Sometimes I take it very personally when others don’t share my values.

I can feel so strongly about what I think is right and wrong, that I feel like I’ve been physically attacked by injustice.  I feel personally devalued when another human does something blatantly unethical and gets away with it.  Someone pursuing his own interest isn’t pursuing my interest, causing me to feel invalidated and sidelined.  I react with  fury and become immobilized by bitterness at the person savagely diminishing my importance.

Internally I’m screaming, I AM IMPORTANT!  YOU CAN’T TREAT ME THIS WAY.

How dare you attack my value!  You think you have the right to humiliate, silence, and ignore me?  You think you can shun, belittle, and devalue me?  You think you can confiscate my importance and cast me aside like so much garbage, and get away with it?  

I start looking for ways to take my importance back from the thief who threatens my deepest sense of intrinsic value.

Eventually, I realize I’m not helping anything this way, so I take a step back, a deep breath, and broaden my vision.

We have this out-dated idea that we can increase our value by stripping away someone else’s value; the fittest has the most value and so will survive.  As humanity evolves in consciousness, we begin to understand that value is an inherent quality that can’t be removed.  Like smearing poop on gold doesn’t change the fact that there is still gold under that poop.

No one can subtract from your inherent value, not even you.  If someone smears poop on your value, all that means is that now you have to take a shower.  Someday we will evolve to the point where we realize all this poop smearing is just causing us extra work, and we will spend our energy just enjoying our shiny gold.

In the meantime, it helps to remember that everyone is worried about security and survival and we’re all doing the best we know how given our history of experience.  No matter how others choose to be, I choose who I will be.

I choose to always see my importance, even when others do not.  I choose to see the importance of others, even when they do not see my importance.  Cough  That is to say, I choose to try to remember to try to strive towards this ideal.

It also helps to stay away from poop slingers.  A great favor you can do for yourself is to align yourself with those who recognize and honor your value.

Those of us who are starting to see it will continue on together, reminding each other of our inherent value and importance, and the value and importance of others; that is how we will make the world a better place.