Individual Value and Worth Pt. 2

Like a baby who cries for his or her mother, like a child who demands attention from those who are around, so our “adult” hearts crave knowledge that those around us consider us valuable. The question remains… Why? What broke in side of us that affirmation fixes? Where did this hole come from?

If we exist as simple products of natural accidence, the answer does not exist. Our program that drives our hearts, minds, and very lives requires that we receive confirmation of our worth. But the human heart, like a hopelessly tangled knot, cannot be fully known, not by our own selves much less by others. How can value be assigned to something unknown?

But programs require programmers; so to know the value of something, we must know the one who created it. As an artist creates and assigns a value to his painting, based on the time, materials and effort, so does God put value on us. Only the creator can know the true value. God formed us with his hands, breathed a conscious spirit into us, and put us in charge of ruling his kingdom on this earth as his created children. Then He looked and said, “It is very good.” But we chose and daily choose to be our own ruler, to find our own value. The problem comes from lack of stability. 

Money gains and loses value daily, sometimes a small shift, sometimes dramatic. The rules of culture, fashion and society change weekly, almost daily. Status achieved in one night disappears just as quickly the next. The moment you purchase a new product, it becomes outdated. A constant standard of worth does not exist in this natural world. It must come from outside it.

Human. The name chosen to represent all of us. In Truth, no one person exists below or above the rest. God views His creation as good, but lost. One of the bigger losses at the fall remains our identity. We scrap and fight to prove that our existence has meaning because of the things we have done, to others whom history will forget as fast as the rest of us.

Popularity, wealth, poverty, sickness, or any number of conditions that every person can experience remains meaningless. Yet, to live knowing where true value lies, to live a life devoted to the one that created us, there lies Truth. And only in Truth, is there meaning.

Individual Value and Worth Pt. I

I fell in love once. For the first time in my life. She was a couple years younger than me, stuck in a relationship she didn’t really want, and beautiful. We became fast friends. After a while, she broke off her engagement and short time after that, we became more than friends. But I wouldn’t commit to a full relationship until she found a new place to live. So she did. I came back from a short family vacation to discover she had moved in with a man she had just recently met. 

It took me a few years after that, and two more similar relationships, to discover I did love her after a fashion, but mostly I wanted to save her, because if I saved her, she would forever after feel grateful for what I did and never leave me. I wanted to prove to her my worthiness to receive her love forever, which came from my belief of unworthiness to receive any unearned love.

Her leaving me didn’t prove that I didn’t have value worth love from another person, as I first thought. At that time, I needed another person to love me for what I did, because of my inability to love myself for whom I am. I felt ashamed of things from my past and that shame kept, at times still keeps, me from allowing others access to my life.

I have grown in this truth for the past 5 years, and can see it more and more each day. Until we look at ourselves, the best things we have accomplished along with the most evil actions we have taken, and can say honestly, this is who I am. We can never say with honesty I like this and will keep it and I don’t like this but I can change it. Fear and self-loathing not only cause more of the same, but they block our ability to receive genuine love from others. 

We look for people whom we can prove ourselves to, whom we can work for and get affirmation in return. But we can never please every person all the time. We will always fail, sometimes, even when we do everything we are asked. Confidence in our self and self-worth enable us to help others find theirs. 

The question remains, where do we find that confidence?

Beginning

Taking thoughts, emotions, ideas and putting them on paper requires a thorough think-through of what is true. Contained within our own mind, ideas get stuck and mired in personal belief looking things through one perspective. Placing these same thoughts out in public forces a person to really examine what they say.

The purpose of this blog is for me to put my thoughts out in the open. Seeing what I am thinking helps me process. Others seeing what I am thinking and commenting, gives me perspectives I can not attain on my own. For now I will update once per week, on Tuesdays, to process the things that I have been learning the past week. The name comes from the idea that started it. To really go to the places, sites, with-in myself and explore myself.

Thank you for joining me. Thank you for disagreeing with me or encouraging me and even just for reading.