In this day and age, a person's worth is usually measured in several ways. People value someone because of certain characteristics and contributions that she took pains to hone in order to feel worthy, happy, fulfilled and satisfied with her lot on earth.
Who would have bothered remembering the gay tutor turned playwright (Shakespeare), the drunkard author who died of rabies (Poe), the spinster lady in white who lived in isolation (Dickinson), the painter who cut off his ear (Van Gogh), or the drama behind a depressed college drop out who went out to connect the whole world with the product of his depression (Zuckerberg). What do we care about them if they did not do what they have done?
A person is usually deemed worthy because of his so-called contribution to human progress...
For instance, a person is worthy because she is decorative. She has all the pretty, frilly outer accoutrements that could please and satisfy the eye, make trends possible, break and create fashion rules, and make wealth a little bit more palatable. External worth pays a lot. Models, actors and actresses, celebrities make billions because of this.
Another way to measure a person's worth is through his intelligence. The intellectual scale also pays a lot. The magnitude of the changes that occurred on earth was caused by the mental marathons of geniuses who made technology, industrialization and modernization possible. The things we take for granted nowadays are things people had to do without before. But, because of the need to feel satisfaction over life, the need to fill up the emptiness, computers were made, the internet started linking people all over the world, and facebook made face to face conversation unnecessary.
A person may also be deemed worthy if he can provide an emotional crutch to emotionally-limping beings. Therapists, Oprah, self-help gurus, new age wonders, meditation and yoga instructors have all made much over the previous decade. Who would have thought that in our dire circumstances, we would turn to wonder advisors for help and assistance, mere mortals that they are.
Then, we also have to count that really talented people who made art the measure of their worth. Before they became known as artists, they were crazy, ruined beings who were floating through life's existence like nothing really matters. Art became a crutch to make life bearable and at times, even possible. Now, man's art history is cluttered with the creations of madmen, social pariahs, and empty husks who lost their souls in search for its immortality.
How about the saintly one's who gave up their lives in their fight for something? The warrior who fought against invading barbarians to protect his tribe, the soldier who gave up his life to save that of others, the hero who started an uprising to free his country, the maiden who donned battle arms to fight the wars of men, the women who took women's right to the fore, making a pseudo semblance of equality possible...What of these warriors who went down human history and made names in bold, blood red ink?
They were all known, made worthy, remembered because they have done something out of their lives. Their very lives were celebrated, their very esteem lifted, and the very frailty of their characters were reduced into flaws which makes them adorably human.
We feel pride to know that we are related to them. We feel a bursting song in our chest everytime we think of how they have overcome human frailty and made man triumph over time.
But have they really?
What does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he looses his own soul. The Bible says.
There is a god-shaped hole in all of us. It was created to make us crave Him above all else. In our desperation, we have filled it with our own sense of self-importance and worth.
We die feeling pseudo satisfaction but never really satisfied. The feeling of being used permeates us and we wonder: "Will I be unloved, unnoticed if I did not have what I had to be useful to these people who say they value me?"
That's the funny thing about our conceptions of self-worth. It does not come from the self. It comes from others. We reflect the worth they tag us with and we feel miserable, never really realizing that someone out there loves us for who and what we are, broken beings that we really are.
His love is all that counts, all that matters, all that we need to fill that awfully, big-shaped hole that nothing can really ever fill...
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