Sense of Self

We live in a society of self-loathing. There is a lot of profit in people hating themselves.

There is something intrinsically wrong with nurturing a society who turns in on itself and focuses on what we hate and obsesses on how to fix it.

We are told our bodies, our faces, our teeth, our goals, our careers, our families are wrong. We are told with the right procedures, the right goals, behaviors, and desires we will be a success.

We are told only success brings happiness. Never does anyone say  happiness is success. The ever groping climb for more won’t bring happiness. It will just bring more of the same ever groping climb, because we are set up to never have enough.

Not relevant to anything but it makes me happy

Happiness should be our goal. Happiness should be considered success.

Here are my goals in life: make the world better, and continue to build my family.

The meaning of life is not things. Things are a means to an end. Cars don’t give you value as a person. They might bring you enjoyment and joy, but they don’t mean you have more worth. The meaning of life is finding people to love and to care for that will love you and care for you. For some people, that means a spouse and children. For other people like me, that means building a strange pack of people, some related and some not.

Yes, I want to be a successful writer. I don’t mean becoming fabulously wealthy, though it wouldn’t be a bad thing.  I mean, I write things that make people laugh, feel, think, get mad. I want my writing to mean something to people. It would be glorious to make a living off of writing, but I can’t use that as a gauge of my success. I want to bring meaning to someone. I want to show people things about themselves and the world. I want to show the world we are all a lot more a like than we know.

But, even if I never achieve those goals, if my writing never affects anyone, and I never sell anything, it doesn’t mean I don’t have worth.

Self-worth is a tricky tricky bitch. We are the ones who control our worth. People can try to build us up, and people will try to tear us down. Ultimately, we are the ones who decide if we let them.

This is a hard hard lesson. It is easy to say but a struggle to live. I finally had to learn people tear down and hate things they loath in themselves or things they don’t understand. Sometimes it is so hard to say “that is your shit, not my shit, and I’m not going to let it affect me.” Sometimes we have to claw through the crap around us and fight to keep our worth.

We are born with worth and worthy of love.

We are BORN with worth and worthy of love.

We are born deeply flawed. Life breaks bits of us. This does not mean we are not worthy. This does not make us unlovable or undeserving of respect. It means we are human. It prepares us to have empathy and love for those around us who are broken and flawed. Without our flaws and our broken bits, wholly loving another human being would be nearly impossible. No one can love everyone. No one can understand and have empathy for everyone. We must try. We won’t always succeed but it is the trying that is imperative.

I believe in self improvement. I struggle to  be better. I forget sometimes that I am worthy as I am.