Why Relationships Matter

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Mattering involves both feeling valued and knowing that we add value to others.

Noticing something and following up on it can communicate that a person matters to us.

We become mattering agents by helping others feel seen, cared about, and able to contribute.

There are no spoilers below.

I recently finished Allen Levi's novel Theo of Golden, and I loved it. I have since been reflecting on it, on its characters, and on what Theo is doing with the people around him.

The engine of the story is Theo's project to buy portraits of the residents of Golden and return them to the people they depict, asking only for that person's story in exchange. What stayed with me was the sheer amount of attention Theo gives to ordinary people who do not seem used to receiving any. He notices them, gets curious, asks about their lives, and then he remembers, and finds ways to let them know that what they told him stuck.

Isaac Prilleltensky has described mattering as two experiences that have to occur together: feeling valued and adding value. We need to be acknowledged and appreciated by others, and to feel that we contribute something to their lives. Have one without the other, and something still feels off.

Theo's encounters supply both.

It starts with attention

Attention has been at the center of the research on mattering from the beginning. When Morris Rosenberg and B. Claire McCullough first described it, they framed it in terms of whether other........

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