Needed or irrelevant?

We can probably agree that it’s better to be needed than irrelevant. At least when people are around you for you, not for what you can do for them. I’ve made mistakes both ways about people’s intent. There’s little better in life than being with someone who genuinely enjoys spending time with you. And little worse than reading or misreading them as just being interested in you instrumentally. I’ve always thought when it’s genuinely, organically good, there are no questions about anyone’s intent. But that could be just one of those Internet declarations that falls to pieces the minute you run actual human beings through it. If I have (say) twenty people in my life, I can at various times think I’m beloved by, or irrelevant to, any or all of them. Of course, it’s not like I’m out here constantly reassuring these twenty people how much they mean to me. We’re not here to exhaust each other. Maybe it’s like a switch on the wall—not on all the time, but there when we need the light.