Mattering

What would life be like if we did not want to matter? This question has been on my mind.

Many people choose small lives, rejecting the pursuit of power or fame. This is the burning ambition we conflate with mattering. But even the quietest life is built on a framework of necessity: to be missed, to be relied upon, to occupy a chair that would otherwise be empty. Mattering, then, is not ambition; it is being necessary to the algorithm of daily life. The true question is: What if we wished to remove ourselves from that algorithm entirely?

Could you love?

Can you consciously choose not to matter and circumvent the irony of making a choice that matters?

This is what I want to write next. I’ve just got to figure it out.