Mattering
To matter, as a verb, to actually incarnate in matter by being thought of. Being thought of is what makes us real, makes us exist, makes us “matter,” as the verb of becoming material. To not matter, then, is to not exist, to not physically exist as matter. You might be a ball of energy, but what makes that ball of energy human is to matter. Otherwise matter is whatever—it doesn’t matter.
It is not that, if we don’t matter, it is like we don’t exist.
If we don’t matter, it means we don’t matter. We do not exist in matter. We have not been mattered. There might be something there, a concentration of energy into a mass of atoms, flesh, bones, etc, but none of that yet exists as a human.
Do I know that I matter? Do I matter to myself? How do we matter to ourselves? How do we self-incarnate? It would seem that this is learned, that we learn to matter by being mattered by an other, by an other mind. For most humans, this is first done by the mother. You come into material existence in her womb, and perhaps you come into human existence when you matter to her—when you matter in her mind. She matters you by your existence being recognized and mattering in her mind.
Therefore the locus of mattering is the mind. Consciousness. There is no unconscious mattering. There may be a need to matter that lies in a latent unconscious state, but there is no manifestation—no mattering—until there is a conscious mattering in the mind of an other, or eventually in the mind of the subject.
If you have never mattered to someone, and thereby have not actually mattered to yourself, you don’t exist—and your being knows this. That is a particular kind of suffering. To be floating in space, to be in a liminal space, like being in a dream where no one can see you. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, shouting, “No—don’t do that,” or “I’m here!” while no one turns their head. Your experience is that you do not exist.
We learn to matter by being mattered by another mind.
We become real by being held in another person’s mind.