LIFE – Let It Flow Easy!!
There’s a story about a well known public speaker who offered a $20 bill to a large crowd. “Who wants this $20 bill?”
Most of the seminar attendees raised their hand, expressing excitedly that they would want it.
“In a moment, I am going to give this twenty dollar bill to one of you – but first, let me do this.”
The man crumpled the $20 dollar bill and asked: “Who still wants this bill?” Hands remained up in the air.
“But wait...,” he replied, “what if I do this?” The man dropped the $20 dollar bill on the ground and stumped it with his shoe.
He offered it to the crowd again, now crumpled and dirty. “Now, who still wants it?“
Still the hands went into the air.
He proceeded to give the $20 dollar note to someone in the audience, and then said:
“My friends, you have all learned a very valuable lesson. No
matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20.
Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way.
We feel as though we are worthless.
But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value. Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to those who do love you.
The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know, but by Who We Are and Whose We Are.
You are special – Don’t Ever forget it.”
My first session with my Guru started with this story. And then he asked me “ So,how do you value yourself?” It was like a Zen koan which I had to meditate / contemplate not just over days or weeks or months but over years. As I continued on my journey of understanding my own value, the question practically popped over in everyday situations of life – in dealing with others at work – the bosses, colleagues, in dealing with family, friends but most importantly in the non stop chatter that was going in my head – my relationship with myself. How did I value myself and my life and its experiences?
Invariably we are very hard on ourselves with our idea of perfection and expectations of ourselves, the goal posts that keep shifting as we go along with life (being a good parent, colleague, friend, spouse/ partner, child to our parents, a community member, a student, a professional, a nationalist etc) – trying to find our worth in seeking our value from the roles we perform and seeking approval from others.
Do they like me, do they approve of me as a good worker, do they value what I bring on the table, why did they not appreciate my work, or what I do around the house, or do my children appreciate me or value me, does my partner / spouse cherish me – the questions are endless. And based on the response we get from others, we assign that value to ourselves. We crush and crumble when we face criticism or rejection or indifference or when we feel we are taken for granted, we gloat and float on cloud nine when someone praises us, appreciates us.
The roots of this process of value assigning starts establishing unknowingly in our childhood – the conditioning we go through at school, in dealing with our peers, parents, our experience if we have been bullied, accepted or rejected by school mates. The complexes of superiority or inferiority are nothing but the exercise of our need to derive and assign a value to ourselves. The constant comparison we do – am I better looking, is my house, car bigger, is my bank balance more, are my children better than others, why is my life not as smooth as the other, am I fitter or play better than the other, am I wiser or more intelligent than the other, am I a better speaker or orator, painter, musician….. We see this phenomenon of seeking approval through the number of likes and following we get on social media. A pandemic which is literally crippling every unaware social media user.
It takes a while to understand that the very exercise of assigning our value is a self defeating exercise. The question of self value goes even beyond the basics of self worth and self esteem or self love.
Today I leave you with the same question that changed my experience of myself – “How do you value yourself?” Look around yourself – the rose blossoming in your garden is not blossoming to seek your approval, or is not comparing itself with the other rose, jasmine in your garden. It just simply is.