What If Feeling Irrelevant Doesn’t Matter?

Your circumstances may have made your world smaller. They do not have to make your dreams smaller.

There is a question that can quietly show up when we begin imagining something bigger for our lives:

Can someone who feels irrelevant really do something relevant?

That question can become particularly difficult during or after a crisis. Crisis has a way of making life smaller. Your world can become consumed by the problem in front of you. The relationship. The court case. The financial struggle. The children. The trauma. The uncertainty. The decisions that need to be made. Before long, survival takes up so much space that it can become difficult to imagine yourself outside of it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world appears to be moving forward. People are building careers, starting businesses, going back to school, traveling, creating, celebrating milestones, pursuing dreams.

And you may simply be trying to make it through Tuesday.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, another question can surface:

Does my life still matter?

It does.

Feeling irrelevant and being irrelevant are not the same thing. Your current circumstances are not a measurement of your significance. Neither is how many people notice you, what someone has told you about yourself, what you have accomplished so far, or the fact that right now much of your energy may simply be going toward surviving.

There are seasons when survival itself requires extraordinary strength. But survival does not have to become the boundary of your imagination.

When the Dream Feels Bigger Than You

Maybe the dream is a new career. Maybe it is going back to school, starting a business, writing the book, building something that doesn't exist yet, starting over, or simply becoming a version of yourself you have never had the opportunity to be. The dream can be different. The question underneath it is often the same:

Who am I to think I can do this?

It is easy to look at people who have already accomplished something significant and forget that we are seeing them from the other side of the beginning. We see the organization after it has grown, the leader after people know her name, the business after it has customers, the graduate holding the degree, the woman living the life she once only imagined.

What we don't always see is the period when there was very little evidence that any of it would work.

You may be standing in that period right now.

You may not have the connections, money, credentials, experience or support you think you need. The people around you may not understand what you see. They may even think some of your decisions don't make sense. And somewhere in the distance between where you are and what you can imagine, doubt asks:

Am I dreaming too big?

Maybe.

Some dreams are big.

But there is a difference between saying:

This dream is bigger than me.

and:

I am too small for this dream.

Those are not the same thing.

Maybe You Need to Be a Little Delusional

There is something almost unreasonable about pursuing a big dream.

At some point, you have to believe in a possibility before there is enough evidence to justify your confidence in it. You have to see something that isn't fully there yet. Sometimes you have to imagine peace while surrounded by chaos. Imagine financial stability while staring at uncertainty. Imagine meaningful work while starting over. Imagine healthy relationships after experiencing harmful ones. Imagine laughing freely again when joy feels distant. Sometimes you have to imagine becoming someone you haven't met yet.

That requires a particular kind of courage.

You have to keep working when progress is incremental. You have to make decisions that might look foolish to someone who cannot see what you see.

Not reckless decisions. Not decisions that ignore wisdom, reality or good counsel. But decisions that make sense because you know where you are trying to go.

Sometimes you have to be just a little delusional about what might be possible.

Not disconnected from reality. Just unwilling to let today's reality become the limit of tomorrow's possibility. There is a difference between denying reality and refusing to believe that today's reality is the only reality available to you. You can acknowledge exactly how difficult life is and still believe there is more.

Determined to Win. Angry to Lose.

There is another mindset that comes with pursuing something that matters deeply:

Determined to win. Angry to lose.

Not angry after losing.

Angry at the idea of surrendering something that matters without giving it everything you reasonably can.

There will be setbacks. There will be mistakes. Some things won't work. Sometimes the direction will have to change entirely. Being determined to win doesn't mean believing failure is impossible. It means refusing to be indifferent about the outcome.

If your future matters, pursue it like it matters.

That pursuit does not always look dramatic. Sometimes it is one phone call. One application. One boundary. One counseling appointment. One class. One new skill. One hour spent working on something that belongs to your future instead of your crisis.

Sometimes it is simply one decision that says:

My life is still happening.

Progress does not always announce itself. Sometimes it is so small that nobody else would even recognize it as progress. But small decisions accumulate. The woman who takes one small step today may eventually look back and realize she has traveled miles.

Relevance Isn't the Same as Recognition

Perhaps we also need to reconsider what it means to be relevant.

Most of us are irrelevant to most people. Most people will never know our names.

But relevance was never supposed to mean being known by everyone.

Something is relevant because it matters where it matters.

You don't have to change everyone's life to change someone's life. You don't need thousands of people to believe in an idea before it can help one person. You don't need a platform before your voice can matter to the person who needs to hear it.

And you don't have to already be significant before you can do something significant.

Sometimes relevance begins very quietly.

One person helped. One problem solved. One door opened. One courageous decision. One small step toward something that did not exist yesterday. And then another.

That is incremental progress.

Some Decisions Will Not Make Sense to Everyone

There may come a point when rebuilding requires making decisions other people do not understand. They may think the dream is too big. The timing is wrong. You should be more practical. You should wait. You should settle. You should be grateful for what you have. You should stop expecting so much from life.

Listen to wise counsel. Learn. Prepare. Understand the risks.

But remember that other people are evaluating your decisions from their understanding of your life, not from inside yours. There are decisions that can appear foolish from the outside and still be exactly the right decisions for you.

Sometimes rebuilding requires trusting what you know. Sometimes growth requires leaving what is familiar. Sometimes pursuing something meaningful requires accepting the possibility that it may not work.

Sometimes you have to take a gamble on yourself.

Take the Gamble

For women who have spent a long time having their decisions questioned, controlled, criticized or dismissed, taking a gamble on yourself can feel particularly frightening.

You may have learned not to trust your judgment. You may have been told that your ideas were ridiculous. You may have been made to feel incapable. You may have become accustomed to asking permission. You may have spent so long considering everyone else's needs that asking yourself, What do I want? feels almost selfish.

It isn't.

There comes a time in rebuilding when you may have to become willing to bet on the woman you are becoming. That doesn't mean betting everything recklessly or assuming passion guarantees success. It means being willing to put something behind what you say you believe. Your time. Your work. Your courage. Your willingness to learn. Your persistence. Your willingness to begin small. Your willingness to look foolish while the vision is still clearer to you than it is to everyone else.

And perhaps most importantly, your willingness to try without knowing how the story ends.

You may fail at something. You may change your mind. You may discover that the dream you pursued wasn't actually the dream you wanted.

That does not make the gamble worthless.

Sometimes taking a chance on yourself is how you discover yourself again.

You Are More Than This Season

There will always be reasons to wait until you are more qualified, more connected, more financially secure, more confident, more recognized or more certain.

Some preparation is necessary.

But there may never be a moment when someone arrives and declares:

You are important enough now. You may begin. At some point, you have to give yourself permission.

Perhaps today you cannot imagine anything particularly extraordinary. That's okay. Start by believing something smaller:

This is not all my life will ever be.

There are parts of you that crisis may have buried but did not destroy. There is still curiosity, creativity, intelligence, humor, ambition, tenderness, possibility and the capacity to begin again.

They are still yours.

So perhaps the question isn't:

Who am I to dream this big?

Perhaps it is:

What will this dream require that I don't have yet?

That question gives you somewhere to go.

Maybe you need to learn. Maybe you need expertise. Maybe you need community, resources or experience. Maybe the dream is too large for one person and you need to stop assuming one person is supposed to carry it.

A big dream doesn't necessarily require you to become bigger. Sometimes it requires you to build, learn, partner, invite, ask, grow and keep going.

And perhaps one day, the woman who once wondered whether she mattered will look around at the life she has built and realize something:

She was never irrelevant.

She was simply in a season where it was difficult to see herself beyond what she was going through.

So dream bigger than what you see today. Make incremental progress toward it. Make the decisions that are right for your life, even when everyone does not understand them. And when the moment comes, take the gamble on yourself.

You may feel irrelevant. The dream may feel unreasonable. The progress may be incremental. You may still be standing at the very beginning.

Begin anyway.

Reflection Questions

Where has crisis made your world feel smaller? Is there something you stopped dreaming about because your circumstances made it seem impossible? What might become possible if you stopped asking whether you are important enough and started asking what you need to take the next step?

And perhaps the biggest question:

Are you willing to take a gamble on yourself to find out what is possible?

A Simple Practice

• Write these words somewhere you can return to them: This is not all my life will ever be.

• Then give yourself permission to imagine one thing you would like your life to contain beyond your current circumstances. Don't worry yet about whether it is practical, how long it will take or whether anyone else understands it.

• Choose one small step toward it.

• Then take it.

Sometimes the first gamble you take on yourself is simply believing that there could be more.