The September Soliloquies/Still in the Ditch here

Photo: drawing for the engraving, "Big Fish Eat Little Fish," by Peter Bruegel the Elder. It seemed appropriate to use another piece of his artwork this time around. It's not artwork about a ditch, but how many paintings or drawings of people in ditches can one do without wearing the subject out? The painting was depressing enough to begin with. Better to move on to other subjects, equally grim but at least.. different.

The September soliloquies continue.

Yesterday a friend in the work asked the question, not of me specifically, but in general, "what am I worth?"

This question came from a deep sense of the relative age we’re at (she and I are aged peers of the realm) and what her real value was. Presumably, in an "objective" sense, although it must be confessed that any of us, if hard pressed and then honest, don't actually know what this means. We have a taste of it in our mouths, but probably haven't eaten much of the dish over the course of a lifetime.

I always tend to tell people that their value begins here and now, in the body, where we are. And there is a definite truth, an objective truth, to that. One that must be sensed with the body and intuited with the feeling — as well as reasoned on with the intellect — in order to understand it deeply enough for it to be of help.

Our value is inherent. It begins in life and consciousness itself, and every cell in our body is valuable in the way it is organized and the exquisitely tuned responses that are possible within the context of their relationships.