What is your worth?
A life - a heart, a mind, a soul,... a smile, a whisper.
Are you here to be weighed and measured and attributed a final value amount?
Do you direct debit your subscription to the daily posts of the meritocrats who sell you the equation - worth=wealth, at a price you don't know you are paying?
And is your faith in the zealots who preach the noise that worth rises and falls with the number on a scale? As the numbers rise do you feel your worthlessness weighing you down in loathing and lovelessness?
Are you extroverted, sales-driven, devotees of the cult of personality singing upbeat hallelujahs more value-laden than the quiet-loving shy boy, demanding nothing, in his world of ideas and dreams? Whose genius exists in a wry twist of the lip, not picked up by tests and assessments and so easily obscured in the ceaseless pings and bleats, notifications and alerts.
And what of thought? Idle thought. Of ideas and dreams? Are they to be deemed, to be measured in applicable potential commercialisation, profit and outcomes? Are the only merits those that are measurable?
Work=worth
Wealth=worth
Fame=worth
And the wealth of likes and followers and attentions and validations=
Are these our concrete measures of our value? Our KPIs?
Your face your waist your handbag your shoes your bike your house your means this brand that brand paleo fasting cleansing detoxifying - do these value add to your net?
Have you worked and accumulated and ticked enough boxes to attain sufficient 'worthy'?
What are we selling down the river of measurability?
Art, language, history, music -ideas for their own sake? How do we convert these to measurable outcomes, to their dollar weight to prove that they are worthy of holding on to?
Is a child's education just a funnel towards greater worthiness? Its benefits only those that can be scaled and measured and standardised. Producing job-market fodder for a future workplace whose parameters are beyond prediction.
How do you measure the worth of a teacher whose eyes and soul whispers to a child 'I see you and I understand you.' What value can be statistically assessed and estimated for a community around your child educating them and telling them 'who you are is all you need to be.'
I am worth weary.
It is an illusion, a construction, a fabrication.
You exist as do I.
There is only value in that.
To be. To breathe. To feel.
That heartsong moment of connection in love and spirit.
A perfect melody drifting from a child at their work.
A breeze-drifting lace-leaf, yellowed by the season, twisting its dance by my window.
A bubble of laughter, unsupressible, exploding through your nostrils and filling the library-silence with cackle.
I seek a renaissance of self-determination and the worthless pursuit of joy for its own sake.
My measure. My love. My life.
