It occurred to me just now that I define my value and worth using the same standards that society uses for deciding the worth of things.
How many people want it? How many people are interested in it? How much will people pay for it?
But is it wise to use this very transactional, supply-and-demand based way of valuing things as a basis for valuing people? Is someone’s worth shown by how many friends they have, how many followers they have on social media, how much they get paid, or how many companies want to employ them?
I find my brain wanting to say yes to this question. My heart, however, is vehemently saying that there is so much more.
The pandemic showed us quite clearly the problems with how we value, and subsequently treat, people based on their job when we discovered that the jobs that we truly need as a society are often the lowest paid jobs with the least amount of “prestige”. When you need food, you very much want all the grocery store employees, the cashiers and shelf stockers, to be at work, and you’re not at all concerned about whether the vice president of marketing is at his or her desk that day.