YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH

That's me, on the right.

Today, I heard an excerpt from Michelle Obama's "Note to Self." When she goes to a fancy university, on the first day she wonders, "Am I good enough?"

This is a common theme in our culture, with people wondering if they're good enough. I have never wondered if I was good enough, not because I think I'm so great but because the Lord instilled in me, very early, that all human beings are "good enough" to deserve whatever the human experience allows.

Even when I was a little girl, and my demented and cruel mother had decided that I was the black sheep of the family, I knew I was good enough. I knew that I was good enough, even when she and my sister made up derogatory songs about my body and chased me through the house, chanting and laughing at me. And when she sent me to school wearing an old cocktail dress and Oxford shoes she'd painted pea green, while at the same time buying herself a big white rabbit fur coat, I knew I was good enough, but I also knew that life was unfair. I knew that people would try to make me feel less than themselves, but that it was a lie.

Me, at age 8 or so

We are all good enough, but whether or not other people believe we are good enough, or whether our particular gifts are recognized by the market to which we appeal; whether our appearance on the scene is timely or the product we produce is popular or perceived to be needed; THOSE are the issues. They're strictly logistical and do not speak to our worthiness.

Here is an example of what I'm talking about. In high school I wrote a few chapters of a proposed novel. It was for a school project. The teacher had his interview with me and he told me that my book was derivative because it had the same theme as Orwell's 1984. I had never read that book, somehow. I'd read Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Somerset Maugham and Poe, but not 1984. My writing was good enough. The book would have been good enough, had it not been for the fact that someone else had already done it. My self esteem was not touched in the slightest. This is what I mean.

Having equal worth doesn't mean you'll have the same job as someone else, that you'll have the same income or that you will be as popular or as pretty. Those are all variable conditions that do not have a bearing upon one's essential worth. Whether or not one has the proper education or experience for a job will probably have some bearing, but it may not. Unfair things happen all the time. Many times, in working at low-level secretarial jobs, I watched as prettier, flirtatious women, who wandered around doing no appreciable work, were given salary bumps, offices and other amenities, while hard-working but more ordinary looking women slogged along with barely a grunt of approval from their bosses.

It may go without saying that rewarding a woman simply because she won the genetic lottery is not doing her any favors, on top of it being unjust and inequitable, but it is hard to make that case when her survival is more easily won simply by taking advantage of her God given beauty. This kind of thing happens all the time. I don't think we should sanguinely accept this. If possible, you have to fight it, but it is very difficult. The important thing is to keep your self esteem intact, despite the unfairness.

You've got to develop the habit of ignoring these variables in relation to your feelings of worth. It really is a habit because it is something that becomes stronger over time if you continue to remind yourself and act accordingly. Slowly, you'll develop personal dignity, and no matter what happens to you in life, you won't question whether or not these bad things are happening to you because you don't deserve any better. The answer to that question is always "no."

Please hold onto your esteem of self and recognize that there is evil in the world. Evil people want to diminish you. In their muddied thinking, they believe that if they convince you that you are less than them, it elevates them. God does not agree. Your worth is exactly the same as any other human being on this planet.

God bless you all.

Silver Rose