particularly boring without the chorus. Without the dancers, there would be significantly less action. Yes, there is always a time and a place for a solo, but you cannot completely discredit the chorus.

And even if you were the very best.

You may not fit the role that the director is casting that day. It is not that you are not good enough or that they have something against you.

You just don’t fit that role.

This issue does not exist in careers and in theater and in the workplace. To some degree, we all would like to be the most important in a more intimate way.

We want to be important to everyone around us.

I am particularly bad about this. Whenever I enter a new group of people, I try to integrate myself in to the lives of everyone around me. Not only that, but I do everything in my power to make everyone like me. I make excessive jokes, talk myself down, and try to please everyone. All of the attention makes me feel important.

Truth is.

You can’t be important to everyone.

Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain,

and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, 

and he said to him, "All these I shall give to you, 

if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.”

~Matthew 4:9

I had an experience of being on top of the world. It was silly, but since I moved out of "Newton Stadium" as my family calls it, I had managed to make everyone like me, at least I thought so. I worked well, and I made friends fast. I did what was asked, and then some, for as many people as I could physically manage.

But I could not please everyone.

And one day I had to make the choice…what would I want?

The first choice was one that could potentially bring a lot of joy to people. I could maintain my place of “power” in the little world I had made for myself, and I knew that if I just made that decision that I would continue to be the lead role.

It was a decision that I knew would go against my morals.

It was a choice that could change who I was as a person.

The second choice was to turn away, to move forward as I normally would. I knew that if I took this path that I would lose my status. I would lose friends, and I would be mocked for what I chose to do.

It was a decision that would maintain my morals.

It was a choice that ultimately make me less important.

In the end, I chose the latter. While I know that it was the right choice, I would be lying if I said that I don’t look back on that day and think of what I could have done to change things. I think of all the friendships, all of the status, all of the connections that I lost because of that decision. Because I did the right thing, I suddenly became less important to many people.

I knew that I no longer fit the role, and yet I tried to fix everything.

Not because I wanted to clear the air.

Because I wanted to be important.

I do not regret the decision that I made. While I may have lost quite a bit, I gained so much more by being true to who I am as a person. I had to remind myself over and over that I did the right thing, but as I grew in myself, I saw just how important it was for me to be myself, not who everyone else wanted me to be.

Being important does not matter in the grand scheme of things.

I saw that someone else had taken the place I once stood in. It hurt that they were considered more important than I ever had been. Yet as I looked at them, playing the role I thought I wanted so badly, I realized that I could never have been right for that role, not when they were able to play the part.

The part I played will never be acknowledged.

And I am ok with that.

Maybe I did not play the main role, but I played a role in the lives of those around me long enough for the one who took my place to shine brighter than I could have ever dreamed.

While we may wish to make everyone happy, to be the most important person in the room, we will never be able to captivate each soul. That does not matter though, because you are already important.

You may not be important to everyone you meet but…

You are important to the One who made you.

God made each one of us specially, with a unique ability to love and live with those around us. Some of us are able to love by words, others by physical affection, and still others by random acts of kindness. The way that we love and live may fit one life, but it may not fit within another life.

And that’s ok.

Because all love belongs to God, and He will always see you as important.

"I will come to you in the silence

I will lift you from all your fear

You will hear My voice

I claim you as My choice

Be still, and know I am near"

You Are Mine, David Haas

Sometimes we do not see God’s love in our lives. I know that I have yelled at Him in prayer numerous times because I was frustrated with how my life did not seem to fit with anyone else’s life.

Especially when practicing my faith leaves me alone and misunderstood.

“If what You say is right, then why am I alone?” I would ask Him.

After all, by trying to live out the morals given to me by my faith and my family have left me sitting alone on the weekends, unimportant to so many others. Mentioning my faith blackballs me in my field. Being Christian is “taboo,” and no one seems to think that I can really live like this for long. They say it’s childish to keep on living like this.

They laugh.

They leave.

They take more people with them.

At first I was bothered by this, and I looked back at the choice I made that led me to where I am today. And as I looked back, I noticed all of the little moments that came afterwards, moments that reminded me just how much I would have lost had I not chosen to be true to myself.

I made precious friends who taught me how to love those who did not agree with me.

I drew closer to the family that always loved me, and will always see me as important.

Most importantly, because I did not go against myself, against what my God had given me, I was able to find myself. I found the happy little girl who could sit in the basement lab and draw pictures of proteins as swing sets and dance down the hallways when no one was looking. 

I found a girl who could love with all of her heart, not because she was a silly child, but because she could believe in authentic love.

All I needed was to remember that I was important to God and to my family.

“To cultivate acquaintence with many whom I meet

To cherish friendship with but a chosen few, and to study the perfecting of those friendships.”

~Alpha Gamma Delta Purpose

In time, I found people who truly saw me, and they saw me as important. It was not easy, and I looked back at my “popular” self often. Yet as I drew closer to those who truly loved me, I found God amongst them, and with God in my midst, I found myself.

I feel more important now with my cherished few than I ever did with the crowds I tried to please.

“A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter;

he who finds one finds a treasure”

~Sirach 6:14