On "mattering" in a philosophical sense
This is a good episode of Philosophy Bites with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. Summary via my LRF as I'm on the go:
Goldstein defines mattering as being deserving of attention, and her key move is that the attention we're most anxious to deserve is our own. That makes us normative, value-seeking creatures by nature, distinct from other animals. She dates the arrival of these existential questions to Jaspers' Axial Age (roughly 800–200 BCE), framing them as a luxury that depends on baseline survival being met.
…