Mattering Map

I’m well into midlife. People perceive me as strong, competent, and independent. I’ve overcome struggles and difficulties; I’ve studied feminism; I’ve traveled on my own (to Canada, but still, I was alone; and for a few months in college I went to school in England); I work with people every day to become stronger internally and more able to interact with the world around them in ways that bring success, joy and accomplishment, even peaceful contentment.

Yet when faced with a 3 ½ hour drive by myself, to the other end of the state, I noticed a deep-rooted fear, an uncertainty, really, about just how powerful I am. How can I be at this point in my career and my life, yet when confronted with a form of existential isolation (let’s be clear – if something happens on the road, I’m only as isolated as a person with a cell phone and a current AAA membership card can be), I feel the smallness of my own single life. I will drive over a mountain range, along and over a river, and through flat lands of tumbleweed, now with the added vista of alien invasion-like wind turbines. Really, I’m not alone.

But I am. All the friends, my family, even my trusty car and a lovely new sectional sofa, don’t really separate me from the truth of my mortality, my coming in and going out of this life alone, and the way I prefer to think that I matter. Not just to me, but to the people around me, and, in my grandiose moments, to the world. I like to think I’ve made a difference, that my single soul careening down the highway at 77 mph (the most I’ll risk in a 70 mph zone) would show up on a greater mattering map. But it’s just as likely that my isolation anxiety reflects a larger truth – I am precariously perched in this life, one moment can lead to it’s end or an unforeseen change from which everything after will be altered. I have no control, despite how I clamor for it. I won’t be noted in a history book and eventually all the people who know me will themselves be gone. I matter greatly to a small, cherished group of people, and I matter somewhat to a slightly larger circle. Odd to confront how much I matter to myself, how central I am to every perception, thought, sensory experience even when I think I’m involved with others.