Should we be valued for who we are? Or for what we do? Should we do good to be valued? For legacy yes, but in general, should groups like ‘family’, ‘friends’, ‘society’ value us for being a part of them or for what we contributed to them? Should we be valued for being or doing? Is man an isolated creature? Or is his value always determined in relation to others?
What exactly is ‘being’? Is it absence of action? Or doing what is most natural to us? So what if we do things we see as natural to us, but are of no value to others? Does it make us less ‘valuable’?
Example 1: I have a good sense of humour and my friends like me. But, I don’t consciously try to be good at it. It’s just natural. This earns me goodwill and friends enjoy my company.
Example 2: I have a quick temper. I have friends, but, they are not always happy with me. But, I get angry for a reason.
Here, why should my friends value me? For my attributes (humour/temper)? Or do they see something deeper than that? Is there a being beneath these attributes whose presence is valued?
Aren’t we not just what we do, but also what we think & feel? So, can someone only be valued for useful attributes he/she cultivates? Or is it ok, if the attributes serve only us and not others? If actions are more important than intentions, does it mean our value is less if we only ‘think’ or ‘feel’ compared to a person who ‘acts’?
But, how is ‘value’ determined by others? It depends on who they are (beliefs), on the tinted glass (experiences) they see from, on what relation they share with us, what they expect from us and on what they think constitutes ‘value’. So, what others think as ‘value’ changes from person to person. But, we may be a complete different person inside, and others see only a fraction of who we truly are, so their definition of ‘us’ is always fractured. It is cannot be a true evaluation of who we are, hence they cannot determine if we our life has value or not. For this reason, the concept of ‘value-of-our-life-depends-on-what-usefulness-we-add-to-others’ is broken.
Only we can truly evaluate ourselves. Because, we are what we think, what we feel & what we do.
P.S.: When you enter into a relationship, there is a tacit agreement between you and your partner to play your expected individual roles. But, when they are not met by you, it causes friction. This greatly affects how your partner views you and there is no escaping the fact that you’ve not fulfilled your duties. However, relationships are greatly susceptible to external stimuli, frequently altering the expectations from it. And, there is no way to keep your value in the eyes of others if the changes you’ve requested in the relationship are deemed unworthy to them or vice versa. It is very important to keep each other posted on the updated expectations in a relationship. If terms are not conducive to any party, the relationship can be desolved on mutual consent.
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