What Matters Most

You can read the title with your choice of punctuation:

What matters most?
What matters most!
What matters most?!

Me, I'm overwhelmed by all the things that matter. Some are relatively inflexible: e.g., my age, gender, and race matter a great deal in my day-to-day life, but I can't do much about them.

Others things are flexible: religion, political affiliation, and work are hugely important, but I am (theoretically) capable of changing them.

A short list of yet more things that matter: sexual identity, romantic relationships, family, friends, health, diet, education, geography, class. How tall are you? What's your body type? Your favorite sport? Do you play an instrument? What kind of car do you drive?

All of these things matter. It's not easy to identify something that that matters most to everyone. Depending on who you are, the type of car you drive may affect your daily existence more than your age or race. Perhaps this morning's choice of clothes may be the single most important decision all day. If you're a brain surgeon or an airline pilot, last night's choice of entertainment may have a life-and-death affect on many other people today.

For myself, I'm trying to figure out what matters most on a personal level, with little time for systematically thinking and worrying about what matters most to the bulk of humanity. But I do think and worry, in part because, in my daily life, I am exposed to all sorts of people - experts and pundits on every subject, or at least on every subject likely to find itself discussed on television. I work at a studio that feeds talking heads to the insatiable 24-Hour News Beast. The Beast eats everything, although its four basic food groups are politics, entertainment, business, and sports.

This morning at 5:30 a.m. I fed The Beast an eminent commentator on business affairs. He arrived in a nice car, wearing nice clothes, with a nice haircut, a nice tan, and a nice smile. For all that, I'm not sure he's nice. I'm open-minded about him because he seems smart and articulate. I like to think smart and articulate people are more likely to be nice than stupid and mute people. But I'm not sure about this idea. This nice guy seemed to suggest that the brutalizing of Iraqi prisoners was bad, but that the effect on the markets was worse.

"I don't think people are all that shocked that there is brutality in war - I mean, it's a war - but what is beginning to strike at the heart of most investors is the issue of confidence. What investors need more than anything else is confidence in the future, confidence in their leadership. And you have to really wonder about the competence of the military structure that not just allowed this to happen but allowed them to take pictures of it! How stupid do you have to be? I think when you come right down to it that's the worst problem here."

He concluded with, "I think the solution to the prisoner abuse scandal is for America to send a couple hundred trial lawyers over to Iraq and get a class action suit going. See if they can extract about ten billion dollars out of America for this."

Now, I'm not easily shocked by mean-spirited and inappropriate humor. I have been guilty of (at least) inappropriate humor myself. In fact, I recognized myself in this nice guy. Like him, I have often substituted a quick laugh for substantive thinking and analysis.

But right now, I'm inclined to grimace at his lawyer joke. I'd like to see someone like this nice guy talk seriously about how, to the naked and abused Iraqi on the concrete floor of a prison death-camp, it doesn't matter whether "the markets" lose confidence in "the military structure." I'd like to see someone like this nice guy say that what matters most - even on a morning business news show - is something bigger than the morning business news.