Pathwalking 118
Other people do not determine your worth. You do.
The old adage is true – you cannot please everyone all the time. You are going to do things that are going to upset and alienate and maybe even infuriate other people. It cannot be helped – this is just a part of human nature.
Choosing your own life and walking your own path is going to have pitfalls and perils, ups and downs and so on. People will not understand you, will not understand your actions, and will not accept that you have the right to choose for yourself.
Because we have a deep need to be accepted by others and to win approval for our actions, it is easy to let others determine our worth. It is stunningly easy to let the opinions of others overcrowd your thought process and determine for you your worth as a person.
It is hard when those people are random acquaintances, but even harder when they are friends. Harder still is when they are dear, close friends or even family. They likely do not mean to judge you, they believe in all likelihood that they have your best interests at heart. Still, that does little good when your worth as a person gets called into question and makes you feel bad.
You ARE worthwhile. You are deserving of the good things in life you desire. You have incredible value as a person, no matter what anyone else believes.
This is one of those great universal truths. EVERYONE has worth. Everyone has value. Our morals may be different, our beliefs may not align, but that does not lessen anyone else, or you. We can agree to disagree, and frankly we should. No two people are alike. But even with that said, we all have worth.
There are an incredible array of negative messages constantly broadcast about the worth and worthiness of people. The haves versus the have-nots. The rich versus the poor. The religious versus the atheists. We wind up in competition to determine worth.
People love competition. The professional sports industry, be it baseball, football, basketball, soccer or what-have-you generates obscene amounts of revenue. People get obsessive about rooting for their home team and choosing their favorite players. We see competition played out in massive events where the winner takes home an impressive paycheck and often hero status.
We love to make competition personal. We wind up competing with people for jobs, for love, for power, for things both consequential and inconsequential. The outcome of that competition is often the basis of where we get our idea of worthiness or worthlessness.
Competition between two teams for entertainment is one thing, competing with one another for inconsequentials is quite another. We have somehow managed to convince ourselves that we live in a world of lack, a world of not enough, a world where artificial limitations become the accepted truths of life.
We find ourselves determining our worth based upon our homes, our jobs, our associations, our education and other tangibles. We also determine our worth based on social status, education, intelligence, wisdom and other intangibles. We use these things to also determine the worth of others, and pass judgment from there.
Pathwalking is about choosing the life you want to lead. The thing is, those who do not choose their own paths are no less worthy of finding happiness and contentment than those who do. People who allow others to control their lives for them are no less worthy than those who wrest control for themselves.
This is not to say that everyone should necessarily get a trophy just for getting out of bed every day. Mediocrity is a far cry from exceptionality, and we should not just reward everybody for the sake of sparing their feelings. However, winners or losers, brilliant or middling, fat or thin, short or tall, everyone has their own worth.
Not only do other people not determine our worth – remember that likewise we cannot determine the worth of others. There is no need to compete, there is no need to compare what makes any of us more or less worthy – everyone has worth. Everyone has value.
You are a worthwhile person, and you deserve to have the life you most desire, to walk the path you want to choose, and to enjoy everything life has to offer. No one but you can determine this to be true. Choosing your own path to know your own person and discover and live a life you want most will only work out when you accept that you ARE worthy of it.
Do you believe you are worthwhile?
This is the one-hundred eighteenth entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Thank you for joining me.
The first year of Pathwalking is available in print and for your Kindle.
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