Friday, July 1, 2011

Value is in the hard (#882)

Nothing comes to me easy! Everything I need or want has a price to pay that involves much effort. Thomas Paine's statement "What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: 'tis dearness only that gives everything its value." rings solidly true for me. Material items are just things to occupy my time and some of them like this laptop computer have greater value than other things I have. However, what is really valuable to me are shared human qualities. My point is that I don't wake up everyday ready to jump about with excitement. lol. I am like everyone else, I have both good and bad moments. But I refuse to stay in the bad moments once I recognize them. I work to pull myself into another way of thinking that elevates my hopes over my despairs. I place value on my moods and working hard to make them better dominates my time as a worthy venture. I like to think of myself as the new born child still with the ability to change everything in order to survive. I say this a lot but it will always be true, I wasted a lot of years not working on making myself a better human being. I quit on myself through cynicism and an I-don't-care attitude. That was easy and required little effort on my part. What I received from that casualness of non-caring was little to nothing of value. I did not respect myself or others and when I wasn't deluding myself with propaganda I was despondent and worthless in spirit. I have discovered that anything worth having and/or being is a hard fought-for endeavor. I have to expend thought and energy toward principled ideals if I am ever going to respect myself and allow you to be respected in my eyes. There is an ethic to be had by applying myself toward improvement. It is in the trying hard and standing up for the better and best of my nature that brings worth to me. That is where working hard brings value whether I actually succeed at what I attempt or not.

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