A  life worthwhile

I struggle with the question of what makes a life worthwhile.  Or, more specifically, what makes my life worthwhile.

In college, my friends and I would buy The National Enquirer just to look for the most outrageous stories, (Years before the internet and Stumble Upon!).  I ran across a story about how much the human body is worth,  As in: how many precious metal and  minerals are in there or what could you get for selling all you internal organs.  Stuff like that.  And I know that car companies have a dollar amount designated for each human life so they can get a ratio of how worthwhile it is to recall a part on a car versus getting sued and paying settlements. And,  if you are Betty Grable, you can say that just your legs alone are worth a cool million!

So I guess, if nothing else, you can say that every life has a dollar value.But I am more concerned about what makes our conscious life worthwhile.  I absolutely believe that an alive person is worth more than a prematurely dead person.  I absolutely believe that everyone breathing the same air and having the same energy burning in their bodies is connected and contributing just because of those things.  I would tell my clients that very thing  I would tell the parents of a special needs child that very thing.  I have told people that had a son is killed in a gang shooting or who's sister is dying of MS because she has no insurance those very things as well.

So why am I different?  Who do feel the need to validate my existence with achievement and impact?
Sometimes, that is even what keeps me from writing! I rail against feeling that I "have to" in order to feel worthwhile!

So I have decided that I will stop trying to fight the the need to validate myself by reviewing small ways that I may have impacted on the world.

When I wrote my essay for grad school, I got all dramatic and soppy and wrote something about only needing to impact on one person to make the hard work of getting a degree worth the effort.  I'm surprised they let me in!  However, if I really felt that way, I have to see if I have made an impact n that one person, and if it was truly worth the effort.

So in future posts,  (to keep you in suspense,)  I am gonig tp review my life's work and identify interesting cases.

Have a writing goal gives me the motivation to keep it up, as well!