Joel, I've been battling that feeling of worthlessness all my life. As a very small child I was convinced by JWdom that my every inclination was sinful, that my desire to nurture and use my talents was selfish, sinful, and entirely worthless. Since my ONLY gifts were in the arts, and I was taught that art is pointless except in service of the WT, I learned to feel ashamed of needing to sing, to write, of wanting to act and produce theatrically.
It's been a lifelong process trying to undo those guilts and shames. I still can't let myself call writing 'work' although the process manifestly IS hard work; my gut still insists it's dilettantism at its worst and emotional gridlock sets in. I've learned not to try to force 'growth' on my scared inner child, hoping that someday it will get over those slaps and be happy to be itself.
Lately I've begun to think you can't measure your worth by deeds. You can't measure your worth relative to that of others. Does a flower compare itself to the other blossoms? I was sitting in the schoolyard watching my son play; it was a gorgeous sunny day and the trees were clothed in shades of rosy gold. It was windy and showers of leaves swirled in every gust. They carpeted the playground with the scent of their sweet decay. I sat grooving on the leaves underfoot. Each one was a miniature marvel, delicately veined, tiny jewels of mixed color. Did one leaf compare itself to another? Did the brown-edged bug-nibbled ones sigh that they were not so fine as the perfect ones the little girls were excitedly collecting? Did the golden ones feel jealous of their scarlet companions? Did the small curled ones feel inferior to the broad flat ones? Did the ones already on the ground feel inferior to their stronger more determined brothers still in the branches?
The leaves swirled in spiral vortices, carried by dust devils bouncing off the school walls. They made a glorious shouting clatter against the voice of the wind that carried them, heedless, across the lawns. Each little insignificant leaf was self-contained, beautiful in its own way, complete unto itself. Each leaf was necessary to the life of the tree from which it fell, and each was fulfilling its function by drying up and falling to the ground. In death serene, those leaves will decay into springy loam that cushions the heedless feet of playing children in future seasons, beneath yet more cycles of new leaves.
As they lie rotting underfoot, do leaves worry about their relative place on the branch pecking order? Do the biggest leaves from the top branches get special dispensation from rot? Do the leaves that get pressed into books or ironed into wax paper tombs feel superior to the ones that make compost?
We're the leaves on a very big tree Joel. As individuals, we're precious, unique, and no better or worse than any other leaf. We live, we fulfill our function as parts of the whole, and then we die, and rot, and thus nourish the tree of life. If we can just 'be' the unique individual we were born to be, we have fulfilled our function. Comparison is fruitless. Pointless. Meaningless.
Hear that wind? It's the cycle of life, swirling all around you. We can't change where it blows us so we might as well enjoy the scenery while riding it to the common inevitability.
