Great Thinkers on Mattering
She had just experienced the greatest disappointment of her life. She could not marry the love of her dreams. Heart broken, in desperation, she ran away, leaving everything and everyone behind. After many trials and tribulations, including a very dangerous journey, she arrived sick and penniless to a new town. There, Jane Eyre found respect and appreciation from the community. As a teacher, she felt valued because she added value to her pupils and their families. She felt welcomed. This is how Jane described her new life:
I felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood. Whenever I went out, I heard on all sides cordial salutations, and was welcomed with friendly smiles. To live amidst general regard….is like sitting in sunshine, calm and sweet; serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray. At this period of my life, my heart far oftener swelled with thankfulness than sank with dejection.
Charlotte Brontë published Jane Eyre in 1847. In that passage, she captured an essential part of mattering: feeling valued because of her ability to add value. Over forty years later, across the pond, William James, the great American philosopher and psychologist, described the opposite experience -- feeling devalued -- as follows:
If no one turned round when we entered, answered when we spoke, or minded what we did, but if every person we met ‘cut us dead,’ and acted as if we were nonexisting things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would ere long well up in us, from which the cruelest bodily tortures would be a relief; for these would make us feel that, however bad might be our plight, we had not sunk to such a depth as to be unworthy of attention at all.
Astute observers of the human condition, Brontë and James were describing the feelings associated with adding value, feeling valued or being devalued. Their words are as relevant today as they were over a century ago.
Dr. Isaac Prilleltensky is an award-winning academic and author. He is also a coach, consultant and a researcher. His latest book, co-authored with his wife, Dr. Ora Prilleltensky, is How People Matter: Why it Affects Health, Happiness, Love, Work, and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Press here to pre-order.