[This image is by France Corbel and can be found in a number of places. Image description: There is a light pink background, and in the center, there is a coffee carafe filled about 2/3 with coffee. The words, “Your worth is not measured by your productivity,” are written both above and within the carafe of coffee.]
We can become so task-oriented that we neglect being relationship-oriented.
We can become so busy with work that we neglect time for care, tending, and growing.
We can become so convinced our worth is wrapped up in productivity that we (temporarily) forget our worth is intrinsic to who we are and unmeasurable.
Our worth is not measured by our productivity.
That has simply never been the case. But we’ve internalized this somewhere.
Somewheres…?
capitalism,
the Protestant work ethic,
ableism,
scarcity-thinking,
urgency-thinking,
greed,
school culture,
family culture,
workplace culture,
any kind of competition culture.
But I’m convinced of this: When we seek — however imperfectly — to ground ourselves in the truth of our own intrinsic worth, and when we seek to view our neighbors in the same ways, we make space for people to do the same. After all, aren’t so many of us longing to hear this? That our lives were never meant solely for productivity or measured by productivity? That there is much more to who we are? And that who we are matters in and of itself?
Smuggling Grace 