“Everyone needs to know their life matters” is a statement I’ve uttered often throughout my adult years.

Because I believe it, I’ve adopted an Appreciator role, dispensing compliments openly and frequently.

Everyone craves a life of consequence, of significance, of purpose. To know that our daily lives, then years, then decades, mattered to someone, somewhere, somehow. To enact change, an alteration in the course of life is a higher calling, a challenge to be realized. Few people aim that high, but all, I feel, wish to avoid loneliness and diminished societal worth.

The state that retirement slams us into.

Aging tends to shrink social circles, so my urge to connect outward to strengthen my sense of mattering has accelerated.

Baby Boomers – my peers – amassed sufficient wealth to offset the minimalism of Social Security for ease in retirement. Further, we’ve fostered good health with potions and lotions, pills and procedures, and good lifestyle practices to realize the ultimate Boomer goal: to have fun!

My husband and I have accomplished the above, but we went beyond. We each prepared for an equally essential aspect of retirement: how to continue to feel seen, heard, and valued.

I stepped away from my compulsion for community service that, while fulfilling, ran me ragged, pulling me close to burnout in addition to my one percent giving forty-year career in speech-language pathology. I pursued an elegant hobby: writing, then honed, crafted, and polished my skills enough to publish books, win awards, and accolades. I proved myself worthy, I made myself matter. To me and to many, as compelled to do by upbringing and inclination.

To put thoughts and feelings on paper for posterity, a singular occupation rather than a social one.

My husband delved deeply into relationships: with a nephew and a cluster of male friends. He matters to the core with his active listening and ability to cajole and advise. He’d applied those talents to advantage during his sales and marketing, but the business relationships were expedient and of the moment, not lasting.

Now my husband is cherished beyond the walls of our home, by others more than our dog and me. His life matters.

More recently, we’ve volunteered lead a small group in a somewhat difficult and introspective life study at our church. Our task is to shepherd ten others to believe their life matters in the same way that we know ours do.

Our perpetually purpose-driven lives matter to God, the best value and proof of a life well-lived. We believe.