Worth, Value, and Importance

Worth is a loaded word. Worth is one of those words that means so much, and has become something of a taboo word to apply to people. In our world of special little snow flakes, "Everyone is worth something!" I'm not so sure this is true. Worth means value, it means that on some level, you are important, that on some level, the world would be a lesser place for the loss of you or whatever the object of worth was. With this in mind, we can say that to be worth something, you must leave the world a better place than it would have been without you. The world must have been made better by your actions and what you left behind to have been of worth.

I don't think this is unreasonable to say. I think this, by itself, is something we can all admit. The problem is when we have to argue whether or not a person was of worth, whether they, by their decisions and actions, left the world better for their presence. It might be that they make awesome pies, or they painted a wonderful picture, it could be anything, provided the world was a brighter, more fulfilling place for it.  By this definition, those who go about, doing nothing, not creating, simply existing, thugs on the street, lazy children, layabouts and people who just don't do anything, could be seen as worthless. And this would be true. It is cruel to say, but it is true. The teenage thug who does nothing except mug people, smoke on the corner, and assist his gang members in whatever activity they decide to do, could easily be seen as worthless. This, is not to say, they are valueless. Unrefined oil is practically worthless, but it has value, value is not just what you have done or are capable of, but what you have the potential to do. No one on this earth is without value, though there are quite possibly many worthless people, people who are valuable for what they might become should they choose to pursue it.

This is important to recognize. Too many people believe they are "special little snow flakes" that they have their own irreplaceable talent, that they are IMPORTANT. This is not true. Importance is not something any of us here reading will likely ever have. Importance is how much the world as a whole views you in terms of value and worth. Most of the readers of this blog, including it's writer, could die here and now, and relatively few people would know about it or care, where as someone like the president could die this very moment, and it wouldn't be an hour before most of the world had heard about it. No, we must be willing to admit to our children, and to ourselves, that in the grand scheme of things, the vast majority of us are not important at all. We have value, and we may have worth, but we are not important. Further, we have to impress on ourselves that we are worthless until the moment we can say "yes, the world would have been a darker, less fulfilling place for my absence, if I had not done this or that, it would not be a better world." At that moment, we can say we have worth. And the more we can say that about ourselves, the more worth we can believe ourselves to have. What we do have to impress on everyone is that they have value, they have potential, they have the capability to do a great deal with their lives, maybe not everything or even anything, but that they are capable of having worth, of making the world a better place, and they can do so without being special, or important, but by just being themselves.