What is your value?

Sir Rastus - newest member of the buwick family!

How do you perceive yourself? What is your value? What are you worth?

Since the age of 12 (59 years ago), I have been accustomed to working and being productive. As a North Dakota adolescent, I shoveled snow from sidewalks and driveways, carried the daily newspaper, sometimes “enjoying” throwing papers in 30 degrees below zero blizzards. (What you are brought up in you think is normal.)
I mowed lawns, set double lane pins in the bowling alley. In high school, I painted houses, barns and churches along with working in a laundry, construction, sports writing and farm work. College years was more of the same until I took my first post college job as a college teacher and athletic coach.

And I’ve worked ever since in the people helping business until 10 years ago when I was unjustly asked to resign from my position as college prof and coach. Work has served as a source of ministry, of financial gain, fulfillment, of self esteem building and it has been fun. My norwegian/estonian heritage provided me with a good work ethic. My first wife, Ann, would at times chide me for not having fun. I would tell her that work, to me, was fun.

Though I’ve explored countless work options in these 10 years, nothing has opened up. It has at times been frustrating, at other times depressing, much of the time boring and recently – a relaxing freedom. As I have wrestled with these issues, a bottom line question has been popping up. What is my value as a person? What am I worth? As with most men, my worth has come through the vehicle of work. Does it need to? Is there another source to measure our value, men?

Where do you get your sense of worth? More on the next post .