What is worth?

In today’s modern society, value is placed on many different things and sadly it is most commonly the materialistic things that spring to mind when we think of value.

Not all that long ago, kicking a crushed can around in the street with your mates gave untold hours of joy and guess what – it didn’t cost much at all to have that fun time with your friends. Life was simple – but it was also a tad complicated as well.

Back in the day, it was seen as unmanly to show your emotions, that you were perceived as either weak or you were called a sissy or other similar epithets. Fathers would often cast shame and dissatisfaction with how their boys were turning out if they were to cry or if they showed any sign of emotion. The boys would be told to ‘take it like a man’ and have to plough on stoicly through life and figure out their issues. Thankfully I never suffered any such ignominy or comments of that nature from my Dad, probably because he was working so damn long and hard to put food on the table for 7 kids! On the flip side, I also never evere kicked the footy in the back yard with Dad either. Never mind, because I was happy in my own company and it also meant that I did not get judged by anyone about how good I was at anything.

Yes, it would have been nice to get more compliments and spend more time with my Dad doing ‘normal boyhood things’ but I will never judge my Dad for that because he never really had a Dad around during his childhood having lost his natural and his stepfather by the time he was about 15. He had to figure out for himself what being a Dad was at an age when HE should have been doing his own thing in HIS own company.

Dad was also born just a couple of years before the Great Depression and back then times were a heck of a lot tougher – economically and in many other ways – than it is nearly a century later.

It occasionally occurs to me to think what sort of opinion my Dad had of himself, bearing in mind he basically became his own adult male role model when he was still a teenager. Did he allow himself the time to consider his own needs and take time out for himself if he was feeling down? I’m not sure he would have had the time as he had 2 younger siblings to help his Mum raise as well as a part time job after school. I’m also pretty certain that, as I alluded to earlier, it was not the done thing for a man to be anything other than that and heaven forbid he should show any emotions. But what image did he have of or value did he place on himself? I don’t think that was the done thing either. You just got on with it I guess.

I am an emotional, empathetic person, and without intending to sound disrespectful to my Dad, I am assuming that I got this side of me from my Mum. Ever since I was a teenager I have had the opposite problem to my Dad – I have struggled with how I perceive myself and to allow myself to see much worth or importance in me. I was raised to be honest, respectful, well mannered and courteous and I live by those values to this day. I was also the second youngest of 7 and basically fended for myself whenever I was not getting told to get ready for school or to come to the dinner table.

So what is worth, in a self worth sense? I know that it is so much more than how good I am at things but for whatever reason, throughout my life I have been so damn hard on myself over what I now start to see are seriously UNimportant things. So why do I do this to myself? What I struggle with to this day, as a middle aged man, is how I perceive myself and how much value I place on myself. There have been a lot of things happen in my life right from my teen years until now that have had a profound effect on my opinion of myself. I have been to see counsellors about it but I still don’t see myself as anything or anyone special and cannot seem to place any realistic value on myself as a person. My family, my mates and people I work with are amazingly supportive and I feel like I am letting them down when I think lowly of myself. I hit a particularly emotional speed bump at work this morning and my poor supervisor copped it but she was absolutely astoundingly supportive and I have come home with my confidence on the rise, and a renewed determination to stay positive in how I see myself. I owe it to my support network as they have been and are the reasons that I am still living and breathing today and I can’t thank them enough.

I owe it to them – and of course my 2 beautiful teens – to know that I AM worth a lot to a great many people and to say that if they can see it, why can’t I?