Build a life on matter you create not matter you collect

​Back in the early 90s, I went to work as a mentor for some young people who'd come from some hard places. Some harder than others.

Up until that point in my life, it was the most meaningful experience I'd ever had. The days were long and hard, but every once in a while you got to know you were making a difference in the world no one else was going to make.

Turns out that matters quite a bit.

A few years into that experience, I got a promotion. Then quickly another one. And before I knew it I was spending the next decade chasing promotions and all the material matter that came with them.

Money. Nicer living arrangements. Travel.

I actually got pretty good at collecting matter, but the more matter I collected, the further removed I started feeling from the places that felt like they mattered.

The words 'matter' and 'material' both come from the Latin word "materia", which originally referred to the substance or material from which something is made. The word materialism emerges, I believe, when we begin to define ourselves by the substances we have and not by the substance of who we are and what we pour into the world.

What we pour into the world that matters more than matter....

I will tell you that driving down the road these days, I still occasionally see a car and think, it sure would be nice to drive a car like that.

I can still feel the lure of materia.

But I know that's not a healthy place for me. Because I have come to know fulfillment and often joy for me is not a nice car, it's influencing in some positive way the way people regard themselves and others when they are driving their nice cars.

Chances are my boys will never inherit any meaningful material inheritance from me. And the truth is, today, if I could leave my boys this article or a billion dollars, I'd leave them this article.

(If you are reading this boys, I feel your cringe.)

But my prayer is that someday they will know this article is worth more than a billion dollars. Because the reality is, if someone were to offer me a billion dollars to not write it, I would choose to write it anyways.

I only get one chance with my heart and my thoughts and my words to leave something for the world that might just matter. Nothing distracts me from that chance more than matter.

So I want you to know today, you matter.

I want you to let someone else know today, they matter.

I want you to know, no matter you ever collect will matter more than that.