Today was the second memorial service for my great-Aunt.  One of the people who offered up a recollection of Aunt Jane spoke of her as someone who knew everyone—both the somebodies and the nobodies.

I thought about this dichotomy and it struck me that in those words is captured a lot of our human struggle.  I know that I desperately want to be “somebody” and am scared to death about being a “nobody”.  Yet is it even possible for me to be a “nobody”?

The dictionary defines nobody as “a person of no importance”.  I suppose that if I used the societal notion of importance, I am well and truly a nobody.  I haven’t found the cure for cancer, I haven’t won a Noble Peace Prize, I haven’t created an app that has generated millions and I definitely haven’t been Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.  Yet do these measure my true worth as a human being?

In the last three years I have had to deal with a career change that, while not unexpected nor unwelcomed, shook me to my core as it forced me to rethink the measure of my worth.  In my old job I was a somebody.  I worked for a big somebody in the fashion industry and that gave me a certain amount of leverage and largesse—albeit all of it was borrowed.  When I left that behind, I left behind the somebody that was part of all of that.  I had so intertwined my professional and personal somebody that when I had to say goodbye to one, I had to also say goodbye to other.  It was easy to think I had become a nobody.

But I realized that while my professional importance in one area had diminished, the importance of who I was hadn’t.  I had failed to see myself the way my friends saw me.  I would never describe any of my friends as “nobodies”—and their professional status has little to do with their importance. They are all somebodies because of the value they provide to the me and, by extent, to the world.  They are somebodies because they are somebody to me…and I to them.

This is why the lesson of redemptive love is so important and universally applicable.  Jesus reached out to everyone.  He didn’t see nobodies.  Even the outcast, the unclean, the worst criminal were somebodies because he loved them all.  Every single person Jesus came across carried importance for him.

The same could be said of my Aunt Jane.  She saw people for who they were and what they could be.  They were all somebodies because of their potential, because she was interested in them and because she believed they were important.  So, I think that that first statement is inherently wrong.  Aunt Jane only knew somebodies because everybody was a somebody to her.

I hope that I can take her lesson forward in two ways.  I hope to remember that everyone is worthy of being loved and that makes them important.  And I hope to remember that I too am worthy of being loved and that that also makes me a somebody.