Self Worth

A couple of communications in the past few days have initiated another of those troublesome thought trains which has, strangely enough, been remarkably similar to the epiphany described the other day in Worm's fantastic blog.

Perhaps it was the way I was brunged up with one eye always on the relevant authority (maybe it was the same thing for Wormie) but it is now abundantly plain to me that conformity has been an essential part of my being. Conformity basically means being the same as all the rest. The fact that I've found myself at the top of every group pile that I've been conforming to all my life must mean, by deduction, that I have some qualities that make me, at the very least, better than the group average I've been aspiring to. A problem with aspiring to average is that one ends up being just average and, being average means that by avoiding the real lows you also miss out on the real highs of life. By ducking the hassles you miss the rewards, by avoiding distress you never feel the joy. Life is a flat line and in the operating theatre a flat line means you're dead!! Wow.

Most of the self development literature I've read starts out with the requirement for an evaluation of your weaknesses from which you develop techniques and practises that will strengthen those weaknesses. Recently I heard about one that sets out to determine your strengths and strengthen them, now this sounds like a much better idea to me. I realise that I've spent my life being overly aware of my weaknesses and of down playing my strengths so that I deny my abilities until a crisis arises and I rise to the top of the pile. Hmmm, so by inference then, if life is a perpertual crisis there is a perpetual need for the strengths which are usually denied.

Snoopy will get that dirty Red Baron. Yay for Snoopy!!!!

Here I am as one with the environment. There's me, the Bush, the Bugs, the Creepy Crawlies and the Beasties. Not one of them cares who I am unless I'm a threat to them. Not one of them has any expectations of me, I don't have to conform to any rules other than the basic rules of survival. I'm not being judged by them or anyone else for that matter. In my mind, out here I'm worthwhile because I appreciate what is here and I can be me, the real me.

Here, people are looking to me (as a young niece once described the look in a Lion's eye as looked at her staring at it through a game fence). People looking to me are seeing those weaknesses and are criticising! This is a foreign place, an uncomfortable place where conformity is the rule of easy survival.

The reality, in a Town/City environment, that none of those people actually care one hoot about you gets glossed over by that insideous thing, lack of self worth.

Perhaps though, the biggest realisation has been that my own sense of self worth is firmly attached to my financial status - no money, no worth!! How sad is that and how deeply embedded is the idea. A new friend made an exteremly generous offer that I refused. There were several reasons for my refusal but the principal one was that I am keeping my head down below the parapet of liquidity. No bucks = no good! Hah, this one has to be defeated somehow.