Happiness is knowing you’re a person of worth

Because being happy has less to do with your circumstances and more to do with what you think of them (if it were simply an equation of how nice of a life you have, we wouldn’t have happy poor people and unhappy rich people), how one conceives of oneself is vastly important.

This “self-concept,” in psychological thought, determines a lot of things about how we function and perceive the world around us. Here, though, we depart from speaking about the vast majority of self-concept, such as goals, religious thought, culture, personality, and the like, and discuss self-worth.

Self-worth is, quite simply, the value you place on your life. By “life,” I am not speaking about mortality, or of physical well-being, but about identity…what makes you, “you”…your “selfness.” What value you place on that is your self-worth. This is in contrast to self-esteem, which is how well you think of yourself. This has nothing to do with value, since many people who are arrogant have very high self-esteem, but low self-worth. In contrast, a person can have a humble view of themselves, insisting that in the grand scheme of things they are no better than their neighbor, yet contradict anyone who stated that the humble person was dispensable. The arrogance of a narcissistic person, however, is often used to mask how little worth they feel they have, and to better cope with that feeling.

It’s not difficult to imagine that people who place little value on their own lives may be miserable. What is difficult to imagine is how anyone can place little value on their own lives (“selfness”). For whatever reason, human beings always place the most value on the rarest of substances – gold, silver, jewels, one-of-a-kind objects, etc. What is more rare than you? Is there anyone else just like you; has there ever been anyone like you? Think of the colossal magnitude of different events and circumstances, different conversations and choices, different chances and whims that had to happen to make you, you. No matter what disability, setback, poor choice, or character flaw you may boast, what always remains is your complexity, rarity, and unrepeatability. Why should personhood be valued in such a way to turn out valued less than dead things like gold and jewels? Speaking only for myself, I see each person as another universe unto themselves, simply because they are as complex as a universe. Everything they do, every little choice they make, is calculated on the basis of that colossal magnitude of differences that make them, them and me, me; an entire universe of differences. What is the value of a universe?

Self-worth alone is not a recipe for happiness, but it would be difficult to imagine a happy person without any self-worth. If you are unhappy, arm yourself with the knowledge of your own worth. Out of every person that has ever been or will ever be, there is a perspective that only you possess, because you are the only person who has lived your life, and has struggled your struggles. That is a rare gem, indeed.