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Why am I alive?
Not surprisingly, this is a question I ask myself more frequently when I'm feeling depressed, useless, and things just aren't going the way I thought they would despite my best intentions.
I think many of us live in a society that emphasizes value on productivity. There's nothing wrong with that. Where it falls down, though, is how we measure that value. If I invent and/or manufacture a particular type of widget that people everywhere need (or feel they need). I can point to that widget and say, "I did that!" Therein lies my worth. Right? Or maybe I'm an artist or songwriter who can point to my platinum album or million-dollar painting and say, "Therein lies my value." Is that how it works?

Let's follow this scenario a bit, and see where it goes: Let's say the greatest artists and inventors in our society are the people with value, because we can easily quantify their worth. Well, what makes their work valuable? Usually it's the dollar value attached to it what people are willing to pay for these things because they need or want them so much.
Wait what people? The inventor of the widget suddenly has a worthless piece of junk on his hands if no one wants to buy what he has or if no one is around to buy it. The artist has nothing but a doodle or noise on a recording device if no one is around to appreciate or buy their product.
Therefore, we find that the people who did not manufacture the widget or paint the landscape suddenly have value here. Without our desire or appreciation for these things, the creators of them have worthless product, and therefore must themselves be without worth IF we were to follow the logic that worth is based purely on productivity.
But if you want to shoot that logic down in a hurry, go visit eBay.
Look around you - right now. You're probably not a manufacturing guru, are you? You probably don't have million-dollar paintings hanging around that you created, do you? (Even if you do, they're not going to hail in that kind of money until after you're dead. Sorry.) So what do you have? Why are you here?
You're here because you have something so valuable that no manufacturer can build it and no artist can create it, and neither of them can survive or have worth without it: You have love for your fellow man. Okay, there's some fellow men you have more love for than others. You love your children, if you have them. You love your friends. You love your pets, if that's all you have around you right now (like me). They love you back, even when you're not actually feeding them! And that makes you feel a little bit good, even for a moment, doesn't it? Because they are spending their love on you, because you have worth to them (maybe just because you love them back), and therefore you have worth.
That is why I am alive today; because I have love, and that is worth something to the ones I love, whether it's an actor on TV I enjoy watching or a cat getting a scratch behind the ears. And that is why you are alive today: Because you have love, and whether you express it through dollars spent on a product someone made, or whether you express it through a smile to a stranger wondering why he or she is alive today, or whether you express it through calling a friend who might be feeling very lonely and unloved right now despite having all the "things" in the world around them; and therefore you have something of great value. You have value.
People can love their I-Pods, their Lincoln Navigators, and their high-paying jobs all they want. But these things cannot nor never will love them back. Only YOU and I can love someone back.

Learn more about this author, Lisa Shaw.
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