This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Do I Matter? The Mattering Instinct with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein | 387

Starting point is 00:00:00 If you love the show, the best way to keep it going is simple. Share it, rate it, and support the sponsors who support us. I am Nicole Khalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast. We're together. We're redefining what it means, what it looks and feels like to be doing women's work in the world today. Not as a title or a role, but as a lived experience. One where you get to decide what matters, what doesn't, and what's worth your time and energy. And that word matters is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.

Starting point is 00:00:41 Because if you zoom way out, it's easy to argue that most of us don't matter all that much. We're one human among billions, a blip in history, unlikely to be remembered past a few generations. In that context, the pressure we put on ourselves to be exceptional, unforgettable, or permanently impactful, can feel kind of absurd. And yet, zoom back in. to the people we work with, the relationships we're in, the humans we raise, the choices we make, the communities we impact. In that context, we matter with absolution. We shape lives. We change outcomes. We influence the future in ways that are both obvious and invisible. Both things are true at the same time. And I don't know about you, but living inside that paradox messes with my head a little bit.

Starting point is 00:01:29 Because at our core, alongside safety and connection, we don't just want to matter. We need to. We're wired to. It's one of our most fundamental human drives, which raises some uncomfortable questions. If this instinct is universal, why does it feel so scarce? Why does our desire to matter so often turn into comparison, competition, and conflict? And why does something so deeply human, managed to both drive us forward and pull us apart. That's exactly where we're going today, into the deep end with somebody who has spent decades thinking, writing, and teaching about the very things that most of us feel, but rarely articulate. Our guest is Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, award-winning philosopher and author of 10 acclaimed books of fiction and non-fiction,

Starting point is 00:02:22 including her newest book, The Mattering Instinct, How Our Deepest Lourgreens, How Our Deepest Lourner, drives us and divides us. Her work explores why the need to matter may be even more fundamental than the need to be happy and how understanding that instinct might change how we see ourselves and each other. Rebecca, I'm super glad that you're here. Thank you for joining us. And I want to start with this concept that you believe that needing to matter is even more fundamental than the need to be happy. Why do you think that is and why have we gotten it so backwards? Yeah. It depends what you mean by happy.

Starting point is 00:03:02 No matter what you mean, I still think that the need to matter, this longing to matter, is more important to us than happiness. But there's happiness as that emotion that comes and goes. And like all emotions, it's a response to the circumstances we find ourselves. And then the emotions are there because they have cognitive content. they're telling us something, that feeling of anger or dislike that cause us to either fight back or draw away is a response and it's wired to our actions. And so true with happiness. Happiness is an emotion and we can't live for that emotion. That's not the role of the emotions.

Starting point is 00:03:45 That's not why they evolved. There's another notion, which is the notion of the ancient Greeks called it eudaimonia. And it sort of means flourishing, that sense, it's a long-range view of your life where you feel this is going pretty well. It's a good life. Of course, it could be better. I could compare it to other lives. But all in all, I wouldn't trade it for another life. And this is a very important feeling, this feeling of flourishing, subjective well-being. But I would say that the longing to matter is very tied in with that second form of happiness. Because one of the things that goes into our assessment of how well we're living our lives is how well we're meeting this longing to matter, to live a life that we can justify to ourselves. It's a very philosophical longing that we have. It takes us out of the immediate present, into the past, into the future, into our goals. And there is where the longing to matter does very much feature. It's interesting as you're talking. You're right, the emotion of happiness is temporary and fleeting because it's emotion.

Starting point is 00:05:05 All emotions ebb and flow and all of that. Whereas this idea that we matter feels more long-term and sustainable, contentment popped into my head when you were describing that second version of happiness. And I think the feeling that we're here for a purpose or a reason or the fact that we were here made some sort of difference, I think leads to that feeling of happiness. And I also think it's harder to find that feeling of happiness if you don't feel like you matter.

Starting point is 00:05:37 So they do seem linked to me. Yeah, they are linked, yeah. To go after that happiness, which comes in many gradations, you know, when I solve a difficult problem, I get the surge, something in my brain. It's a serotonin. It's a neuronal transmitters, you know, serotonin and these things. It's not meant to last. You can't live for that, as wonderful as it feels. But this more reflective, projecting, and very abstract kind of emotion, because you're sort of comparing this life counterfactually with how your life might have been, you know. The thing that I have found that most interesting to me, that has kept me going over the past decades of speaking to people about this with no intention of ever writing a book.

Starting point is 00:06:25 But just because it leads to such interesting conversations, it's the great diversity we bring to bear. We share this longing. But yet, it is the way we try to respond to it to a piece. And it can never be, it's a longing because it's a longing because it's a longing. because it's always there. We always know that doubt is always there. Am I doing it right? And your introduction was so wonderful because, yeah, you know, compared to the cosmos and to long history, yeah, of course, I don't matter. Although some people think they do, right? And, you know, some people, in fact, you know, the religious, the spiritual answer might lead you to think that,

Starting point is 00:07:06 yeah, in some sense, you cosmically matter. You were created by the transcendent being. And that's one of the approaches, you know, the religious, the spiritual. But there are secular approaches as well, but it's this diversity that we bring to bear in this question. And our lives are at stake here. We kind of stake our lives on it, how we decide to live out a life that we can justify in our own eyes. And so it can brew among us very deep divisions, you know, not just the religious, secular, but all sorts of divisions, deeply irresolvable controversies. The mannering map, I call it, is where our deepest controversies are played out. It's funny as you were talking. I feel like this plays out all around us. I think you're right. We all have our fears and our doubts

Starting point is 00:08:01 and are wondering around do we matter, how much do we matter, how do we matter? And then I also think there is a tendency to, we see people telling each other how to matter. And then that can be very, as you said, it's a completely diverse experience. How I matter in my life, how I choose to justify my existence might be different than you or the next person or the next person. And because these fears and doubts exist, I think sometimes when somebody's version is different, we try to double down on our own and fight for our own. And that's where we're creating this division and this, I'm right and you're wrong

Starting point is 00:08:44 and I matter and you don't or I matter more because of X, Y, and Z. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fascinate. Okay, I have so many questions around that, but before I move us forward, I have to ask, because I know you went to the etymology

Starting point is 00:08:58 of the word matter, and you looked at the root of this word, and I am wildly fascinated about that. What does it mean to matter? You know, we use it as both a noun and a verb. As a noun, matter is the stuff of the universe. It's what physicists study, right? But the verb, to matter, we use both to apply to what matters and who matters.

Starting point is 00:09:22 Who matters really matters to us because we all want to be among those who matter. But it means basically to be deserving of attention, which is, again, it's a complicated notion because deserving is what we philosophers call it's a normative notion. It brings norms of justification into it to be deserving according to what norms. Who's judging here? What are the right norms for judging? Who's deserving of attention? What I think we are, I mean, my fast definition of our species is we are creatures of matter

Starting point is 00:09:57 who long to matter. So that verb is both noun and verb gets to the very core of all of us, of all of us from the most powerful people who are dictating how the world is turning out to the most humble among us, to be human, it's too long to matter, you know, to take your life seriously and to want to justify all the attention that you have to pay to yourselves simply to pursue a human life. So this word, matter. Where does it come from? And it's such an interesting story. So it goes all the way back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. And he was the one who introduced this idea that what things are are both form imposed on stuff. You know, there's just this

Starting point is 00:10:51 gross stuff. And then there were all the characteristics that get imposed on it. And we get, you know, all the different varieties of physical things. And there was no word for stuff, for just general compositional stuff. And so he used the word, the ancient Greek word for wood, highly, and for just this notion of passive receptivity without any characteristics of its own, just stuff that's taking up space, but with no characteristics. Well, the Latin translators of Aristotle, because he became the philosopher, to study philosophy was to study Aristotle. So his Latin translators, they wanted a word, and they wanted a word, and they didn't want to use the word wood, but they wanted to capture this idea of passive receptivity with

Starting point is 00:11:41 no activity involved. And they used the word materia, deriving it from the word for mother, matter. When we talk of our alma mater, we're talking about our nurturing mother. Mater is how you say mother in Greek. And because they, following Aristotle, thought that women, have no role to play in the act of conception other than pure receptivity, because according to them following Aristotle, women are simply people who fail to become men. So I have lots of thoughts around that, but okay. So to me, this is mind-blowing as a woman, as a woman philosopher, who studied physics. that was my first course of study, that the very word for the stuff of the universe comes from this

Starting point is 00:12:40 false belief about women, the belief in fact that women matter less than men is built into the very word we use for the stuff of the universe and what it is to be deserving of attention, you know, the verb. So just interesting. It's just for me it's mind-blowing. Okay, I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole and turn this into an opinion piece, but I want to circle back on your book. You talk about mattering projects. What is that and how can we do that in our own lives? Yeah. Okay. So, you know, Freud had said that the two cornerstones of humaneness is love and work. And I would amend that to connectedness. There are various ways of forming connections, not all of them are love, but connectedness is extremely important. And without that, there is no

Starting point is 00:13:36 flourishing because we are lonely. We need people in our lives who will pay us attention whether we deserve it or not. But then there is our longing to matter and what we do to try to appease it, to try so that we can get on with our lives. And almost everybody I've ever spoken to, Even, I have a summer house on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and I hang out a lot with the surfer dudes there who are very philosophical surfer dudes. I have tremendous confidence. So the surfer dudes, they, when I talk about, you know, the longing to matter and what is their mannering project, it's they, they have an answer to it. And, you know, people who, women who devote themselves to, to their families, this, you know, the flourishing of their families is their mannering project. or there are religious people to serve their God, you know, as they think God wants to be served, you know, is there a mattering project? The project, we have many projects, cleaning out my attic is one of my projects, but writing my books, trying to figure out this question, trying to leave some deeper understanding into human nature.

Starting point is 00:14:49 This is my mattering project. This is why I teach, why I write. But we all have these sort of long-range projects. They're sort of never really finished because they are really what make us engaged with our life. And people who don't have this, people who don't have connections, deep intimate connections, feel loneliness, people who don't have this kind of loosely defined project, mattering project, they also suffer. In the extreme, they suffer from depression. And the most characteristic statement of depression is, I don't matter. I might as well not have shown up for my life for all the difference I make, you know.

Starting point is 00:15:33 And so this too, so I would, that's what going back to Freud's love and work, well, for Freud, that's so interesting. For Freud, clearly it was his work. It was his psychoanalytic work. That was his mattering project. That's not meant to be the mattering project of all of us. Work is not for all of us, but for many of us, certainly for me, yes. Every January, women feel pressure to fix themselves, be smaller, be better, be disciplined. Why isn't more pleasure ever the goal?

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Starting point is 00:17:16 Take control of your well-being and book an assessment. today. Medcan, live well for life. Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. And correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like we can and probably will have multiple mattering projects. So I consider this podcast, one of my mattering projects. I also consider my family. You know, we probably have many versions of this in our life. Is that fair to say? Absolutely. But actually a lot of people, if you define, and that's one of the things I love to do in these deep dive conversations that I've been having with people over the last 40 years, is if you define it broadly enough, you will find, you know, there's the connectedness. So yeah, you know, I have family. I have children. I have grandchildren. Yes. You know, that this is. And my flourishing, my sense of flourishing is certainly dependent on all of that going well. But there's this other thing too. Right? This something where I feel that I'm justifying all of the attention that I have to give to myself by giving something more, you know, that there is something that I am giving. But that's not how it is for everybody. And for many people, there's a collapse between what they need for cogniziveness and their mattering project. But I'm very interested when there is a duality. Right. As you were talking, the thought came into my head that I think that our life in the universe gives us hints. Like I think of breadcrumbs throughout the course of our life or through lines about our mattering project. There might be themes. Or if you think about all the ways you feel you matter or all the ways you're deserving of attention, there may be some commonalities that give you some hints or some direction in,

Starting point is 00:19:15 what this overarching mattering project might be. Fair or not fair? Oh, completely. And that is why it's just so interesting to, you know, how people always feel like they, you know, they have a, or a lot of people have, I have a book in me, you know, just to have lived my life,

Starting point is 00:19:34 if I could express it. There's a book there. There's a story there. There's a beginning and a middle and, you know, and we'd like to push. that off, but yes. And so, you know, and I think you're right that there is, there are themes that come deep out of our own individuality. You know, the question, the meaning of life has always just put me off because as diverse as we are, a truly ineradicable and radical kind of diversity. We bring that

Starting point is 00:20:06 diversity to bear in trying to answer this longing to matter. And as you pointed out before, there's a great inclination to try to proselytize, to generalize, to universalize one's own way of dealing with this deep existential longing. And I talk about that a great deal in the book because it can lead to really ugly divisions between us. Yeah. It's so important to see what we share. Yeah. And that's where I really wanted to go next is the inclination to compare, to judge, to compete, I think can and does come up here. So my first question is how do we identify our own ways of mattering, our own mattering projects without judging other people's own ways of mattering and mattering projects? And also without like taking them

Starting point is 00:21:08 on. I think sometimes we think the way we matter is by doing it the way someone else is doing it. as opposed to figuring out our own way. So how do we navigate through this connectedly, right? So we still are leveraging other people, but without comparing, competing, that type of thing. And one thing I do want to point out, when I see deserving of attention, this deep existential longing that we have,

Starting point is 00:21:35 the attention of which we want to prove ourselves deserving is our own. So it's not necessarily, it's not like, oh, you know, I'm going to be famous, as a celebrity, I'll matter to loads and loads of people, therefore I will matter. A lot of people that is the way they try to appease this existential longing. But I think it's something so deep and interesting and beautiful about humans, about all of us, that we are actually trying to justify ourselves to ourselves.

Starting point is 00:22:08 That's very deep. And I think it's what we're gesturing towards. when we talk about the intrinsic dignity of human life, this, that we need a project to convince ourselves we're deserving of all the attention that we have to give ourselves. So one thing that I do, and of course, you know, we're living in a time where it's very, very easy, we're so polarized, it's so easy to feel horrified

Starting point is 00:22:31 by things we see displayed. And whichever side you're on, you're going to be horrified with people on the other side. And it is, to me, you know, it's almost a practice. It's almost like a Buddhist practice that I go through to try to understand the people who are, you know, who are upsetting me and who I think are doing damage in the world to see the deep humanness in them, that the longing, the doubts, the just being, the vulnerability, the just being vulnerable to all of this. that is human. And then, you know, and some people I have found really think of mattering competitively. They are very competitive people.

Starting point is 00:23:20 If you give them psychological tests, the test competitiveness, they are hyper-competitive. And what they mean by mattering is matter, they think of mattering in zero-sum terms. Like it's a pie. You know, if that person gets a big piece of it, there's less of it for me. And there are a whole political movements right now that are sort of based on this, you know, give us back our mattering. These people are taking it away from us. You know, the whole groups of people that are targeted is taking away the mattering that is rightfully ours. However, you define that, you know, and they're good. So, you know, and this is, this is a huge problem, you know, and some people simply are extremely competitive, but most of us are not. If I, if I give these tests for, for competitiveness, most of us fall in between. And so how do we, first of all, I think we should realize that the person that we really have to convince that we're deserving of attention is ourselves, nobody else, really.

Starting point is 00:24:23 And not our authorities either, you know, not our parents, not our teachers. We have to look deep into ourselves and see, I love what you said, you know, when some, there are breadcrumbs that the universe is giving us. There were sparks that made us feel more alive. There are things we do that make us feel, yeah, you know, I'm really in gear here. I'm ready to go for us. I can't wait to wake up tomorrow morning to get back to this. These are the kinds of reactions, deeply individual that we're looking for, and certain communities that we feel nurture that.

Starting point is 00:25:00 Certain communities that take it away. Go where that feeling is being nurtured. And the other thing that I think is always to keep in mind, and I'm always interested in morality and ethics, is that some things can make us feel very good about ourselves, but at the expense of others. And that is, you know, if there is anything that I think that I can prove philosophically, it is to the extent that any of us really intrinsically matters, every other human matters to that same extent, that that is a basic, that's a guardrail. And it can show you where, even though something's feeling very, very good to you, you might be morally going in the wrong direction. And that's something to watch out for very seriously. Yeah, especially again, if we're justifying to ourselves. If we go against our own integrity or what we ultimately value or feel is right or wrong, you know, to prove something ultimately that we're going to carry.

Starting point is 00:26:05 that with and for ourselves. Everything you just said, Rebecca, is so powerful. Like my inner knowing knows it's hearing something it needs to hear. It's really incredible. I want to just reiterate what I heard is this is an inside out proposition. And so often we have been taught mattering as an outside in. If I can make enough money or have enough followers or be as productive or change the world, then I'll matter. And this idea that ultimately who we need to matter to is ourselves might be the most powerful thing I've ever heard on this show. So thank you for that. Then my question goes to, and I think we all, everybody of any gender has some version of this, but I think we as women have often been taught or society is kind of,

Starting point is 00:27:04 supported this notion that in order for us to matter, we need to be useful, we need to be nurturing, we need to be self-sacrificing, we need to be productive. Any tips for how we can not take our internal mattering so far that it becomes something it's not meant to become? Yeah, such a good question. And one of the, you know, things that's so interesting to me as a woman is how often this This question is sort of that the woman asks it, people think it matters that she's a woman, like what, that her sex or gender or, you know, both, that that would determine the answer. You know, again, I'm going back to Freud. I don't know. He's my whipping boy today. I don't know why.

Starting point is 00:27:54 But, you know, he had said the great question that has never been answered, despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul is what do women want? And it's like, well, we don't want as women. We want what people want, what it is to be human. We want connectedness, so we won't be alone in this world. And we want to do something to justify our own attention to ourselves, you know. And that might have something to do with the traditional, roles of woman had, but it might not. And there's a very famous philosopher and psychologist, William James. In fact, I work at Harvard at

Starting point is 00:28:39 William James Hall. I mean, so he was a Harvard professor, a very important figure. And he suffered from a long debilitating period of depression, multi-talented, too many talents. He didn't know how to define his mavering project. And so he just couldn't get on with his life. He was lay in bed for months and a time, thinking of suicide. That's how bad it was. But then he decided, nope, he's just going to get on that horse and he's going to ride it. And he became a very influential thinker. Somebody's had enormous influence. And he had a sister, a younger sister. Now, these were the Victorian people. They were, you know, a 19th century family. His sister was named Alice James. We found out many years later in the 1970s when her journal was published, she had the same genius. She had a

Starting point is 00:29:28 had the same temperament. She had the same inclinations and interests. She had no place to put it. And she turned into a, her mannering project was to be an invalid. You know, they called it hysteria. Nobody could diagnose it. And when she finally, in her early 40s, so tragic so seven, she finally got breast cancer, she was happy because now she had a diagnosable disease and she could just, you know, retreat to her bedroom and die. So it's almost like a controlled experiment there, you know. And same kind of temperament, different genders. She needed that great big, wide world of ideas that he was able to explore.

Starting point is 00:30:10 We all need different things. There's no one answer fits all. There's certainly no one answer fits all women. Yeah. And isn't that beautiful? You know, I often say at the start of the show, the definition of woman's work is whatever feels true and real and right for you, you are the decider.

Starting point is 00:30:30 And that feels so aligned with what you're saying and true to my experiences, there is no one way to do this. And we are here as who we are and that is the quest, isn't it, to figure out for ourselves how to be ourselves. how to be here in the most creative, pro-life way that we can do it, you know, and not at the expense of other people's longing to matter, which matters. I mean, all of them matter. It's a sad thing in our species

Starting point is 00:31:05 that one half of the population was, for millennia, cut off from the full potential of being human and giving back in the way that we would like to give back in order to feel that we truly matter. There is no one way for any human being, however you define us, including by our sex and gender. One last question, Rebecca. What would you say if somebody is listening in and asking the question, do I matter? You do. You do. Every human being matters. There's not just. so much that one can prove in philosophy. But here I think we have a knockdown proof. Every human being matters. But that general kind of answer is not going to do it. It's an individual problem.

Starting point is 00:31:59 You are living this life. You are having to spend 24-7 with yourself and asking, you know, do I really deserve all this attention? Why am I putting myself and my own flourishing before everything? Why am I paying so much attention to it? Am I? truly deserving of it. So that is, you know, an individual question that you have to answer the general philosophical question, of course you matter. That's not going to do it. We all need a project, a mattering project that gets us out of bed in the morning and onto doing what feels productive and creative and beautiful to do. Beauty is such a signal for tending your garden. this might be what you are meant to do. This might be where the joy comes out.

Starting point is 00:32:49 If you like me want to dive deeper into this, a reminder that Rebecca's book is called The Mattering Instinct. It's available on Amazon or wherever you get books. Let's keep our local bookstores in business. We'll put the link to all the ways to find and follow Rebecca in show notes. Rebecca, thank you. This conversation was beautiful and necessary and important. And I hope everybody listening felt the same way I did. it just, I don't know, it found made exactly the right time. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, friend, I will close us out with a loving reminder that mattering isn't about being extraordinary, famous, or universally admired. And it's not about proving your worth through

Starting point is 00:33:32 constant productivity, perfection, or self-sacrifice. Mattering isn't loud or performative. But it's not light either. It's weighty. It shows up in how you show up for the people around you and the choices that you make and the work that you do. If this conversation did anything, I hope it challenged the idea that mattering is scarce or reserved for a select few names that we all recognize. Mattering isn't limited. Significance isn't something you compete for, hoard, or prove. It's not a zero-sum game where for you to matter more, someone else has to matter less. You matter because you're here, because you shape the way. world through how you live, lead, and relate. You are a creature of matter who longs to matter.

Starting point is 00:34:20 So you matter. Full stop. End of discussion. Now go matter. And remind someone else that they do too. Because this is woman's work.

This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Do I Matter? The Mattering Instinct with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein | 387

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