Today was our semi-annual company meeting. Our companies "purpose" in it's mission statement is to "add value to people". Today during the meeting my boss asked us about the ways that as employers we see them adding value to employees, clients, shareholders and partners. For the company I work for (owned by 3 Christian men) any question about what to do with the future involves being asked "will it add value to people?"
So I'm sitting there in the company meeting, freezing because the air conditioning is very high and thinking about all the ways I hope to add value to my unborn childs life and how I can't wait for that to happen and I start to think about my life. In the last week, I've had several things cross my path and in most of them I've tried honestly to add value to the situation. To teach someone something or to stay out of the way when my opinion wasn't going to add in a helpful manner is a hard thing to do.
The truth is that it's hard to add value to life. We as humans are greedy. We want to be right. We want to be justified. We want others to show sympathy when we are hurt or joy when we are celebrating. We want to be valued. But today I thought very hard about how much less important it is to be valued than validated.
I know a few people who constantly bemoan that they aren't valued (be it- at a job they don't like, a relationship they don't appreciate being in, or even in how they interact with their family). These people, myself included, want someone to give them value by seeing it their way or by acknowledging they are right.
Is that value? Is that helpful? Or are we teaching ourselves, our children and our friends that validation adds value? Because we shouldn't be. If we knew we were we would probably stop. Just today I thought about 3 seperate situations where by "understanding someone's situation" I probably gave off the impression that they were validated in their reaction.
I don't want to be validating peoples reactions. I want to validate your feelings. I want to validate your value in God's kingdom. I want to validate that you are loved. I don't want to validate that it's ok to react to anyone else in a way that diminishes them or is demeaning to their value.
So I guess this is really all about me and my struggle. My continuing struggle to be a better person and to try to put value into the BIG PICTURE. My adding value to you should add value to the whole situation and if it doesn't I'm going to be rethinking it. Mainly because I want my child to know that their value isn't related to anyone else's but it is effected more by what gives the BIG PICTURE than what it takes from the BIG PICTURE.
In the end I want to be adding value to God's Big Picture, and I want you to want the same thing.
3 comments:
Wow, I've never thought about it that way. It is incredibly difficult to separate validation from value. I like the idea of it...and I'd like to learn how to do that too.
That's tough. So many people at work feel under-validated. My boss, for instance. She's disgruntled. We're proofreaders, and the only time we get contact with executives is when we miss something, not for doing a good job. I know I'm adding value to our little "big" picture at work, and so is she. We're kind and considerate people, and we really care about doing a good job.
In the bigger big picture, like with family and community, I have a very good role model for that. My mom. She's awesome. She goes out of her way daily to help others, even strangers, because she loves to be a blessing. She cares about her community, and reaches out to others who feel disenfranchised. I want to be like that. I want to do more like that... more than just making sure that I am friendly and loving to everybody I meet or pass in the aisle at the grocery store.
It is hard not to validate someone's actions when you know that is what they are looking for, that someone else understands what they are going through or what they did to react to a certain situation. That does give people comfort and sence of for lack of a better term validation. However I think that you are very right in the fact that people, especially Christians, need to focus on exactly what you said, validating feelings, that they truly are loved, and I don't think we do that enough, ne included. I commend you on bringing this subject to light
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