Oct 27, 1858, Roland Macy opened Macy’s Department Store in New York City. It was Macy’s eighth business venture — the other seven failed.
So, R.H. Macy became valuable and worth something when he was a “success?”
We often hear people talk about what they earned. What they achieved. What they produced. I wonder what another person, any other person, given the same circumstances, might have produced?
The problem is that many young people, many people period, grow up believing that they have no value. Once a person decides they have no value, everything they do is filtered through the belief that it doesn’t count.
If I believe I don’t have value, I will pick people who are not good for me and therefore prove that I cannot maintain relationships.
If I achieve something, I will find a way to invalidate the experience and once again prove I have no value.
Unfortunately, the scope of this problem has reached epidemic proportions.
In actuality, it is responsible for the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
British Petroleum has roughly 80,000 employees (using 2009 statistics). There are really only two possible scenarios regarding this “accident”. When a child spills a glass of milk, we call it an accident. Huge mistake. If I grow up not being responsible for my spilled milk (not to be confused with guilt, blame, shame or fault), I may become an employee of a company that has no solution for crisis breaks at 2000 feet below water. So either not one of the 80,000 pointed out that the emperor had no clothes (in this case a crisis management plan or rapid response team with tested procedures didn’t exist) or someone did raise the issue and was told to be quiet. I’m not sure which is worse.
Now if you are starting to feel comfortable knowing who to blame for how this mess happened, how is it that the U.S., Mexico and England, none of their legislative bodies nor regulatory agencies, or any of the people who elected them brought forth the thought about needing to have a solution? Feel included now?
We are ALL responsible!
A friend of mine had an idea a few days after the “disaster” about a possible future solution. Let’s create a separate entity, for profit or not that would be responsible for finding emergency procedures that work and creating a response team for ecological emergencies similar to biohazard teams that are part of most fire departments in developed countries. Additionally, this person sent the information to the head of PR for Exxon-Mobil and outlined how it might work. Two things would be solved. The oil company’s image would be greatly improved and we won’t have to endure this kind of human and economic damage, let alone what the critters have endured during the last six months. Two days ago, four oil companies created just such an entity. Hurrah! Who knows whether that letter was the trigger. One person doesn’t have to wonder what might have happened had they taken action. They know their value and worth are a given
Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
– Henry Ford
Let’s take a look around at a few big, big issues affected by the lack of experience with value and worth in the world and a few smaller ones.
While nuclear energy is the most cost efficient, non-resource depleting source of power generation, we still do not know what to do with hazardous nuclear waste. Or is that phrase completely redundant? The former Maine Yankee Power Plant (or all of its potentially dangerous parts) is buried in some western state willing to be paid a fortune to take the risk that it will not turn out to be a mistake.
Twenty-seven thousand people died today because we have not decided to end hunger and persistent starvation as an issue in our society. I guess those folks simply didn’t have enough value and worth to be saved. I wonder what the effect might be on our collective souls if we didn’t have all those bodies cluttering them up?
The various religions are like different roads converging on the same point. What difference does it make if we follow different routes, provided we arrive at the same destination?
– Mahatma Gandhi
We’re still killing people in the name of religion. Israel and Palestine, The Sudan, Ireland, to name a few. Anyone who knows they have value and worth in the world doesn’t want to kill another person, or their children or grandchildren because they have differing beliefs. All that damage is about fear and insecurity, not “spiritual rightness” and that phrase is a complete oxymoron. If you believe something to be spiritually accurate, what does it say about the nature of your “God” if you need to kill in order to be right?
And now at a smaller level, or is it really? My mentor, Albert Boothby, and I wrote a grant to the Ford Foundation that began one of the pilots for Upward Bound in Sedalia, North Carolina in 1964. Oprah Winfrey says Upward Bound is the program that allowed her to experience possibility in the world. Now that doesn’t make me responsible for Oprah Winfrey. It does cause one to wonder what might happen if Upward Bound had never existed?
In a Green Energy Apprentice program I manage for Learning Works in Maine, the eighteen to twenty-five years olds in the program have a difficult time letting in that their value and worth in the world are a given. Why? Because we have told them just the opposite almost from the time they were brought into the world.
“I wish this kid had never been born!”
“You’re dumb!”
“You’ll never amount to anything!”
“Can’t you do anything right!”
“You’re stupid!”
How many times does a person have to hear one of those expletives before they believe it? Unfortunately once is often enough.
And by the way, this isn’t about blaming Mom and Dad. Well people don’t damage others. It is simply a recurring cycle of damage.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
– William Morrow
The good news is that the situation can be rectified in any moment you decide to allow it to change.
Regardless of what you have been told up until this moment, are you willing to allow in that YOUR VALUE AND WORTH ARE A GIVEN.
Because it is the truth.
Because it is my experience.
If you are willing, there are a thousand things you can do today to impact the future of the world.
Begin by seeing what is wanted and needed.
The best portion of a good man’s life is the little, nameless,
unremembered acts of kindness and love.
– William Wordsworth
Step beyond the circumstances in your life.
Create something you can value.
Begin with you.
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances.
The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the
circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.
– George Bernard Shaw
Allow yourself to experience that your value and worth are a given.
You are here.
You are a miracle!
Share what you have discovered!
Namaste!
