My name on a grain of rice

Once, at a theme park in the Ozarks, a man painted my name on a grain of rice and stuck it inside blown glass and put it on a chain.
I never wore it because the god of my youth frowned upon physical adornments.
It didn't matter, because I wouldn't have worn it anyway.
I was sad at the insignificance of my name on something that could easily fall into a crack in the asphalt and never be noticed.
It seemed very metaphorical and deep to my angst-y fourteen-year-old self, so full of self-doubt and questions...

I found that rice while I was looking through boxes to get rid of this morning.
I didn't even know I had kept it all these years.
I sat with it for a very long time, remembering that lonely scared girl.
Those old feelings of insignificance are sometimes just as real, and always just as much an illusion as ever.
I wonder about the man who chose to learn how to paint on rice, when he could have chosen murals.
I wonder if we all sometimes feel like our contributions are miniscule, or that they should be, so as to not take up too much space and have to say 'pardon me' to someone more worthy of the space in which we are standing.
Knowing how sad and small those thoughts can make someone feel, I want to look the people I love in the eye and tell them that they matter.
I want someone to tell me the same thing.
Most importantly, I want to look in the mirror and say it with a straight face.