Worm Food

Trying to come up with something to say tonight, I found my bag of tricks empty. Since i am in a writin frame of mind, I needed to do something. Dredge up a pearl. Glean some remnant. Wrestle a thought or two to the mat. But I can't.

The next best thing is to retreive a thought passed on in the past. What follows is a Thread started by "Buck Fitty" in the Dirt Rag forum, "Hangin Out"

http://www.dirtragmag.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7208

A rant about self-importance... from Buck Fitty
I'll start by stating the obvious. I'm not nearly as important as I'd like to think that I am. Neither are you.

There. I've said it.

The movie "the Incredibles" got me thinking about this- "if everyone is special, then no one is..." It's a good point. And my corollary is this- If everyone thinks they're important, then everyone is less likely to see anyone else as important.

Think about it- we rant on websites, just like I'm doing now, spewing forth our opinions about things we may not know anything about, we take out our fears of unimportance on others by inconveniencing or berating or just plain ignoring common courtesy. We puff up ourselves at the expense of others.

What does all this self-importance gain us? Do we gain an increased sense of self worth or an increased fear of obsolesence?

Is our oversized sense of self worth the reason we as a country are increasingly in debt, increasingly overworked and increasingly stressed out and (I know this is pretty subjective, but hear me out) unhappy?

What if, just as an experiment, we all looked in the mirror and said to ourselves every morning "I'm just not that important"- Not in a self loathing sense, but in the spirit of saying "I have permission to take it easy on myself".

And maybe if we all give ourselves permission to take it easy on ourselves, we'll find ourselves with more time to do the things we really love. Maybe by dropping our sense of self-importance, we'll get a chance to learn what is actually important in our lives. Maybe by giving ourselves permission to fail, we'll feel more like taking chances and create something truly incredible. Maybe by seeing everyone else as important, we'll try to be better to each other.

I don't know, I'm just talkin'...

My Reply
Jeez, let me wake up first
Interesting thread for sure. I just need some more coffee and a few more minutes to fix on my important contribution to this subject. Ah, coffee, nectar of my god. Thankfully there are not too many posts to re-read. Heavy thinking this early in the AM ..... Ah, coffee. Good, that other eye is starting to come around.

All the different twists on importance of self. And everyone making good points. I read the first one from Buck Fitty and I start nodding, "Yeah good point there". Often we are not as important as we think we are. But Buck Fitty, I wonder if you are not being a tad harsh with yourself and others. From where I sit I would say we are all important to someone. Our families, our communities, our employees/employers, but most of all to ourselves.

The fact that we may often puff ourselves up on occaision only points to our inability to see the importance of our lives. The fact that many of us beat ourselves up points to that same inability. Most of us do not live lives filled with obvious examples of importance. We work, go home, mow the lawn, feed the dogs, play with the kids, and go to sleep. The rhythms of our lives lull us into a mistaken idea that we do not matter. At least that's how I feel sometimes about my life.

During those odd moments when I am feeling introspective or I happen upon a thread somewhere in the internet ether, I will take a moment and ask if I am important. I worry about it for a few moments. Contemplate what others think. Just about the time I start feeling good about myself, I come to the realization that during the brief instant of time I am on this planet, I am important. But when weighed against the big picture of time, the Universe, and the Big Bang, I am just worm food waiting to happen.

Keep it 'tween the ditches,
CRUM