Who Decides Our Worth?

We recently discovered the most beautiful roly-poly I’ve ever seen in our garden. He was an incredibly vibrant purple. I managed to get a quick picture of him before he scurried off to find a hiding place since I’d moved the pot he was skulking under with all his little isopod buddies. Curious about his unique coloring, I used Google Lens to find out if he was some rare variety of isopod that I’d never seen before.

That’s when I learned that beautiful purple color was a tell-tale sign that the little creature was dying. It’s known as Invertebrate Iridescent Virus 31 (IIV-31); it forms crystal-like structures in their tissue, which is what gives them that purple or blue appearance. While scientists hesitate to use words like “pain” for invertebrates, they will say it causes “severe physiological distress.” I’m not a scientist, so I’d venture to say they’re in quite a bit of pain.

A little critter that most consider insignificant, but his pain-filled life still matters enough to him that he scurries for cover when the flower pot gets moved.

My sister—the beautiful golden-haired golden child I mentioned in my last post—recently lost all of her hair to chemo. I have to admit she is every bit as stunning bald as she was with all that perfectly styled blonde hair. But still, she struggled with the loss. Since she was an infant, she’s been hearing that her hair is integral to her beauty, and her beauty is integral to her worth. I could write a book about what she’s worth to me, but that doesn’t seem to stick quite like the countless microlessons we get from our parents, exes, and ad companies.

Worth is something I struggle with a lot these days. I didn’t think I was vain until I looked in the mirror and saw someone I didn’t recognize staring back at me. My mother never misses a chance to tell me that I look tired. I look tired because I am tired, and I refuse to slather myself in creams and makeup to hide my exhaustion. I tell her I will look less tired when I am less tired. But that doesn’t totally chase away the nagging thought at the back of my brain that my worth is lessened by the circles under my eyes.

I am chubbier than I’ve ever been. I know that I eat healthier than most people, and there are a slew of reasons for my weight gain that I’m trying to sort out in a healthy way. Still, that does nothing for my sense of self worth when I see people I love making themselves sick in the name of not looking like me. When all I hear anywhere I go is weight loss, and so much venom is directed at people who don’t fit a certain ideal. It’s hard to stay focused on health when you’re being continuously bombarded with the message that health be damned, one must be thin to have worth.

I’m also pretty broke these days. I haven’t worked a full-time corporate job since Covid and my book royalties place me only slightly above hobbyist as of late. There was a time I could claim a living wage from my words, but that time is not now. I am happiest cobbling together unconventional revenue streams that allow me to keep a roof over my head while I learn and laugh and love and live this life I’ve been gifted. But late capitalist hellscapes don’t thrive when people live balanced, joy-filled lives. A lot of marketing and PR goes into convincing people that our worth is determined by the things we possess and the size of our 401k. It’s an especially cruel psy-op given the current economic environment, but even under the best of circumstances, it feels hollow to me. Still, it’s hard not to give into the temptation to feel insignificant when you don’t have the money to help your adult kid out of a jam or to keep up with the spending your stepkids are used to.

I am also less able than I was even a few short years ago. To be honest, the rapidity of my decline alarms me. As I find myself limited in ways I was not before my health took a freefall, I am no longer able to earn my worth as I was before. Even as I write this, my sweet husband is scurrying around to do the chores of two because a simple cold turned into pneumonia and I’m in bed while he carries my load as well as his own.

Basically, I have no worth by any measurable standard put forth by society. And yet, like my purple friend in the garden, my life has worth to me.

The weeks surrounding the Fourth of July are always upsetting. Leading up to it, I know what’s coming and feel helpless to stop it. Nobody seems to care—or they care about their party more. Afterwards, I leak tears as I read about the myriad of animals that died horrible deaths because we like to celebrate our country’s birthday by blowing things up. I’m usually stuck inside like every other person with compromised lungs; the air quality is dangerous for days. So, I scroll Facebook out of boredom until I can’t take one more story of bats falling from the sky with ruptured eardrums, breaking every bone in their little bodies on impact. Or orphaned fawns. Or birds that flew into buildings in confusion.

I could write for ages about how little regard we have for our animal neighbors, but I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me, given the absolutely calloused cruelty we show to fellow humans. When fathers are gunned down in the street in front of their children, and infants are killed in their carseat over a pack of diapers, and it doesn’t even merit a full news cycle, it becomes clear how little value we place on human life.

Who decides which lives matter? Why don’t they all? Whatever explanation we place on it so we can sleep at night, if one person’s life ceases to matter, then all life does. We’re all fair game in a system or culture that devalues any subsect of us.

It’s been happening for years. Like frogs in a pot of water, we’ve been conditioned to not notice the temperature turning up. We were taught to accept the suffering of a child across the globe. Then the prisoner the next county over. Then the teenage boy across town who doesn’t look like me. The circle of what lives matter grows smaller every passing day.

I suppose some of the tuning out that we do is self preservation. Sometimes I have to look away from the suffering, or I cease being able to function.

And yet, my soul grieves it all—from the father who will not see his daughter grow up right down to the purple isopod under my garden pot. The loss threatens to swallow me whole.

And as for me, even when the world tells me I do not matter, there is a still small voice that tells me I do.

I believe we are so much more connected than we realized—all living things, great and small. And I believe there is something beautiful and unique about each of us that isn’t based on our waist size, income, or productivity level. There’s an author I follow on Substack, Nabu, who said something along the lines of: Every wave is part of the ocean, but it’s beautiful because it’s the only time the ocean will express itself in quite that way.

I like the way my oldest son, who has always humbled me with his wisdom, says it: Every life is infinitely valuable because it’s the only time the universe will ever experience itself through that lens. A thing can only ever happen once in such a beautifully specific and unique way.

With that in mind, here is my goal for myself this week, and my request of you: look for the value in yourself and in the other lives you encounter, whatever form they take. Seek the beauty. Cherish the uniqueness. And know you have immeasurable value.