On Being Useful

The Facebook post pops up on my screen, the first in line of many wanting to be liked, loved or cried over. It is a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” The post had already garnered plenty of “likes”. I am not one of them.

It’s not the honourable and compassionate part that bothers me but the plead to be useful. I have nothing against Emerson but I feel his words are somewhat anachronistic. Honour and compassion come from within but utility? Why is there this need and who sets the bar?  Am I not valuable in who I am without being useful to another? Is usefulness defined by something outside ourselves? Are doctors more useful than retail clerks? And what is the measuring gauge? If I visit an aged relative once a week, am I being as useful as one who caretakes from home? Do we have to reach a certain standard before our worth is measured to be good enough?

Perhaps I am taking this too seriously. I mean, it was only a FB post that got a few likes and positive comments but it struck an inner chord. For too many years, in fact, most of my life I sought to be useful—to have a sense of self value, of meaning. In the search I went overboard in my attempts and I became the ubercodependent —I lost my identity in the hopes and dreams, needs and desires of others. Sure I was useful but was I “living well” as Emerson beseeches us to do?

Several years ago I began the process of deconstructing my need to find meaning and value outside of who I was. What I found was that by "virtue of just being" I am inherently worthy. Here is an excerpt from that occasion from my book, Notes from the Bottom of the Box: the Search for Identity by a Modern-Day Renaissance Woman.

My worth—anyone’s worth—cannot be measured on individual attainment, intimate relationship or some magical formula of self-actualization. It is based on our interrelatedness, the invisible connections that are the foundation for life. It is not so much that I am someone’s child or friend, mate or colleague, but that I am connected to others, not necessarily by choice, but solely because I exist. By virtue of just being, I am related to every other living thing: flora and fauna. I may not know the person walking towards me, but in my noticing, we are both affected. I look at him or her, and my glance is taken away from something else, and in that move I am changed, as is the person I did and did not look at. Our energy, intent and presence affect others even if we are not conscious of it. I breathe in what you just breathed out; I smile and your heart opens; I move this way and you respond in kind, or not. I die and become earth; the earth grows food and feeds those who live. I am but one strand in the web of life, but that strand is continuous within the whole and, as such, important.

My sense of self-worth … is directly proportionate to my recognition of this invisible thread. If I recognize this connection, I acknowledge my infinite worth; if I don’t, my subjective worth diminishes. To speak for all of us, our inherent worth is constant; it is only a misguided perception or denial of our interconnectedness with all other beings that devalues us.

I am part of you, as you are part of me. To negate our self-worth is to negate life in all its manifestations.

Stay tuned for more weekly excerpts from Notes from the Bottom of the Box. If you like this blog, please like me on my Modern-Day Renaissance Woman Facepage.  Thanks for the support!

If you like my writing, check out my other blog, The Interdependent Life.