{"id":1051,"date":"2015-02-18T22:08:18","date_gmt":"2015-02-19T03:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/?p=1051"},"modified":"2020-02-21T21:07:44","modified_gmt":"2020-02-22T02:07:44","slug":"lets-get-shamelessly-vulnerable-part-iv-what-are-we-worth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/life-love-family\/lets-get-shamelessly-vulnerable-part-iv-what-are-we-worth\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s Get Shamelessly Vulnerable Part IV: What are We Worth?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Welcome to Part IV in a series about vulnerability, based on Bren\u00e9 Brown\u2019s<\/a> studies of vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame. I encourage you to also listen to an interview Ms. Brown gave with Krista Tippet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I was having lunch with a friend the other day who questioned whether she was currently contributing anything to the world. She, I\u2019ll call her Felicity, has been a passionate pusher of joy for many years and, until recently, owned a car painted with colorful polkadots and fitted at the back with a bubble-maker. Occasionally she would drive it around town or in parades, leaving behind a trail of iridescent soap bubbles wherever she went. Joy Car, she called it.<\/p>\n

Felicity is gifted with the ability to help others heal emotionally and spiritually. She used to write prolifically on the topic, providing techniques that anyone can use to tap their innate powers to reach their full potential. In her 70s, and coping with a few health issues, she now wonders about her role in the world. For a long time she hasn\u2019t been inspired to write; people have not been seeking her services. What is she supposed to be doing with the rest of her life?<\/p>\n

Like me, Felicity is a creative with a strong desire to contribute something meaningful to humanity. While all people have the need to feel valued, creatives feel it more acutely in that we equate self-worth with how widely distributed our creations are or what people are willing to pay for them.<\/p>\n

Bren\u00e9 Brown says our society tends to measure self-worth through productivity; exhaustion has become a status symbol, she says. The more harried we look and feel, the more productive we must be, thus the more worthy. But productivity is no measure at all of our value as human beings. For one thing, by whose standard is output deemed \u201cproductive\u201d? Our very existence is proof enough of our self-worth. I am, therefore I am worthy.<\/p>\n

I believe all people have value because the Creator intended it so through the very act of creation. You creatives out there, don\u2019t you create because you feel you have something of value to share? If we have no value, then why were we born? I\u2019m going to crack the lid on a carton of annelids here and say that because all lives have value, then logically even people possessed by evil have value. How so? Firstly, they weren\u2019t born evil. Through experience, circumstance, and choice\u2014conscious or not\u2014they\u2019ve just seriously lost their way. Secondly, they are reminders of what we don<\/em>\u2019<\/em>t<\/em> want to succumb to, what can happen when we stop valuing life. They might even inspire us to be better people by forcing us to look more closely at what we<\/em> value ourselves. There is no defense for evil, but if we try to understand what possesses people to go over to the dark side, we may be able to turn things around. Look at what you get when you read the letters e-v-i-l backwards.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m willing to bet that most crises of the soul, mind, and heart are rooted in self-worth. So would fully acknowledging our self-worth mean the end of suffering, crises, and broken hearts? Sorry, my hopeful friends, we can\u2019t duck the human experience; however, we could better cope with these unpleasant necessaries, process them more quickly, and experience greater peace of mind. Say we lived as if we were inherently worthy, we might begin to practice better habits; take better care of ourselves, those we love, and the planet; and act with greater compassion and understanding.<\/p>\n

We all share Felicity\u2019s momentary lapse in understanding of her inherent self-worth. Every once in a while I take my own worth out for a temporary wallow in self-doubt. Sadly for some, though, the doubt is not temporary. Why, oh why, do we assume that just because we don\u2019t see<\/em> results, we must be ineffective? Or just because we\u2019re not producing volumes of output, we\u2019re lacking in some way? (If you have answers, leave them in the comments!)<\/p>\n

If we think of it like in the film \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life,\u201d we can imagine affecting peoples\u2019 lives in ways unknown to us\u2014for better or worse. Though we may never know the effects of our actions, guaranteed they have an effect. As I said to Felicity, you may doubt your usefulness now, question your worth, but even the simple act of smiling at a cashier at the store spreads goodwill. We can\u2019t get too much of that.<\/p>\n

Once while driving Joy Car, Felicity stopped at a traffic light next to a family sitting in their car, glum expressions all around. Felicity hit the switch on her bubble-maker then beeped to get their attention. First, one head turned, then a smile grew, then a finger pointed. Soon all heads in all the surrounding cars were turned, all smiles, laughing, pointing. Her face lights up whenever she tells the story (I\u2019ve heard it a dozen times), and it\u2019s clear with each telling that she knows the significance of that moment, however simple. I imagine others who\u2019ve encountered Joy Car also tell people about the crazy polka-dotted hatchback they once saw spewing bubbles and how it made them smile or even laugh.<\/p>\n

We are our Creator\u2019s Beloved. If that isn\u2019t enough to make you feel worthy, recall your own Joy Car moment, a time you did something that made a person\u2019s day, however simple. Then recount that story over and over again and wallow in your worthiness.<\/p>\n

Next time we\u2019ll circle back to vulnerability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to Part IV in a series about vulnerability, based on Bren\u00e9 Brown\u2019s studies of vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame. I encourage you to also listen to an interview Ms. Brown gave with Krista Tippet. I was having lunch with …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-love-family"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1052,"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1051\/revisions\/1052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lunarivervoices.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}