“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool." - Almost Famous
As as much as we don't like to admit it, we all have a similar problem. At times, perhaps more often than we like, we struggle with knowing our own self worth. All markers of social status seem arbitrary. We fail to comprehend why our best efforts have been fruitless. We find ourselves further and further from our expectations. We blame the system. We blame our upbringing. We feel hopelessly alone in a room of our peers, our friends, and our family. We feel abandoned...defeated...angry.
As much as we don't like to admit it, we also possess a solution. The false idols that we have been worshiping are no longer adequate. All of the preparations that we have been making. All of the hoops that we have jumped through. All of the silent misery that we have endured. These have all just been distractions--ways of delaying our attendance to the truth. Times of questioning like this have always pointed in the direction of meaning. The solution is the realization that we have simultaneously already arrived AND are also always in the process of arriving.
Defining worth is a deeply paradoxical challenge. Using art as an example: the labor, canvas, and oils that went into creating the Mona Lisa cost no more than a few hundred dollars, yet the painting is worth more than $50 billion. This assumes that a buyer is willing to pay that much for it. Offer that same Mona Lisa to a person who is starving on a deserted island, and they would put no value on it. They would, however, give any amount of money for food and rescue. A thing's value, its worth, seems to be directly connected to the demand and utility of it. But does this also apply to human worth?
Most of us can agree that there is an intrinsic value to each and every person that is beyond quantification. Arguments to the contrary are remembered in history as slavery or genocide. Criminals have their own freedoms revoked for infringing on the rights of others, but they still retain their worth. The janitor who cleans the offices of the fortune 500 company has just as much worth as the company's CEO. The janitor is loved by his family just as much as (maybe more than) the family of the CEO. If that same executive is involved in a corporate embezzlement scheme, then his self worth would be in the toilet by any moral standard. Meanwhile, the toilet cleaner, who is satisfied with his job and gives what he can of himself to his church and community, has a self worth that is on the highest floor.
It is tempting to conflate confidence with competence. Anyone with a misguided ego can be confident, but few are truly competent. We are taught from an early age to 'fake it until we make it,' which has at its core an implicit question: when will we know that we have made it? The simple answer: we have made it when we no longer feel the necessity to ask that question. When we become one with our purpose. This state, in all of its sublimity and transformative power cannot exist indefinitely and needs fuel to sustain. That energy will be found in the dark places that we must endeavor to go. It is in these challenging times that we find the core of our own souls--that we discover our worth.
Comments