HOW TO MEASURE OUR WORTH
By Shelby
Jean Arnold Perez
I know you’re supposed to say that
all human life is valuable, and I’m not disputing that. Human life, indeed all
life from where I sit, is inherently valuable because life is fleeting and
therefore precious.
I personally feel that would only
cheapen life because it suggests we are only valuable in a derivative sense. I’m not so impressed to hear that we are
only valuable because Someone Else liked us and valued us.
I’m not talking about the basic value
of human life. I’m asking by what metric we can measure the value and
contribution of a man to the world around him. And yes, I know we could broaden
the question by asking about humanity in general, men and women included (as
well as everything in between because it turns out humanity isn’t as binary as
we formerly presumed). But right now I’m asking more about how I, as a woman,
can measure my own worth to the world I live in.
I was given, my worth as a man was
determined by two basic things: 1) My ability to provide materially and
financially for a family, and 2) Their ability to guide and direct (“shepherd”)
said family into spiritual matters.
Men certainly aren’t the only ones
who grow up under an oppressive narrative that reduces them to a set of
expectations they never seem to be able to live up to. Women, in their own
turn, are expected to somehow be perpetual objects of sexual desire, ready to
respond to any and every advance from the men who want them while somehow
remaining chaste and faithful to the men who claim them as possessions, putting
family above all other things including their own happiness or fulfillment. Must
those always be mutually exclusive?
Which means that those who make it
their focus to nurture and raise families, (whether male or female) become
devalued because what they contribute cannot be neatly quantified, according to
its impact on the bottom lines of the institutions from which everyone is
expected to derive their worth.
I would argue this is why American
society does such a poor job of rewarding the teaching profession with
compensation commensurate with other kinds of work done by people with
comparable levels of education and experience. Incidentally, homemakers and
Stay-At-Home-Parents probably suffer the most from this imbalanced perspective.
We are valued according to what we
produce, not according to who we are, and that’s a problem for a species as
inclined to self-analysis and the quest for meaning as we are. I’m determined
to keep working on it until I’ve gotten to a healthier place emotionally and
intellectually.
The measure of a man is not
necessarily his title or his position, but rather how he treats others. The
only measure of your worth and your deeds will be the love you leave behind
when you're gone.
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