Do you feel you matter?

"It restored some of my faith in humanity."

Someone told me this, a few days ago. We were talking about what it feels like to belong to a group of people who really do show up for each other. 

The sentence carried me straight back to a specific morning in 2018.

I woke up in the middle of a dried-out lake in the Nevada desert. The sun was already sharp enough to make me squint, and when my eyes adjusted, I found myself looking out over a temporary city: tents and RVs, strange costumes, sculptures rising out of the dust, structures that looked like they belonged in a different world entirely. 

Some of it was breathtaking. Some of it was just plain strange. All of it had been built by hand, by people who, in many cases, had never even met each other before that week.

It was our first day in Black Rock City, a place that comes together once a year for nine days and holds somewhere around 70,000 people. Then it disappears again. Everything we needed, we carried in ourselves. And when it's over, we carried it all back out too, down to the water we'd used to brush our teeth.

Inside this city, people share their time and knowledge, they collaborate and co-create, they meet each other with respect and curiosity. Despite their nationality or religion.

I came out of the desert with a new belief in humanity. None of this is required. Nobody has to build a temporary city in the middle of a desert, or spend months preparing art that will only stand for a week before it's taken apart again. No one has to show up like this, for themselves and each other.

But we do it anyhow. We do it because we want to. Over and over again.

I've been back twice since 2018, and the feeling from that first year still stands. It has made me more aware of the impact we can have when people come together.

Because, it does happen when we have to. When we as a community come together to help each other in times of need. Or there’s a crisis at work. But it also can happen when we let it.

And while on the topic of burning... Liz Wiseman, leadership researcher and author, talks about burnout (which I personally experienced in my early career). Her research found this: People rarely burn out from having too much work. They burn out from not feeling they have impact. 

To know that our part matters is a feeling we all should have in life.

Because we do.

And if you're leading a team, that's on you to give them. Not by telling people they matter, but by making room for them to participate and support each other.