In 10 minutes, define your personal value. What makes you valuable?
The most valuable thing I do each day is write. Something. Anything. My words are my currency. Though I suppose standard rules of economics don't apply--I have an endless supply of words, and it is rare for anyone to demand them. So, my value is artful, wrapped up in what is creative. Historically, this is not something which is valued in the sense of money. Not unless I'm really good, or am misunderstood in my own time, or am to inherit a global chain of luxury hotels and have a sex tape floating around on the internet. The value of a writer's product in terms of money is usually low. There are simply too many of us, and too few unique thoughts shared between the group. So, what else might I claim to be my value, and how may it be measured? I am also a wife--the keeper of my husband's heart, confidence, and ego. And I make my home. There must be some value to associate with the vacuum cleaner, the dish soap, and the laundry hanging on the line. Or maybe that's all relative to taste, habit, and circumstance. After all, for a woman in a third world country, her ability to balance a pitcher of clean drinking water on her head over the dusty miles between well and hearth is the difference between life and death. That's value. Measured not in dollars, but in dysentery. Or a lack thereof. If I don't vacuum, nobody dies. If I don't write, nobody even notices. Except me.
