[dgreensp]

Matter to whom? Mattering to myself was an important step in my personal growth, and there are other people in my life who think I matter, and people I've never met who simply believe we all matter.

How sad to convince ourselves not to matter to ourselves by saying look, I don't matter to the universe, so how could I possibly matter? Does anything matter to the universe? If not, it's probably not the best entity to look to to figure out what matters. If the universe does care about something, who says it doesn't care about you, just because it's big and you're small in comparison?